Unit X: James Long - Evaluation

After attending the briefing for this unit a few months ago, I was rather excited to work in a group and meet new people. I really enjoy commertial projects aimed for the fashion industry and James Long looked a great brand to look at and work for. I had also never worked on menswear before, so I was rather excited to get stuck in. As I had previously mentioned, I have quite crippling social anxiety when it comes to univesity and a strong self doubt in my own work, so I had found it very difficult to go into the studio and work with my peers whilst working on previous projects during the year. This is something that my tutor Alex Russell and student support were fully aware of and also something I seeked doctors advice and medical attention for. So although exciting, I was also rather petrified of working within a group of people i had never met before.

During the first few week we had a strong group of six - four textiles students and two fashion students. During this time we found it a little difficult to get off of the gorund for agreeing on ideas and themes as we had a few strong personalities in the group. After our meeting with Tom, he suggested working with vintage tennis and one other theme -  mechanical. After a group discussion, we decided that mechanical may not be accessible for us to get primary research for - something that the fashion students didnt quite understand the need for primary, but as textiles students we needed primary research and photographs to draw from. From this, we settled on vintage tennis for the fashion inspiration and rust/decay for the textiles inspiration. After this, myself, Katie and Alex travelled to the Norther Quarter to purchase a macros lens for our phone cameras and to take photos. It was a freezing cold day, but we soldiered on and got some great shots.

 We began to draw from these images as a group during worskshops and came up with some good illustrations for print designs. Hayley was the main print member of the group and began making samples quite quickly as her workshop was soon after the initial two weeks. Alex was the quilt member of the group and she created some really interesting designs using black mesh and stitching that i think would have worked really well as a placement design on sweatshirts. 

The group would tend to meet on mondays for the workshops, wednesdays and thursdays for our tutorials. After that it was easter and during this time, a group member had been accepted onto the placement she had been waiting on and left the unit, so from then on we were down to five of us.  

Our workshops and sessions with Sarah and Natalie were really helpful and gave us a better insight into what we should be working toward during the week. It was also good to see where the other grouos were at with their work and how they were developing. 

I chose 3D textiles as my disapline and found my workshop a little uninspiring but maybe I had a different idea to what 3D textiles was. We experiemnted with hairpinning - which had quiet an interesting effect. I also used a special foot on the domestic machine that pinched the fabric as it sews to give a ridged effect. Somehting that could perheaps have been applied to my samples, however my workshop was scheduled quite late in the project and the groups samples had already gone a totally different way to what I had learnt.

I fully enjoyed being back in the print studio after a while of being a little too anxious to go in there, but I put on a brave face and felt comfortable in there after a couple of hours. I was quite impressed with the experiemental samples I had created and felt like I had made some inovative samples - something James Long is very supportive of is inovative ideas. Tom had mentioned bonding fabrics a lot during the first briefing, so I attempted to bond some mesh to a faux leather and the effect was quite interesting. I then also foiled over the sample making it tie in quite nicely with the theme and other group samples. My samples were overlooked though and I felt I had perhaps done somwthing wrong, however, no one in my group comunicated this with me at all so at the time I was none the wiser and carried on with my tasks.

The stress was turned up a notch just before the presentaion after a tutorial with Natalie. She seemed confused as to why a few of my samples hadnt been used in the final ideas and only then were my drawings and samples recognised and it was suggested I was made head illustrator for all pen lines on the line up illustrations. Which I was quite thriled about as I felt I wanted to make a good contribution to the group after so many disregarded suggestions. We did get the group file complete in time for the presentation to our best ability. The presentation was very critical but also constructive - but this is more than likely just how it is in industry, so it was good to see how critical people can be about what you present. 

Although I wasnt around all day for the exhibition set up, I made my best attempt to show up in the morning to shop my support and help as much as I could before I had an important interview later on that morning. I feel as though the commincation broke down after this towards myself so have found it a struggle to get images of the final line up for my own file. It became apparent that I was unaware of a lot of the meetings the group had. This is mainly due to no communication of these meetings but also, due to my forementioned anxiety, I am not usualy one to go into the studio and work - I usually do this from home, so it would be unlikely I would bump into the group, however this could have been avoided if I were told about these meetings so I could have attended.
To my knowledge, as a group, we saw eachother a two to three times a week, usually on a monday for workshops, wednesday as a planned meet and thursdays for tutorials. I sometimes felt we could perhaps have met up more so I could keep on track with the work and know what everyone is doing, however this seemed to be happening anyway unbeknown to me. I believe this may explain why some of my work was overlooked and probably made me look unentheseastic.

