Nick Knight

Textures, prints and shapes...

In order to add another dimension to my collection I feel that I need to add a level of quirkiness, albeit through texture or shape. The concept behind my collection is to create a collection of quirky yet feminine heavily printed garments, and apart from my print I need to add another element to my designs to make my collection stronger. So here I have started to research these different features.

Camilla Akrans

Floral, feminine, perfect for my research!

Floral photography

Flowers and fashion = love!

Floral fashion

Erdem

Erdem's floral prints are a mix of femininity and surrealism. These prints appeal to the mass market as they are so timeless. The fact floral prints are always a popular choice in fashion has led me to want to use flowers in my print. Taking main inspiration from Hans Silvester and combining this idea with the theme of sex and the female form in Brave New World has ultimately become the main source of inspiration behind my print.

More tribal fashion

Hans Silvester

These photographs taken by Hans Silvester really capture the essence of tribal life; here focussing on people from Omo Valley. Their use of traditional body decoration is what identifies them as a tribe, alongside their flora and fauna assembled fashion. I love the way these photographs incorporate tradition, nature, pattern and beauty, all factors i want my final print to represent.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to travel to Kenya for a month, where we stayed at an orphanage, helping out with the children and helped renovate the building and a local school; treked up Mount Kenya, through the wild environment and through extreme weather conditions; visited the local safari and finally visited a local tribe. The Samburu Tribe still live by their traditional values. Their clothing was bright, simple and colourful, again factors I would like my print to have.

Tribal fashion

Tribal inspired fashion is a concept that never goes out of trend. Taking beautiful traditions and giving them a modern outlook is why this trend is constantly re-formed in the fashion industry.

The last factor from Brave New World I am researching is the theme of tribes. The Zuni tribe is an important aspect of the novel as it is used to ultimately contrast the utopian world the characters are living in with ‘the real world’, which they are restricted from visiting. Life on the reservation differs extremely with life in the World State. Pain, suffering, disease, filth and old age still exist whereas in the World State, science has managed to abolish anything which interferes or impairs the physical well being of citizenry.

I have found the conflict between science and technology against tradition to be very reminiscent to our present way of life. Technology is replacing tradition and it is difficult to distinguish whether this is for better or worse, which is what Huxley is trying to warn his readers in the novel.

Steven Klein

The use of digital print has really transformed the face of fashion design in today’s industry. Designers are now revitalzing the industry by reinventing traditional methods. This technology offers a faster production and an instant result, which in comparison to traditional printing methods is crucial to the designer.

These photographs captured by Steven Klein really portray the effect of digital print. The clashing of colour and print in these photographs has really helped influence which direction I should take my digital prints.

Further research

Main themes mood board.

"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words
in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult.
Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.

Brave New World
Chapter One.
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From researching fashion designers renown for their digital prints, I found Erdem Moralioglu’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection to be appropriately similar to ideas found in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Reproduction takes place through technological and medical intervention, including the surgical removal of ovaries and the Bokanovsky Process: a process of human cloning which will divide one embryo causing them to split into identical genetic copies of the original. I found a few of Erdem’s prints to be very reminiscent to the division of embryos from the circular shapes in the prints as seen above.

Brave New World

Basso & Brooke's Spring/Summer 2008 collection took inspiration from Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. The way this novel inspired the collection influenced me to read the novel.

The novel is set in a futuristic, dystopian society, which is under strict control. They live as a part of a totalitarian state, free from war, hatred, poverty, disease, and pain. They enjoy leisure time, material wealth, and physical pleasures. Human beings are created in factories, using technology to make ninety-six people from the same fertilized egg and to condition them for their future lives. Although there is so much control over there lives, there is one individual in particular, Bernard Marx, who strives to break free.

There are many strong themes which continuously appear throughout the novel such as the power of control, sex and technology. One of the main ways the government maintains such a stable society is through the drug Soma. Soma clouds the realities of the present and replaces them with happy hallucinogenic 'holidays' leaving the user in a deep numbness, void of all feeling. Soma is greatly encouraged to be consumed throughout the novel and is considered the norm.

In the foreword of Brave New World, Huxley states its theme as 'the advancement of science as it affects human individuals'. This novel is Huxley's warning over how much of an effect technology and science has over mankind. Huxley wanted the reader to be aware of the rapid development of technology by setting the novel in the future, which almost acts as a premonition to what the world could become if Man becomes subservient to science. The fact that the society is so overrun by technology in the novel portrays how the human race has lost their individuality, freedom and ultimately their identity.

Having great interest in this novel has led me to base my final collection around it.

INTRODUCTION

I am a third year student studying fashion design. With the aid of this blog I aim to document my final year of study. My final collection and dissertation are based around the theme of digital prints and am designing and producing my own digital printed fabrics.

I am a great print enthusiast. Ever since I first laid eyes on design duo Basso & Brooke, I knew I had to delve into this topic further.

Print has always been a recurring trend in the fashion industry and like most modes of design, has been enhanced to its next level through the development of technology. Going digital outweighs the majority of problems faced through traditional printing, which is why it has become a more popular choice of medium in more recent times. As the results of digital printing are unlimited, almost any image or idea can be printed onto fabric.

The concept behind my collection is mainly based around the design industry's current shift into the digital age and overall aim to embrace this new technological era we now live in.