‘A Mile of Ruffles’

My final project aims to look at the relationship between fashion and art. I was keen to acknowledge the craftsmanship and aesthetic planning that goes into some of the most spectacular examples of couture fashion, considering practices like sculpture, architecture and, of course, textiles.

When scrutinizing the fashion trends seen throughout the years I was interested in the performative ability of some garments, particularly haute couture lines. I considered both catwalk and fashion photography editorials when researching the drama of certain fashion houses. Fashion designers such as Iris Van Herpen, Tomo Koizumi and Alexander McQueen influenced my practice greatly, and they are all designers who create on the border of art and design. 

When beginning my own practice, I was inspired respond to aesthetic trends, attempting to contemporize 70s fashion in terms of texture, silhouette and colour.  I chose this era, not only because its trends appeal to me in terms of personal taste, but due to its reintroduction to the fashion sector by creatives such as Nadia Lee Cohen and brands such as Shrimps and RIXO. An enormous part of this era’s trends are voluminous silhouettes, I therefore made my own garments completely from handmade ruffles, cumulatively using around 1 mile of fabric. I was careful to maintain an artistic undertone throughout these pieces creating dramatically oversized, sculptural dresses.  

Once these were created, I went on to photograph the dresses in the style of various fashion photographers who influence me, such as Tim Walker and David La Chapelle. Both photographers work with very artistic sets, with many of their photographs appearing to be an artistic tableau celebrating the fashion and art that they are photographing. I was also persistent in maintaining a theme of childlike wonder, using colours and fabrics that were reminiscent, to me, of celebration, joy and fantasy. 

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