To develop this further and learn from this unit, I wish I was more confident and assertive with my ideas and samples. I often found myself too afraid to share ideas to the group which in turn obviously made me look uninterested. If I had been more confident, I may have been more self assured in my abilities in fashion design and this in turn would have helped Nicole out a lot more as after the withdrawal of one fashion student put a lot of pressure on her. I also would have used more computer aided design in the final line up and been a lot more creative and 'let go' a lot more with the designs. I also would have focussed more on the brand we are designing for. I feel the designs are not quite 'James Long'. I think this because they are quite brightly coloured and clean looking. Tom mentioned in our feedback that the sample were quite feminine and clean - however it was he first time some of us had designed for the male market. The most helpful aspect of this unit was the confidence I gained in using the school of arts facilities without feeling anxious anymore. I should hopefully now be alot more confident to walk into the studio without having panicking and this in turn will help me flourish in third year.

Unit X: James Long - Presentaion to Tom Norcombe & Exhibition

Today was our presentaion to Tom from James long, at 11am we placed our neatley headed samples on the table and offered him the gorp file we had worked all week on. He was very impressed with the samples themselves and liked our use of print techniques, foils and fabrics. however, he wasnt so much impressed with our group file - mainly that of the illustrations and the technical drawings. He mentioned the illustrations were not communicating the samples very well - something that perhaps could have been avoided if we had perhaps used collage or even photoshop to create our illustrations, then worked back into them to give texture and to make them pop. To a degree, I agree with Tom. I feel that with the illustrations, we could have used more interesting media other than just felt pens. However, this is someting to learn from for the future an now that we know this we can use this knowledge to benefit ourself and make better designers for ourselves. He also suggested we made our file a little more creative and interesting as there was a lot of white negative space, but i think we may have been afraid to let lose a little and to keep things quite clean.

Although it was a nerve racking experience, we learnt from it and tried to imprve on the points tom made before our exhibition the following thursday. 

On the morning before the exhibtion, me and Nicole met up at the London Scottish House to see the exhibtion space. The other girls were attending a lecture so were coming later on. Sarah suggested that we needed to add extra support to our file where the samples were pinned in, so in reaction to this me and Nicole headed toward the Union to buy some card to support the file. Unfortunatly at this pint i had to leave Nicole as i had a job interview, which the group knew about previously and were to meet nicole after the lecture. I was a little stressed i couldnt help set up, however, the girls did a fabulous job doing so. 

Unit X: James Long - Technical Drawings

Being one of two people in the group capable of drawing technical drawings (prvious studies in fashion technology aided me with this), four of us met up on the weekend to finish the line up colouring and start the Technical drawings. Me and Nicole mainly drew a majority of the drawings, but Hayley also helped us once the line up had colour and print drawn onto it. 

Our line up illustrations were hand drawn because James Long prefers this - as previously mentioned in the first briefing with Tom. Personally, i wanted to touch up the hand drawn designs on photoshop, but after many suggestions of doing so from myself, the group were adament that everything were to be hand drawn with no competer aids. I feel if we had used photoshop to enhance the drawings and clean them up, print them and work back into them with texture on top, they would look a lot more professional, however at this stage there wasnt a lot i could do to persuade the group. I am all for a hand drawn illustraion and i firmly beleive that it gives a signiture to the work using your own hand, however, enhancing it with programes like photoshop and illustrator does give it the extra 'bang' that gives it a professional finish.

I have a good knowdlege of photoshop and am quite quick at doing so, so it was my responsibility to clean up and straighten out the technical drawings. Below are a few of my own attempts at technical drawings of the mesh panel polo shirt, piped shorts, bomber jacket, sweatshirt and mesh shorts design.

 

 

Unit X: James Long - Textiles Samples pt. 2 & Line Up

Just before our presentaion to Tom on May the 9th, i wanted to quickly contribute some more samples to the group, just so we had more than enough choice. i decided to experiemtn with the sublimation printer as it is something i hadnt worked with before and i am a keen digital print designer, so this is a quick and easy way to apply digital design onto fabric. I used two of the macro images i had taken during the beginning of the project and adjusted the colours and shades on photoshop to match the colour palette we are working with.

From these i used the heat press to apply them to a range of synthetic fabrics as you can see below. During one of our sessions, natalie suggested we started to use beading on our samples so i have worked into these with beading also and it gives quite a pretty outcome with lots of texture.

Above: Sublimation onto white foamy mesh.

Below: Sblimation onto textured fabric with appliqued mesh and beading - one of my favourite samples from the sublimation experiments.

