Final Line Up

This is my final line up for my collection. As we have to have six outfits for our final line up, I have designed six, however I will only be making two outfits out of the six. These two will be the first outfit (a play-suit with a mesh overlay and woven detail on the waist and the cuffs) and the sixth outfit (a woven top with a pair of high waisted, wide leg trousers, with side drape detail). I think that this collection reflects my Elemental theme with the colours I have used (subtle blues and neutral tones), and the organic and soft shapes I have used. I have used sustainable fabrics such as linen, cotton and silk in this collection to reflect my research into the global context of sustainability in fashion.

presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1022bxrBHhc_Wx78FkksGx94ijunV5xGCSmpgkDpq5qs/edit#slide=id.g2099ac2169_0_0

Costings- 2nd December 2016

As I am wanting my collection to be based around the contextual issue of sustainability,I would prefer my garments to be made out of sustainable fabrics such as linen and cotton. However, as these fabrics I unique and can take longer to produce than synthetic fabrics, the price of fabric may cost more than I had imagined. I have been bench marking fabric prices online and this is what I found; 

Organic Cotton

• http://organiccotton.biz/store/index.php?route=product/category&path=255_202

This website sold many organic fabrics, including fabrics with bamboo content (which ranged from £7.95-£9.95 per metre) this was quite pricey however, bamboo fibres are a very natural source, and can be made into fabrics such as silk and jersey. Natural coloured linen can cost up to £12.95 per metre, however coloured linen such as black and blue can cost as little as £4.95 per metre. 

John Lewis

• http://www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-natural-linen-fabric-natural/p1097257?sku=232942466&s_kwcid=2dx92700013366480617&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=CO7S97XZ1dACFbgW0wod7rYM8A&gclsrc=aw.ds

Department store John Lewis also offer a range of natural fabrics such as linen and cotton. 100% natural linen costs £18 per metre, and the they also sell 'linen look' fabrics with prices costing £10 per metre, which i made from 100% cotton, but has a linen textural finish to it. Either way, both are expensive. 

The Natural Fabric Store

• http://thenaturalfabricstore.co.uk/product-category/fabric/cotton/

The Natural Fabric store is a sewing and fabric shop based in Dorset and sells natural fabrics including, cotton, linen,tweed, denim and wool. However, this is more expensive per metre than the two stores above. Linen can range from £22-£30 per metre, and cotton ranging from £12- £20. 

Looking at the cost of fabrics I think I may have to budget myself, and maybe buy some pure natural fabrics, and then maybe some that are natural 'look-a-like' fabrics. It is clear to see why so many clothing brands these days prefer to use synthetic fabrics, because they cost so much less than the natural fabrics, and this is why they can sell products cheaply. However, a few brands do care about the sustainability and durability of their garments, therefore they are more willing to sell a smaller range of clothing, at a higher price. If I was in industry making garments, I would always aim to make my garments from sustainable natural fabrics, this way I can can be confident in guaranteeing an excellent high quality product, that will last a life time. However, from doing my research into synthetic and natural fabrics, for my collection I think I will be using a mixture of both synthetic and natural fabrics.

Sustainable (natural) Fabrics vs Synthetic Fabrics

Whilst researching the types of fabrics I want to use for my collection, I have realised that sustainable, organic fabric such as pure cotton, linen and silk would be perfect to use. However, I have found that these types of fabrics can be really expensive, therefore   I may have to rethink the fabrics I will be using. Sustainable, plant and animal fibre fabrics are the most eco-friendly types to use, and the neutral colour scheme of these fabrics compliment the colour palette of my collection perfectly. I visited the fabric shop the other day to buy some samples for my sketchbook, and see what I could potentially use in my collection. Whilst looking, I realised it was going to be rather difficult to source sustainable fabrics as well as them being out of my price range. Therefore, my solution to this is to use a mixture synthetic and sustainable for my collection, or maybe use fabrics with mixtures of synthetic and sustainable fibres. An example of mixed fibres is polyester and cotton; cotton is lightweight, breathable and comfortable to wear against the skin, whilst polyester is strong, and doesn't wrinkle or stretch when washed. In addition, to add a drape-like feature, viscose is also added to these blended fibres, viscose is a semi-synthetic fibre, as it is sourced from bamboo, however requires hard processing to develop the fibres from the pulp. As the first outfit of my collection requires drape, this may be something of consideration. 

