JENNIFER FEARN PORTFOLIO
Exhale
AW16/17 Graduate Womenswear collection
METAPHYSICAL DREAMS AW 16/17 Womenswear for Dover Street Market
BRUTALIST Maximalist SS17 Womenswear
SS 17 Womens Activewear for Adidas
Exhale
AW 16/17 Diffusion line for H&M
Exhale... An overwhelming feeling of stress and anxiety is something myself, and many other students, are all too familiar with. Sometimes all that is needed is the space to breathe deep and exhale; an opportunity to escape life’s worries and feel safe and comforted for a while. The raw, empty expanse of the mountainous Scottish landscape provides the perfect environment to do just that. The overwhelming scale of the hills, valleys and glens are the perfect antidote to the trivial worries/problems we obsess over in our everyday lives, dwarfing them and helping us to see the bigger picture. Learning to be on our own and to be able to manage our anxieties is vital to our peace of mind. I aim to create a collection that inspires a sense of calm and serenity, with a feel of the outdoors, achieving this need for escape when there is not an opportunity to do so. Running away to the mountains to be alone and free will be the main inspiration behind this collection. Focusing on this need to run away I will design a collection, comprising six interchangeable outfits, for Autumn/Winter 2016-17. I will design and create a minimum of twelve garments. Garments will be designed with thematic key words in mind; relax, breathe, escape, warmth, comfort and security. These words will influence everything from silhouette to colour and fabrics. Garments will be predominately oversized and cocooning, enveloping the wearer and fulfilling the want for comfort, warmth and protection. Voluminous garments will illustrate the feeling of finally being able to exhale and relax, giving the wearer space to breathe without restriction and a creating a comforting blanket effect. Tops and jackets with combined scarves and wraps create a sense of ease and effortlessness, adding warmth and comfort without the added weight of extra layers. Other wrap over features create a feeling of comfort and warmth, of being held close but this will be achieved without feeling restrictive. Transparent elements in the collection hark back to the sensation of exhalation and clarity of mind as the wearer can finally think and see clearly again, away from worry. The collection should not be overly conceptual, so as to have commerciality to it. Due to this, trend forecasting will play a small part in the influence of the garment design, creating a base for the more unique and experimental pieces. The colour palette for the collection will come from the beautiful Scottish landscape. Soft and calm greys inspired by the perpetually overcast sky will be complimented by the varying greens of the hillsides and the plants that cover them. Chartreuse will be the accent colour, adding a bright and eye-catching focal point. White will lighten and lift the collection and bring a sense of peace and purity. The darker, more sombre colours will have a sobering effect in the collection while the lighter chartreuse, white and sand will lift it and keep the overall feeling of calm. Keeping in mind the key points of the collection, fabrics will be a combination of natural and technical and be appropriate to the season of Autumn/Winter. The natural fabrics; boiled wools, silk and suede will relate to the landscape while the technical fabrics; Ventile, waterproof and scuba will take on a more literal representation of being outdoors. Fabrics are mainly light weight, continuing the feeling of ease and not weighing down on the wearer, with heavier fabrics included only for warmth and seasonal appropriateness. Soft jersey and padded Cupro characterise the comfort element of the collection with their soft to touch handle. Lastly, silk-mix organza brings in a sheer and metallic element to the collection providing a contrast to the mainly matt fabrics. Relating back to the landscape, texture will be a very important element in this collection. Topographic maps will be the inspiration behind this component of the collection. These maps communicate the idea of running away and getting lost in the mountains. Elastic shirring thread will be used, in an unconventional manner, to create texture portraying these maps and the mountainous element of the collection described earlier. The uneven shapes on topographic maps will form the basis of this surface pattern design which, when sewn with the elastic thread, will bounce up forming undulating hills, emulating the mountains and valleys these maps depict. This elastic sewing will be created on the garments made of boiled wool, the uneven texture of which connects directly to the varying textures of the outdoors. The topside of the fabric will be sewn in contrast thread to make the pattern more clearly identifiable but without taking away from the texture itself. The white, scuba tops in the collection will be punctuated by topographic lines, hand printed using disperse dye. These small sections of print will help unify this design feature throughout the collection. Lastly, needle felting will be used to join silk organza and woven wool. The technique is a unique way to join two very different fabrics together to make one garment. The texture created along the seam of the two fabrics is raw, uneven and unpredictable- a perfect definition of the outdoors. The target market of this collection will be hardworking women with hectic lifestyles who enjoy the peace and serenity of nature and like to escape through fashion. They are creative and individual, unafraid of garments with a touch of the unusual. They are aged from 25 to 35. They care about quality and luxury fabrics and are willing to pay for this. With an eclectic style they favour clothing that straddles the line between clean and detailed, enabling them to dress their garments up or down. They buy investment pieces that can be worn time and time again and are interchangeable. The collection will be placed at the mid-level designer market level and will satisfy the needs of this target market. All of the features and elements mentioned here will work together to achieve the feeling of comfort, peace and serenity that this collection strives to create.