Third below: Sublimation on white scuba with bead detail. i really like how clear and deatiled the subliamtions are printed onto the fabric and is deffinatley somehting id like to work more with in the future.  

I can see these samples being used on things such as tshirts, jackets and panels within these garments as well as all over. they would make interesting placement print ideas also. i feel these designs really emulate the rust and decay theme quite well because of their smokey deatils and scattered beading - everything is quite orgaincally placed much like rust and decay.

Unfortunatley, by the time i had completed these, i was a few hours too late for them to be used in the line up which we worked togther on after a session with Sarah and Natalie. We needed twelve looks so, together we placed all of out garment designs on a table and decided how many of each garment we needed and then picked which ones to chose from the selection. once again my designs were mainly overlooked bat a pair of shorts - and i am unsure as to why, however, we got the task completed and began to wok on the illustrations for the line up.

 

Unit X: James Long - Group File

For our presentation to Tom Norcombe from James Long, as a group have to create file explainign or design journey. it must include things like intial ideas and themes, muse reserach and development, initial garment designs, textiles ideas and samples and final line of twelve designs. i was finally recognised as the illustrator of the group after trail and error from the ither members of the group, thus my job was to draw any functional details we had researched, the sleeve and collar samples nicole had made from the textile designs and also the lines of the final line up. Which i was persoanlly thrilled with and finally felt trusted enough to have a responsibilty within the group. i finally felt like i could make a valuble contribution to the group as not a lot of my other work had been taken note of and i could tell one of the tutors may have picked up on this too when during a tutorial she asked why we (as a group) hadnt been using a few of my samples.

Below are my drawings along with Nicoles fantastic sleeve and collar samples. i am very impressed with the sleeves as they involve a lot of different techiniques. she used two cords of piping on some and two samples from the other girls work and also a ribbed cuff and they look great. 

 

Unit X: James Long - Range Building Workshop

Todays workshop was to help us to start beginning to think of how we can apply our samples to garment designs. I looked at my garment and fastenings research to see how i could use my research in designs. i looked at the idea of using cable knit as thin panels runnding down the arms of a jacket. I drew matching shorts to accompany the design and Sara suggested to me to continue developing the design by changing it slightly and adding more of the cable texture of the sweatshirt. i also extended the idea of the mesh panel from under the arms side to all the way to the centre fold. the shorts developed by getting shorter, and adding cable knit ribbed pockets. Below is a design development working from left to right.

 Above is a photo (upside down i know) of a few rough designs out group came up with during the workshop.

  

Above here is a photo of our designs further along during the workshop. Here we have began to add colour to them. My designs are to the left of the photo. I feel i began to create a good range of ideas and have tried to apply my samples to the ideas and few of the other girls samples to the designs.

Unit X: James Long - Trend Research

Although it may not always be needed, personally i prefer to have some trend research to back up my ideas and contextulaise my designs to current and future applications, thus making them usable and in demand. 

Using WGSN, i researched trend in textiles and fashion for men for spring/summer 2017 - the season we are designing for. I discovered that mesh is big trend an this can be seen in stores across manchester at the moment - luckily, as a group we cottoned onto this when looking at sportswear so already sourced mesh fabrics for use for our samples.

I also noticed a strong print design that had graohic shapes and bright colours, similar to the groups samples. it mentions of inspired by urban textures - as were we.

Uni X: James Long - Digital Design Experiments

From my drawings, had a little play on photoshop with some digital print designs from my drawings. this is made from the scratched foil in a nail shape, i then scanned it into photoshop and using a collection of adjustment layers, i created a brush pattern with the scribbley, scratchy nail shape. Below are the results.

Natalie suggested in our group tutorial that i get these onto fabric, however i couldnt afford to at the time pay for digital print, and with my previous troubles with crippling anxiety, i found my knowledge of the university facilities to be lacking. However there is nothing stopping me collaging with these over a james long catwalk picture to see how they would work on his silhouettes. i could develop that idea even further by collaging my designs over vintage tennis garment photographs to see how they would work on a garment like that.

With these designs ive tried to keep the masculinity within them and the James Long gritty vibe that a lot of his designs have. i have done this by keeping the colour pallete quite muted and a little on the dirty side.

The Scratchy nail shape would also work really well into machine embroidery as well as print. i could possibly looking into how i can print this onto fabric on a budget and work into it with stitch.

Unit X: James Long - Macro Images in Depth

Below are a few of my personal favourite macros images I took myself from around the northern quarter of manchester. I tried to look for interesting colour compostions, textures and shapes when taking them. They mainly consist of graffiti, rust and rotting woods.

