Punk Fashion

After looking into the Manchester Music scene and taking inspiration from Dave Haslam’s talk I found myself looking into the rebellious fashion of punk.  Punk is all about rebelling against the mainstream and not conforming, doing something different that gets you notice, perhaps our project could end up being something rebellious and causing some shock.

Transparent Seams

I recently came across an interesting eco-friendly fashion blog, transparent seams. As well as just blogging about eco fashion, they actually decided to make some. Along with A.L.A.S they put together a workshop hosted at the Gaffa Gallery for the Sydney Design festival inviting the public to join in and up-cycle an old item of clothing into something new.

Recyle Plant Visit

As a group we organised a visit to Manchester’s  recycling plant .I found the visit useful as a source of research, which allowed me to gain an insight into how we can help in conserving our planets materials in the correct methods.

Trends and Forecasting:Laura McPherson

I found Laura’s talk about her work as a trends forecaster to be incredibly interesting ,her job sounded so exciting always on the lookout for what’s going to be the next big thing, researching trough a wide range of materials and even working two years in advance it sounds like it can become demanding . Although from her experience of working for a variety of magazines it seems to have its rewards.

Poster Designs



Initial Poster Design Idea

Influenced by The Happy Mondays and New Order recode cover we saw on our MOSI   archive visit we decided to put our Photoshop skills to the test  and each create an eye-catching poster to launch our “Donate 2 G 4 The Future” campaign. 

DJ Dave Haslam Talk

DJ Dave Haslam delivered an interesting talk about Manchester’s alternative music scene. He talked about a constant  erg to escape form mainstream culture and how it’s important to always be creating something different, something that’s offers an alternative to what’s already happening. Although I do agree with his views that it’s always important to be doing something different and that sometimes it can be good to rebel against the mainstream, I do think that at a point this desire to be so different can become a negative quality. After all what is wrong with being mainstream? Mainstream is just the popular and we all seek popularity. Whether this comes from a band wanting to make it big or a small fashion label trying to achieve greater success we all want our product to become popular, for it to sell.

MOSI Archive Visit

On Friday we visited the museum of science and industry to have a look at their archive collection. It was interesting to see some of their old textiles archive and discover how it could become a useful source of research. As a group we will be producing a series of posters to promote our campaign to get people donate their unwanted clothes, so it was particularly useful to see their collection of old poster’s and albums covers form Manchester born bands Happy Mondays and New Order.

Unit X - Community Couture

After looking at the series of videos, we decided as a group to choose Community Couture.  The futuristic ideas of a world free from trends with an explosion of cultural fashions grabbed our group’s attention giving us the idea to create a multi-cultural eco-friendly fashion label.

After a group brainstorming session over coffee we came up with an idea to hold a campaign asking the local Manchester community to donate their unwanted clothes, then we would work as a group to recycle the clothes into new garments, responding to the problem that rose in the video about material becoming extremely expensive in the future.

Vivienne Westwood - "Chaso Point" Collection

Here's Vivienne Westwood's Gold Label collection titled 'Chaos Point'  from November 2008.

Leamington Spa Gallery

                                                              

Keith Coventry- Crack Bottles
2002

In this work Coventry has converted bottles into crack pipes, ironically one of the bottles is a Diet Coke bottle. A statement which reflects the history of where the brand name Coca Cola came from, as the popular fizzy drink once contained cocaine up until the 1930s.

Liverpool Trip

                                                          Bluecoat Art Center

     

                                                                  Open Eye Gallery

                                                 Richard Simpkin : Richard and Famous                                                

Artist Richard Simpkin has dedicated his career to obsessively having his photograph taken with various celebrities of the world. The piece was created by Richard in 1989 and has become his on-going life project that explores the ever-evolving celebrity culture that surrounds us.

                                                                 Painted Photographs