“Recycling”, a word that we hear so often nowadays that it has become part of our education and it’s becoming part of our everyday routine. I know this last thought still can’t relate to everyone on this planet but one thing is for sure, the world is changing and so are we. In the last couple of years, especially in the fashion industry, we’ve seen this new weave of exposing what we’ve done to our beautiful planet in the past and what we have to do in order to keep it alive. Lots of designers decided to “talk” about it throughout their work, their clothing, their fashion shows. Not only fashion designers, but artists coming from everywhere in the world had a saying on this big topic. Although this theme has been a trend for a couple of years already, I personally feel it really appeals to me as a person and as a young designer. Since I was a little “bambina” from a small town of South Italy, I’ve always played with bits of fabric and pieces of clothing wondering in my auntie’s tailor shop. In fact, this project in collaboration with the avanguarde brand Balenciaga, is inspired by the use of existing clothing to make new ones, giving them a new life with new colours and new shapes.
BALENCI WORLD
YOURS TRULY
LAYER IT UP SIS!
TECHNICAL REUSE OF MATERIALS
EXCUSE MISS DENIM
HEARTS ON FIRE
HI, MIND IF I BUBBLE?
THAT GIRL IS ON FIREE
IL CIELO E’ SEMPRE PIU’ BLU
PINK DAY FUNKY DAY
Project Evaluation This unit started with students visiting Dover Street Market to get a general idea of the different designers who were on display at the time, secondly, we were asked to pick a brand we would love to collaborate with in the future and so I made my choice by picking the avantguard brand Balenciaga. I’ve always loved the brand itself but just recently since the new Georgian head designer Demna Gvasalia has taken over, the brand’s style has changed giving the audience a new vision of their clothing and their accessories gaining an incredible amount of popularity. The designer has perfected the mixture of streetwear and haute couture creating a new movement which inspires freshness and newness. During the first weeks of work our job was to create a digital moodboard about Dover Street Market with pictures we took or pictures from the web; we also had to investigate about our brand and their target market group. Initially I was a little confused because it was the first time I was researching something so specific about a brand and also because I wasn’t really sure of where to get the right information. Finally though, after understanding the history of the brand and look into their social media to see what type of people they dressed or what pictures they were tagged in, I was able to complete my tasks. Another task that we had to complete was picking a trend and consequentially extract a concept that would inspire us to create our own designs. So the next step was actually drawing a range of 30 initial designs, picking just 6 finals including a piece of outwear. My trend, which I took from WGSN, was all about new technology and it was described as really vast: they mentioned layering, reusing existing clothing to make new ones, bleaching and dying clothes, liquid texture, new smart fabrics, clothing inspired by new galaxies and the future and finally, a mixture of the traditional and the new fashion. It was really hard at first to pick which precise faction of the trend I wanted to work with because I very much enjoy all the ideas mentioned. As final decision I
picked as a concept the technical reuse of clothing by layering them all together. The decision mostly came from another project I was working on with a girl from third year of Fashion Promoting. Her final project was about recycling and about bringing awareness on how fast fashion has now become number one to blame for pollution on our planet. So she asked for fashion students that would help her to make just a few pieces of clothing from old ones that she owned. I’ve always been very respectful of the environment we live in, so I’ve always been informed about “recycled” fashion and I decided to take the opportunity to live a new experience and also for genuine fun. Destiny wants, while I was doing the project with her, we had this project going on at the same time so the two perfectly mixed together giving me new ideas. Third big task that we had to face was to, after designing our clothing, illustrate them digitally and make digital flats. We had done digital flats for most of our past projects already so I didn’t have major problems with it, most of my difficulties I’ve found in the illustrations. Although I had some illustrators as inspiration, I didn’t really feel like I had found my style yet; in fact I tried and re tried until just two weeks from the deadline of the project, I drew something that I liked and something I really felt as mine. The remain tasks I felt at ease to go through enjoying particularly the creation of the visual merchandising for the collaboration. Also, I really enjoyed learning new technical skills for both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop but mostly I enjoyed putting the whole portfolio together on Indesign. I love how ,on the program, you can actually see how all your works look together and if they all have a certain style, if the story is there; I think using it, really helped me to visually connect pages and take care of the aesthetic of the work itself.