The macros lens for the phone camera has a convexed shape to it, thus it has this feathered, blurred effect at the edge of the photographs which is quite an interesting property, making the eye focus on the middle of the photo for detail.

Unit X: James Long - Textile Samples

I have spent time in the print room over the past week or so to create some samples to contribute toward the groups designs and final line up. I worked with screen print, foils and puff binder to create texture as i felt that was something we were lacking. Natalie also suggested that we should begin beading into our designs as no other grouops had thought of this so it would give us an extra edge. i went to source beads and found some magenta, copper and black beads. You may notice that some of the colours were slightly off from the colour palette, however when i asked for a photo of the palette to remind me (as we arent allowed our bags in the print room) my group were unable to help so i was left guessing as to what specific shades we were using. i think i manahed quite well, however, i did use a green which looked slightly more yellow than how it printed. those samples however are in my sketchbook.

 Above i worked on the bobbled fabric and placed stripes across it - inspired by the stripes seen on the sweatbands and Fila shirts Bjorn wore. i applied this idea to both side of the fabric to see how either looked. to the right of this i am screen printing striped on the towlleing we sourced. i little communication problem arose here when i didnt realise that i could use the screen our grouo had decided to use for screen as i wasnt made aware of this, so unfortunately my designs dont  properly fit in with the collection, however im sure if i were to work around this and perhaps make more it could collaborate with the other design. 

 I also experiemtned with reverse applique in white fabrics. i wanted to emmulate the textures seen in the macro images in the rust, but also keep it clean white like the tennis garment research i had looked at. This is possibly my favourite sample and i think it would work really well on a sweatshirt, or as a panel on other heavier gements. i used around five or six fabrics for this so it is quite a thick sample - but mainly is made of mesh and breathable fabrics like towelling, chiffon and scuba so is still suitable for s spring/summer season. 

A few more successful prints i designed involve the stripe we have seen from the sweat bands Bjorn wears. It was also suggested by natalie during a tutorial to experiment with a stripe. 

I experimented first with using the bobbley fabric and printed a stripe over both sides of it to see how it looks on top of and on the reverse of the bobbles. i personally preferred the reverse sidebecause it didnt catch all if the binder and this created a negative space effect on some of the bobbles. i then expeirmented with using stripe on the towelling fabric. i really liked the mix of the texture of the printed bindr and the fluffy towel. i then foiled over this to ad a contrast in the shine and textures of the sample which i think worked quite well. 

the bobbled sample could work really well as a loose trouser or panel on shorts. i also think the towelling stripe sample could work quite well as smaller panels or functional deatilas such as cuffs. it could also be interesting used for piping.    

My next two interesting samples came from an idea of using pff binder on mesh to see what effect that would create. i then developed that idea further by putting a second fabric behind the mesh whilst screen printing -  this in turn would push the puff bindr through the mesh and onto the fabric behind. I am really pleased with the textures i created here. the first picture below is the reverse of the puff binded mesh. it gave the fabric a lot more structure as it was quite soft before hand. i feel this was quite an inovative idea and could be applied to a shoulder panel or collar of a jacket of polo shirt.

The second photo is of the fabric that was behind the mesh. it worked just how i imagined it too and only came through the gaps in the mesh. once i applied heat to the sample, the texture is imense and really intereresting. it was like i had created my own sort of mesh which natalie aggreed with during a tutorial we had.  

I had created  few more samples but these, i feel were my most successful not only are they inovative in how i have created them, but also i beleive they fit with James Longs style quite well (the reverse applique and puff binder especially). In light of this, my grouo didnt seem too interested at all in these during our next session. due to my anxiety i am also quite shy and tend not to show if im proud of the work i have done, so perhaps the doubt in myself didnt encourage their attention toward my samples.

Unit X: James Long - Generic Garments

As we are looking as a group at sportswear, i brought in a few of my own vintage sportswear jackets picked up at a kilo sale a while ago to draw from. 

We need to not only look at how the garment sits on the manequin but also its fuctional detaials, finishings and also play around with it on the manequin to maybe invert inovative shapes for garment designs. This way of finding inspiration for garment design is one of my favourites along with looking at my intial, primary research for interesting shapes. I also found a few tennis skirts and shorts whilst meandering a kilo sale, so took photos of these too.

