MDes Fashion & Textiles Catalogue - Postgraduate Degree Show 2023

Degree Show Catalogue 2023

Introduction from Professor Stephen Bottomley, Head of the School of Design

Welcome to the School of Design 2023 Postgraduate exhibition of work in Fashion & Textile Design, Graphics/Illustration/Photography, Interior Design and Product Design Engineering.

We commend this year’s graduates on their hard work, congratulating them on their achievements. Design probes and challenges through lateral and critical thinking. It has the power to improve the quality of life and enrich our culture and society and in this exhibition, you see the evidence of these approaches, now manifest.

To our visitors, thank you for visiting our Postgraduate show. We hope you are challenged and excited by what you see exhibited across the magnificent Reid building. Enjoy your visit and explorations, knowing more can be found on our accompanying digital showcase, where more information can be found about each student and their work.

To all our staff, including academic, technical, admin and support roles, my sincerest thanks for all your hard work evident in this excellent exhibition and over the past year.

To our graduating students, we wish you every success in your future careers and ask you stay in touch with us and the Glasgow School of Art as an important alumnus of our school.

Best wishes

Professor Stephen Bottomley

MPhil RCA, MA Design, BA Hons Head of the School of Design

Xueyi Zhang

MDes Fashion and Textiles

Professor

Jimmy Stephen-Cran Head of Department, Fashion and Textiles

Daniel Fradgley Lecturer

Welcome to the Masters in Fashion and Textiles Degree Show.

The design questions considered by the class of ‘23 included:

↘ How does clothing a body compare to wrapping a parcel?

↘ Can the medium of clothing call for better attitudes towards the health of a nation?

↘ To what extent can gender inclusive design move beyond the ‘feminine menswear’ and ‘masculine womenswear’ archetypes?

↘ Why did a grandmother make pretty dresses for her grandson?

↘ Is it possible for modern activewear to be ornamental and aerodynamic?

↘ How can piles of discarded scraps and shreds become aesthetically irresistible?

↘ In what ways can AI elevate rather than homogenize the design process?

↘ By what means can unsung and inconspicuous clothing items sensualize the female form?

Enjoy the uniqueness of each designer’s approach and the novel responses they turned out!

Xinjing Liu

Jiayi Huang Jiujiu Tian

Womenswear

We all deserve an exquisite life.

My collection is aimed at women who pursue their fantasies and assert their emotional needs and self-worth.

Stockings and tights are sensual, soft, and intimate yet are possibly the most unvoiced of clothing items. They have close contact with the skin, are sheer in appearance and conform to the contours of the body.

Hosiery of different deniers and opacities have been stitched together to create this formfitting collection of body loving pieces. Each garment pulls on and pulls off and can be worn in multiple ways.

Women wearing the pieces will experience a sensual awakening.

Womenswear

I believe fashion should surprise and delight and allow us to enjoy life to the fullest!

The visual inspiration for my collection came from the diffusion of ink in water and the random motion it creates.

I worked intuitively and spontaneously to create expressive and inky layers of colour and texture - and to create exaggerated forms and volumes.

Each piece is made of excessive layers of waste and scrap fabrics that have been gathered, pleated, ruffled, puckered, and scrunched to create ripple-like and dramatic effects.

This super-abundant approach allowed the collection to come together compellingly in terms of tone and proportion.

Shitao Tang (Simon) Siyu Xia (Ted)

Gender inclusive

Resistance to stereotypes is my design goal.

When I was a small boy growing up in China, I often wore dresses that were lovingly hand made by my late grandmother. This was radical by the standards of the time when males were encouraged to be manly. It is unclear why she made these dresses for me. Maybe I asked her to or perhaps she was ahead of her time and was simply an enlightened and bold pioneer. I guess I’ll never know.

Like my grandmother, I want to challenge the perpetuation of stereotypes and build a land where anything is possible - where all cultures and genders can walk freely and wear whatever they choose.

Gender inclusive

My genderless collection explores the idea of covering the body as if it were like wrapping a parcel.

This was inspired by frequent phone conversations with my mother who always enquires if I need anything packaged and sent from China.

In response to words such as shroud, enfold, envelop, encase, swathe, cushion, protect, swaddle, bind, bandage, restrain and restrict I started by creating and photographing three-dimensional experiments and body sized cocoons.

I have also experimented with surface, scale, proportion, and dimension and explored the amount of space that a garment might and can occupy.

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Xinjing Liu (Andrea) Xueyi Zhang (Nevi)

Gender inclusive

It might be argued that gender is a concept imposed by society.

The inspiration for my collection came from the stage play and movie Orlando about a member of English nobility who is born a male in the 16th century and who mysteriously changes into a woman and lives for centuries without visibly ageing.

I used light and shadow as well as black and white and contrasting materials to represent and blur gender boundaries and sexual characteristics.

I propose femininity and masculinity as a fluid and interchangeable choice rather than an inherent reality.

Womenswear

I wish to promote the appeal of traditional Chinese medicine in a call for better health.

I consider myself to be a cultural communicator who conveys aspects of Chinese society - both traditional and modern - through the medium of clothing.

The motivation for my collection comes from a phenomenon known in China as ‘punk health’ where youngsters are increasingly seeing Chinese medicine as a quick fix in the misguided hope that it will magically counteract the effects of their unhealthy lifestyles.

I researched historical clothing worn by Chinese medics and used the 12 Meridians of acupuncture to explore contemporary garment structures and silhouette. The colours and textures of Chinese herbs informed my fabric choices.

↘ zhangxueyizxy@gmail.com

↘ @hi11zi

Yimei Lu Yuguo Meng (Hugo)

Womenswear

My ‘raison d’être’ is to explore unorthodox approaches to fashion creation and garment assembly.

My experimental collection uses artificial intelligence software - and sound visualisation - to inspire surface, structure, and silhouette. I started out by collecting a range of sounds from everyday life which I then translated into two and three-dimensional visual and textural forms.

I interpreted the shadowy shapes and blurred effects by dye diffusion printing on monofilament mesh – a material not associated with clothing but can be shaped and sculpted with minimal sewing.

Activewear

I think sportswear should be ornamental as well as streamlined. We tend to think of activewear as aerodynamic and made from technical fabrics that are ultra-durable, stretchable, and breathable.

The starting point for my collection was Cuju, an ancient Chinese ball game. Players of this early form of football wore large, wide sleeved and layered robes, long wraparound trouser-cum-skirts, decorative headwear, and ornate sashes.

While researching the history of sportswear I discovered how durability, stretch, and breathability had been achieved in the days before technotextiles through clever garment structure and details.

I applied many of these elements to my garments to achieve the functional versus non-functional aesthetic I seek.

Cover image: Jiayi Huang

Design: Kat Loudon and Phoebe Willison

Headline typeface: Rules by Freddie Guthrie

Printed by The Newspaper Club on 80gsm bright recycled newsprint.

All work shown remains the property of the designers and may not be reproduced in print or any other media without written permissions. Contact details for all work is provided on each page for any enquiries.