METAPHYSICAL DREAMS Dover Street Market is a high-end concept store situated on London’s Dover Street in Mayfair. Created by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, the store feels more like a gallery than your regular fashion retail space. There is an eclectic mix of designers showcased here with styles ranging from minimalist to theatrical. My inspiration came from the artist Giorgio de Chirico, whose work I first came across in Philadelphia. I was instantly struck by his dreamlike cityscapes with their toxic skies and empty piazzas in his ‘Metaphysical’ period. Metaphysical literally means beyond the physical and so can be interpreted here as beyond reality – a dream or imaginary world. Features such as shadowed arcades fading into darkness, the contrast between light and dark, the past and present and a lone statue in the middle of the deserted square are seen in most of the paintings of this type. These statues are a reference to Chirico’s Greek nationality. The figure most often depicted is that of Ariadne, mistress of the Labyrinth in Greek mythology. It was from these features I took most of my inspiration. The garments are simple, clean and minimalistic like the smooth stone of the statues. The simplicity of the garments relates to the air of mystery, and the unknown in the paintings. Colours have been taken directly from the paintings, mustard yellow, blood orange, teal and stone. The compact colour and fabric range enable the collection to effortlessly mix and match.
BRUTALIST
Brutalist Maximalist is inspired by the contrasting design movements of the sixties and seventies. Taking initial inspiration from the WGSN SS17 trend Edgelands, I was inspired to research Brutalist architecture. Brutalism was a modernist architecture movement in the post war period championed by artists such as Le Corbusier. Brutalist architecture is most typically known as large, utilitarian, concrete buildings. The buildings, considered ugly by most, comprise rough exterior finishes with large colliding shapes and service features on display. The buildings can be perceived as cold, hard and intimidating. I love this misunderstood style and wanted to create something aesthetically pleasing from something so many consider ugly to show the beauty in the form and features of Brutalism. I was also inspired by the way these buildings had deteriorated since the seventies, when they were built with this utopian design principle in mind, and are now associated with poverty and decline. I found the contrast between this minimalist architectural style and the fashion and interiors trends of the same time period, which were bold, colourful and over-the-top, intriguing and so used this as inspiration for the print. Combining these two conflicting trends I created clean, minimal silhouettes with light seventies influences. These simple silhouettes act as a canvas for the bold, bright and contrasting prints inspired by wallpaper of the time and the concrete of the brutalist buildings. Six contrasting colours were chosen to create the prints and were mixed and matched throughout; creating a collection that can be worn in many different ways. The target market for this collection is bold, fashion forward women aged from 25 to 55.
For my collaboration with Adidas I looked into their existing and previous collaborations and their own products. Through my research I discovered that one sport they do not cover is surfing. The Havana Waves collection was inspired by the emerging surf scene in Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean. Designed for Spring Summer 2017 the collection comprises a range of warm weather surfwear including athletic swimsuits, bikinis, rashguards and wetsuits. The designs are strong and empowering, combining bold colours, prints and garment details such as mesh panelling. Garments have a modernised fifties influence, inspired by the retro cars of Havana. Warm and tropical colours are contrasted with athletic and practical black. The warm colours have come from the brightly coloured buildings that line the streets of the Cuba. The print was created by turning these buildings into a mosaic tile pattern which was then superimposed over palm fronds, bringing a tropical touch. Digitally printed neoprene features this print which is a contemporary take on the traditional Cuban tiles. Bright colours have been mosaicked together and then blended with palm frond silhouettes to create a fun and tropical feel. Fabrics are kept simple and appropriate to the purpose of the collection with neoprene, Lycra and power mesh. Havana Waves is a surfwear collection for all women, whether a beginner or master surfer. She is a daredevil and thrill seeker who is bold in her fashion choices out of the water and seeks to reflect this in her leisure time too.
Exhale
Exhale for H&M is a diffused version of my full Autumn/Winter 2016/17 womenswear collection. This collection is targeted at a younger market than the main collection, designed for the H&M Divided range which typically caters for thirteen to eighteen year olds. Exhale is an exploration of running away to the mountains to escape the stresses of everyday life. For this diffusion collection the concept has been re-contextualised to suit a younger market. The concept takes on a more literal meaning with a stronger connection to the outdoors and more practical garments which support this. Casual, functional and comfortable garments such as jeans and leggings have replaced more formal trousers. These pieces can mix in well with the consumers existing wardrobe. Cosy sweatshirts, knitwear and shearling satisfy the desire for comfort and warmth, vital to the main collection concept. Design aesthetics have been kept similar with features such as wrap details from the main collection still evident but in a simpler, more laidback style. The overall look of the collection is a casual weekend collection with elements of athletic-leisure wear suitable for long hikes in the countryside. Fabrics are soft, comfortable and practical with waxed cotton, waterproof polyester and shearling for the jackets, denim, jersey and Cupro for the bottoms and cosy knitwear and sweatshirts for the tops.
H 00127178