Colour Palette 

To really focus on the colours I want to use for my collection, I have tried different ways to present the colours. This also helps me see more clearly what colours contrast each other and which ones compliment each other. Below are the different ways that I presented my colour palettes;

For this sample, I used a mixture of acrylic paints and Pebeo metallic paints to create the colours I want to focus on for my collection. Once I had mixed the paints I painted them onto A5 pieces of acetate and then stuck these together in a line, placing the colours in the order they flow in. As I haven't made a keywords page in my sketchbook yet, I decided to add the words I believe to be relevant to my collection. A few of these words were; cool, calm, natural, subtle, organic, and soft. These words should reflect how my sketchbook looks, and also my final collection.

This is the other way I have displayed the colours I want to be using. However, to do this I have used the colours that I can see in my primary images of the beach, and to correspond to the colours I have placed fabric swatches next to the images. For the images that only involved the water near the edge and the sand, I used colours such as nude, sand, brown, light brown, mink, pewter and white. However, for the images that include the deeper sea where the water is more blue, I have included fabric swatches with more blue hues. This was just another way to present the colours I will be using for my collection.

Accessories 

As part of my collection, I wanted to create a couple of accessories to compliment my outfits. I have decided to stick with simple yet chic accessories to make. The first accessory I made was a fold over bag, made from faux-leather in a mink colour. The neutral colour, and simple design will go perfectly with my outfits and should complete them nicely. I measured out how much I waned to use for the bag and cut the shape out, I then folded the long rectangular shape and sewn the sides together to create a bag shape. Next I folded over the edge of the bag by 1cm to give it a neat edge, and so that it wouldn't fray. I then took some stick on velcro, to secure the the bag shut. I also stuck some velcro on the inside of the part that will be folded over, and then the other part of the velcro the the actual bag, so that when the top is folded over, it has something to stick to, making the contents of the bag secure. Below are the steps of how I created the bag;

This is the first step, sewing the folded over fabric together which when finished sewing both sides, meant a bag shape was created

Here I had folded the hew of the bag over to secure the raw edges to stop the bag from fraying, and to give an overall neat and professional finish 

I have tapered the corners of the bag so that when I fold it inside out the corners aren't bulky

This is the velcro I used to secure the bag together

I used these pieces of velcro to secure the folded over part to the bag 

Fabric manipulation techniques

This fabric manipulation technique involved me using the primary image I had taken of the sea and emulating the colours and shapes, into the fabric. To create this effect, I layered different types of fabric on top of one another to create the texture of the beach. I have thought about where to layer each fabric, as each colour represents something different on the image. Here, I have placed the darker colours near the edge, to represent the colour of the deep sea waters, I then placed a lighter blue coloured silk chiffon fabric on top of the dark blue velvet fabric to see the contrast of both. Next, I focused on the white frothy part of the water, near the very edge of the sea. This was shown through sewing on a white fine linen fabric, frayed at the edges to give it an uneven look, much like the edge of the sea. To sew these pieces of fabric together, I have used uneven, random stitches in white thread, to represent the movement of the uneasy sea.

These fabric techniques allowed me to see the effects fraying has on different types of fabrics. Here I have used different types of linen fabrics to see the outcome of fraying them. I am unsure as to leave the edges of some of my garments raw, which means that they will more than likely fray, so I wanted to take advantage of this and see what different techniques of fraying I could come up with. The first technique on the left simply involved me fraying the sides, by pulling thread by thread however still leaving a considerable amount of fabric left in the middle. The next sample was one of my favourites as I have never seen something like this before. I frayed both sides, the same as the sample previously, however this time I cut into the fraying edges, unevenly to give a different, and more rugged look. The third sample is the same as the first, however this time I frayed it more, leaving less fabric in the middle. The final one involved me snipping into the edges of the fabric unevenly, so that when I frayed the edges, they'd all be different shapes and sizes, this also gave a quite rugged look and created some interesting shapes. From this I can see that there are a number of possibilities when having raw edges on garments, although the outcome has been interesting, I am still unsure as to whether I should have raw edges on my garments or not.

As I will be making a woven top for one of my outfits, I want to incorporate woven elements into my other garments, such as around the waist of a playsuit, or on the cuffs of sleeves. Therefore, I have drawn different examples of woven techniques, I think the one I would be most likely to go with is the bottom one, the blue one as this is more simple to create with fabrics, the others include something stiff such as pieces of wood, that the fabric is then wrapped around. Like I mentioned before, I would feature the woven detail on the waist band or the cuffs or the hem of a garment, as these small details can what make a collection come together.