I feel this way gives more inovative ideas and has more context your work, rather than just copying the shapes of yesteryear. I feel fashion design is about this experimentation to see how things can be applied to the body, especially in university when we have the most creative freedom. However i feel this can be difficult to communicate during group work. Ive staudied fashion design at level 5 (HND Fashion and Textiles) already so i have a good idea of what to do, but i feel i may be underestimated in my group for this knowledge as i now study textiles. So it can be difficult for me, along with anxiety to communicate that i am capable of these ideas and for people to trust my opinion. 

 

  

Above is my white sports adidas jacket from a vintage kilo sale -  so hopefully it is from the 70s! It is from Germany as the label is mainly German. I drew some of the functional details of this jacket and hopefully they will be used in the group file. the panels on this are across the body and change size from the front to the back. there is smll piping goinf down two pipe lines of eacharm and has white cuffs. there is a late adidas logo on the back of the jacket and his is something natalie had mentioned in a previous tutorial -  she suggested looking at the tennis racquets themselves and how they have the 'Wilson" branding on them and suggested we find a way of maybe nringing a James LOng branding into our designs so this is something i worked on whit a sweatshirt design which you shall see in later posts.

 

Above is another sporstwear jacket i found at a vintage kilo sale. i really appreciated the oanelling of this design especially on the left arm which i have photogrphied here. i think using oannelling in our designs with our sample would be very interesting and would be fun to mix up textures and prints.

 A Current trend i have seen in menswear design on the high street is using striped banding and ribbing - especially on sportsweat. on these garments it was on the shoulderand runnign down the arm to the cuff.

Below are photos of vintage tennis skirts and shorts. the first is the tennis skirt. it had an abstract print on the front and had two pleats on either side and the same pleats on the back with a button detail. it would be so interesting to work with a pleat for a few of our designs as that is what tennis garments mainly are made in. i find fabric manipulation fun and interesting to create so would enjot to do this.

The second is another a skit but this was more af an A line design so it feel differently yot the first skirt. this one also had short underneath it for the wearers dignity whilst play - practical. it also had a branding to the bottom left and an interesting mesh panel toward the bottom hem. 

Unit X: James Long - Bjorn Borg

After a workshop, it was decided we shall use 1970s tennis star, Bjorn Borg as our muse. He is the main face of tennis within that era and had a distinct look of shoulder length bushy curls, strong brow and sweatband.

These images are also realy good for garment research for our garment shape designs. We are looking at designing sportswear inspired by 1970s tenniswear. Here I see polo shirts with stripes and in a slim fit to the figure. There is also branding of Fila left of the centre fold on both shirt and shorts. The ornage jacket seen here has a similar tone to the orange we are using so maybe that is why it has caught my eye. It is an Adidas jacket with a raglan style sleeve and black ribbing for the collar and cuff which is connected with the black three stripes adidas is famous for.

Unit X: James Long - Colour Palette

After much Deliberation The group have decided on a colour palette consiting of cerisey pinks, burnt oranges. We also want to encorporate the copper foil into out design to reflect the rust inspiration we took from our macro images.

Unfortunately, we didnt decide to use any of the northern quarter sourced images we took and used ones we took in the studio. im unsure quite as to why the others were disreagreded and personally feel we could add more darker shades and cooler tones as James Long uses quite a dark palatte with bright accents, however i am excited to work with these colours and seeing how they apply to our future designs.

Unit X: James Long - Drawing Workshop

This week we had a drawing workshop to help us create initial drawings for our textile designs. I wanted to mainly focus on the colour in our macro images and the textures of the rust and peeling paints found in the images we had taken of decaying wall and graffiti on walls.

You can see there is quite a wide spectrum of colours in this first one but the main ones were a peachy colour, blue and cerise pinks. I used an array of papers to create a peeling effect and flicked paint and ink onto the drawing inspired by the flecks of paint as seen in the graffiti macro images.

Im quite pleased with this drawing but i feel it could use more ordered structure. Maybe to improve I could have used a typre of stencil or printed onto of it with such things as bubble wrap perhaps. 

The second drawing has a lot more order and structure in a way that I used stencils of nails and also stamped with the end of pipes to get the circular shapes. I stippled around the nail stencil to emulate the flecks of paint in some of the macro images. I also draw some of the pipe pieces one of the girls from my group brought in. These could work really well being embroidered onto a print design. I feel this drawing is a lot more of a James Long gritty kind of vibe as opposed to my first drawing which is quite colourful and clean. its important to think of the client or brand when designing to give context to your designs/drawings.

To develop this further I may scan this drawing into photoshop and play around with colours, compostion and pergaps create a digital print design from this. 

The group still hasnt decided on a colour pallete as of yet so this is the next steps for us along with further drawing, muse research and generic garment research.