Fabric Swatch

A selection of cotton, silk and polyester fabric swatches and samples from Tessuti and The Fabric Store. These fabrics may assist in finalising the colour palette to my designs.

Sketch Exercise Part II

This post is a follow up of the previous. The second week of drawing exercises with Armando involved further explorations of drawing draped material on the mannequin.

Sketch Exercise Part I

The following images were sketching exercises from Armando's Design tutorials.
A minute each for front side and back views. The point of this exercise was to experience how fast coming up with designs in the real fashion industry would be. As well as being a new approach in incorporating drape forms from the earlier post into designs that would further strengthen skills in imagining and drawing from two dimensional compositions.

Illustrations

This post is an explorative 7 pages of illustrations that utilises sections of drapes and Korean-inspired textile prints with fabric swatches.
These are not my final designs but an example of how I will incorporate small details structured within my drape exercises into my initial design drawings later on.

Textile Process

Initial fumblings of repeat pattern of a Minhwa Korean traditional painting.

Draping Part II

Draping Part I

The following 2 posts will be images of the collection of drapes I did in class and further explorations on the mannequin at home executed with discarded clothing and shirts bought from the Salvation Army.

Textile Dyeing Part II

The second session that we had to dye fabrics resulted in more intense and deep colours suitable to be used within my colout range. This week I was able to dye a variety of neutral organic colours as well as vibrant popping tones to contrast.

Turgquoise 2 minutes
Green + Khaki 10 minutes

Khaki 2 minutes 

Turquoise 10 minutes

Burgandy + Red 5 minutes 

Burgandy + Red 10 minutes

Cinnamon + Coral + Gold 2 minutes 

Cinnamon + Coral + Brown 10 minutes

Gold Yellow 2 minutes

Neutral and Brown extras



Textile Dyeing Part I

In order to experiment with hand dyeing our own colour palette we had two sessions at uni to dye pieces of white natural fabrics in Star Dye.

Most of the dyeing of the first session consisted more of tints than actual dyes due to the short period of time I intervalled my pieces of cotton, silk and silk/cotton in the dye.

Oranges and Reds approximately 2 minutes each:



Fuschia 2minutes and then 6 minutes

Fuschia and Burgandy 2 minutes and then 6 minutes plus scraps of navy and brown tints



The Invisible Women of Chosun

Any respectable woman in the Chosun Period of Ancient Korea had to cover themselves from head to toe once they stepped out of the security of their home.

Hanbok in Paris



Copyright to Lee Young Hee from her book
Paris ro gan Hanbok jengi
'It is not a "Korean Kimono" it is Hanbok'



This book that I ordered online is an autobiography of the first South Korean designer, Lee Young Hee, to introduce the Korean national dress into the European Fashion stage. She was the first Korean fashion designer to be invited to do a show at the Paris pret-a-porter in 1993 and in the following year, again as the first Korean designer in history, opened her own boutique.

From Asian to Caucasian

As a 1.5 generation Korean-Australian, I view the world in hybrid eyes. I find myself at times blurred by influences of the East by cultural heritage and the physical world of the West where I have actually lived all my life. While investigating and researching images of beauty in Korea and the aesthetics of traditional feminine beauty I am astounded by the amount of people (and not just Koreans but other Asians too) who believe that there is only "one valid definition of ideal beauty" (Wolf 1992).

The blog: THE GRAND NARRATIVE, addresses many social issues in South Korea today due to the globalisation,, more like, the Americanisation of the country in recent decades.
http://thegrandnarrative.com/2010/03/18/korea-cosmetic-surgery-caucasian/

The images below are sourced from THE GRAND NARRATIVE:

Even before the Westernization of South Korea, Koreans from before the Chosun Period (14th Century) had a compelling desire to have pale. clean skin.

The image in the background shows an advertisement for a cosmetic surgery practice. The steady transformation of Korean and other Asian women's desire to be have Caucasion facial features mean that one operation will not be the end to achieving the "new feminine ideal".