Never Within Your Control

I am intrigued by the uncontrollable factors that form part of being human, living with the skin we are in and the conditions that can be thrust upon us. This collection is an exploration of various forms of cancer, a disease that many of us have experienced in some way, affecting the lives of many of my close family and friends, with particular focus on the conditions of mesothelioma, hodgkin's lymphoma and breast cancer. I have combined a mixture of textural, graphic and detailed imagery, expressing the human skin, what lies beneath the surface and how it changes over time.

The collection aims to highlight a taboo subject, raising awareness of these conditions, whilst allowing a range of women, of all skin tones, ages and sizes to express themselves through different combinations of the layered garments.

Using technical flat style drawing as a base for the initial ideas and design stage, I experimented with silhouette, outfit and print combinations, later visualised in CLO3D Digital Fashion Design software to more accurately express the print, fabric and texture details before beginning the production of the physical garments in the collection.

This was translated into a textile print collection, applied to a range of sheer and opaque luxury feel fabrics incorporating the techniques of dye sublimation, devore and discharge printing, forming five adjustable and adaptable, layered outfits which I also made physically for my recent graduate collection, expressing the stages of cancer from diagnosis to the condition becoming more visible and aggressive.

Using a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator is useful to first mock up ideas for my designs, looking into garment shapes, based off of research and my own design ideas, as well as trying outfit combinations. I create technical drawings, which I can then fill with my prints to find the perfect combinations and placements. I then translated these into 3D digital fashion designs using CLO3D.

Within my degree collection I have explored many different print styles and fabric manipulation techniques to add texture and pattern to my garments, therefore I wanted to represent the techniques I had tried in my sampling and experimentation phase, within my digital renders, created using CLO3D. Therefore, I have gained some close-up images of details such as shirring, ruching, thread devore, velvet devore and quilting. 

Although I had never tried making accessories in 3D digital software before, I decided to create a small bag collection in order to compliment my final garments, experimenting with different bag shapes and styles. 

After mocking up, testing and experimenting with shape, silhouette, outfit and print combinations, I created my collection physically, using digital dye sublimation, hand dyed and screen printed fabrics of my own design. 

Since starting to use 3D digital fashion software just over a year ago, creating my first collection of garments which has since been featured in both on the Mados Fenomenas book cover and in Raine magazine, I have used the skills I have learnt and expanded and developed them through continuing to create 3D digital fashion garments, also designing to briefs set out in small competitions related to my degree studies, more focussed on print design, but also using 3D software to express my ideas and to visualise garments. I also collaborated with fashion designer Helmy Harvn to create a 3D digital garment version of one of their designs after they discovered my work on Instagram.