Lost & Found: Project Proposal

Lost & Found: Project Proposal Eva Bennett KEA Copenhagen School of Design and Technology

Lost & Found: Project Proposal 2 Table of Contents Introduction

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Thesis Statement ………………………………………………………page 2 Theory and Methods Delimitation

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Idea Description

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Conclusion ……………….....……………..……………………....…….page 3 References ………………………………………………………………page 4

Lost & Found: Project Proposal 3 Introduction Fashion citizens have lost sentimentality for their clothing. Brands sell a signature persona, not a signature style, thus installing an individual style guru upon the fashion citizen for them to imitate. People invest in their style through their clothing via the fashion taste of others, and have lost touch with what they value in themselves. The issue at stake is fashion’s disregard for our individuality, spread by overconsumption in hopes to dress for another identity.

We should focus on slow repair of self. Philosopher Anthony Savile believes sentimentality is an escape (Husbands, M, Lundin, R, & Treier, D, 2007).

But this sentimental escape is not bad: we are looking back to carry ourselves forward, to uncover our utopias we first imagined as children, and re-engage with these fanciful places. Personal style is evoked through inner reflection and loyalty to self.

Thesis Statement Using pathos design, loading time, time of existence, and upcycling design methods, how can one’s inner loyalty be revived to their childhood utopia to prolong the life of a fashion citizen’s closet?

Theory and Methods I used structured interview methods to gather information on popular colours, shapes, and textures that Millennials associate with their childhood: that is, their life memories between the age of five and eight.

The product will include pathos frameworks, as well as upcycling design methods to bring Millennials and Generation Z forward from simply practicing closed loop recycling as mentioned in The Upcycle (Braungart, M & Mcdonough, W, 2013). From these practices there will be a focus on extending the life of a garment by deconstruction and reconstruction, for the sake of sentimentality and loyalty to one’s originality. The garment will interact with slow fashion and the fashion citizen and thus reconnect the user to the value of their uniqueness. The beauty of a fashion garment’s decay from wear and tear will impose sentimentality to evoke self-loyalty between garment and wearer, and between wearer and self.

Lost & Found: Project Proposal 4

Delimitation Dilys Williams of the University of the Arts in London says the selected Millennial generation is the currency of change in fashion for the next Generation Z, with their connection to past generations (Youth Fashion Summit 2016).

Therefore I did not gather colour and texture memory information from any other generation via survey. Disregarding other generations also narrowed the colour palette for the product repair kits, as colour choices depend on eras of fashion. I did not include unstructured, nor semi-structured interview formats to gather Millennial information: I wanted a pre-established tally of what the most common textures and colours are recalled from this group’s childhood, so the most common associations could be easily identified for kit collection.

I disregarded instant payoff theories because I wanted the wearer to develop the garment, as the fashion citizen is tuned to self-reflection via colour, shape, and texture triggers.

Idea Description The purpose of this project is to explore the core of what we long for; to explore the escape of sentimentality through an individual via garment repair.

Once first hand information is gathered from structured interviews to gather quantitative data, the colours and textures associated with Millennial childhood will be honed into a collection of garments from this era. The clothing will be deconstructed and divided into repair kits to patch the fashion citizen’s current wardrobe. The kit will include instructions on different patching techniques of how to achieve texture from different forms of patchwork and knotting. The finished mended piece will be the Millenial’s reflection of self, derived from the emotions of childhood textures, shapes, and colours.

Conclusion The core of this project is to reignite individuality, and thus nourish self-loyalty. The final product will be a worn garment, patched and mended with different colour yarns. The yarn colours will be chosen from a collection of 15 surveys, completed by Millennial participants (see Appendix). The participants

Lost & Found: Project Proposal 5 will be unspecified gender. There will be five to eight colours of yarns in each kit, each one of the colours a representation of the most popular colour selected from this generation. Mending techniques and textures will be represented through stitch lengths, stitch widths, yarn widths, and different stitch heights achieved by special knotting and looping techniques. The finished, mended piece will be a tactile compass of the Millennial’s childhood.

Lost & Found: Project Proposal 6 References Husbands, M, Lundin, R, & Treier, D (eds) 2007, The beauty of god: theology and the arts, InterVarsity Press, Madison WI, USA. Williams, D 2016, Youth Fashion Summit, video interview, 10 May. Braungart, M, & McDonough, W 2013, The upcycle: beyond sustainability – designing for abundance North Point Press, New York.