start of evaluation

In depth Evaluation on final brief.

I am now going to write and evaluation on my final briefs. There were two briefs running alongside each other, brief number 7 and brief number 117. In these briefs we were required to act as a fashion designer wishing to develop our own collection, we were asked to experiment, source and evaluate every different outcome produced. We will be developing and manufacturing a garment which should have been inspired by a certain topic.

Our topic was equality and diversity. We thoroughly researched into all the different headings within e&d, which was very interesting indeed as it made you become more aware of all the different kinds of issues relating to e&d and how they affect everyday life. I researched into most of the different categories but I decided to focus on religion for my final dress design. After plenty of research deeper into my chosen topic, I decided that I wanted to focus more on the bad side of religion and how a lot of religious people are trapped and imprisoned in a religion they either don’t feel relaxed or happy within their own lives or are being abused or bullied or forced to do things that they are not comfortable with. I looked a lot into honour killings and forced marriages which are sadly frequent within certain religions. Girls are forced to marry people they have never even met in their lives, their cousins or a son of a family friend or anybody, the majority of the time it is their parents’ choice and it will mostly reflect each family well.

Children as young as 5 years old have been forced into a marriage they are not comfortable with, and the majority of the time they are then shipped off to a foreign country to live with their new husband on their own. They can be abused mentally, sexually, any way possible by their new husband and there is no way out as divorce is very highly frowned upon in most religions and they cannot escape their prison. Only when they do finally find a way to run off or divorce their husband, it puts extreme shame on each of the families and they would be the talk of the town and no one likes to be spoken badly of?

Sometimes, it could be any member or members of the family, they will arrange for which ever person has ran away from the marriage, to be killed. Whether it’s by a family member or someone else, whether it’s in front of an audience or not, it does happen and so many people have gotten away with it as well.

I wanted my dress to show restriction, control and restraint, showing that the person wearing the dress is uncomfortable and can’t escape it. This is how I was inspired to create a restricting tight fitting dress. I also wanted it to have a look of fabrics being wrapped around the person, holding them in tight so that they cannot get away. This is where I came up with the ‘wrap around’ effect and creating all kinds of different design seams all around my whole dress. I also wanted to create a backless piece, with the zip to the dress travelling upwards towards the top of the neck, going through a black cross which is also symbolizing religion and the clash between Christianity and Islam. Although the cross idea didn’t work out, which I will explain why later. But I was very pleased with my design and how I had come up with my dress and all the details on it and I was feeling confident that it reflected my final topic well.

We learnt a lot about the critical path and time management plans which was very interesting indeed. The critical path is used often in all sorts of industries. It’s extremely important as it provides companies with particular information and reminders on key tasks that are necessary to the project. If companies apply critical paths, they can also use it to refer to which certain tasks are more important than other and need to be completed first second or last, it gives an order and helps everything to run smoothly which in a demanding business can be very helpful and supportive indeed.

We also researched a lot into time management plans. Time management plans are a lot like critical paths except they help you to be able to manage your time properly and get certain tasks done for a certain deadline, helping the overall project run smoothly. It will help you to prioritize certain tasks and work and once you no where you are up to in a busy work schedule, you won’t be getting stressed or run behind deadlines. Also if you are providing for another company or business, it can help you to make sure you deliver what’s promised and to an excellent standard as well making sure you do not disappoint.

It can also help people to keep things into context, and also feel a lot better and more organized about their lives, if they have a plan and manage their time combined with their work, then they can just get on with what’s on the list and deliver to a good standard too. Knowing what to work on when, and how much time you have to complete the task means more quality work.

We also did a lot of research into different designers and how they portray their thoughts and ideas into their designs. One of my favourite designers was Alexander McQueen. I loved his collection highland rape, as I thought the clever title and the way he represented his models to reflect to the real topic behind the appearances was so inspiring. I really admired the way his real meaning was so subtle but also so ‘in your face’ and obvious. I applied this to my work as I tried to design a dress that wasn’t necessarily screaming out what I wanted it to say, but for people to maybe look at it and think to themselves that my dress has a deeper meaning, that may not be entirely obvious through the design but through the overall performance my meaning will start to creep out to the audience.

In my dress, I created a very restricting pattern as I wanted the dress to look to the audience that it was too tight and uncomfortable, therefore portraying the way some people can be trapped within a religion, so I tried to be more clever about the overall meaning of my dress, and not make my topic totally blatant to the audience, but so people would think about my dress more deeply and look at exactly how it is made to gain better understanding of it.

When reflecting on both of my units I would say that the creative thinking technique I used mostly was;

My target audience for my design was ready to wear.