Following our presentation and review in December, our brief was to aid the Fashion students with their abstract design module, showing them how to use different techniques and CAD tools. As the fashion design students have our priorities, such as hand ins for other modules, we are to continue to develop our individual work.
Feedback from the presentation in December was to continue to develop the individual project into a garment utilising wood. My initial attempts, with the interlocking triangles, could be further developed into corsetry, including the corset and the crinoline. Below are modern examples of wooden corsets: (From top-left to bottom-right)Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse, unknown designer, Manish Arora, Una Berke, Iris Van Herpen in collaboration with architect Julia Koerner,
Wood, would lend itself to the manufacture of corsetry, especially to the Crinoline underskirt, originally manufactured from whalebone, then wood, then steel and now plastic. See below for an example of a traditional crinoline skirt, to give the shape for the corset dress.
Fashion as a rule always comes back around, crinolines and corsetry are no exception. Below is a wicker crinoline and corset by Dolce and Gabbana in their 2013 spring show and Gautier’s London warrior.
Attempting to tackle the crinoline first, the concept would be to take something flat and then transform it into a skirt in a series of rings and spirals.
Like the innovative and influential designer Hussein Chalayan, who transforms this table into a skirt and transformed many other household furniture into clothes. Although it is practical in the sense of wearing a table. It looks very heavy. I have prepared some CNC layouts, one set as rings in a circular fashion, the other a spiral. Both have holes in them to allow for threading material through, to alter the transparency and change the crinoline into a skirt what holds itself to the wearer.
