Making things to wear

I have a confession, I love making clothes.
These are the two dresses that I have made this weekend and for once they have evolved without major disaster, (the grey one was for a wedding) and that is a miracle. 
I have been making clothes in this slapdash fashion since I was about 14 and successful or not I have always enjoyed wearing them. For a while I also had a bad habit of making clothes for job interviews  . . . I didn't get the jobs and my partner still has nightmares about one particular outfit known as the 'Ziggy Stardust'.
I never use a pattern which makes everything a little less predictable. These are made from calico and muslin which has been dyed. 
I have been experimenting mixing dyes, soon I am going to try natural dyes in preparation and research for an exciting project later in the year. 

Femke Agema

Femke Agema Boogieman made a this costume for new music festival in Amsterdam Westerpark. Commissioned by Bas Koopmans for Festina Lente Media. It has the spirit of the project that I am doing with my fashion students today. Femke Agema is a Dutch fashion designer who's work explodes out from fashion into art, sculpture, installation and performance, she has some incredible ideas and works.

Donna Rhae Marder

This is an 'oilcloth dress' from Donna Rhae Marder's perfectly titled collection, 'Paper, Scissors,Thread'

"My work has evolved over a lifetime. Some aspects have remained pretty constant. For the last twenty years I have worked out of my house. I fell into using a sewing machine as a sculptural tool and consider myself a sculptor. Even when pieces are designed for the wall I conceive of them as objects like quilts, not illusionist surfaces . . . because of the way I work, the topic of homemaking is always part of my subject . . . Often the work is a homage to unending domestic chores and the finiteness of life." Donna Rhae Marder

Brown Paper Friday

Another crazy day at work today, it has been quite a week. Today was brown paper challenge day for my NC Fashion students. They were challenged to create sea themed dresses using brown paper. It was great fun, full of energy and another great day Photographs.

Sara Illenberger plays with her food

Sara Illenberger has produced lots of amazing work for different food articles in the magazine NEON. This dress is stunning I love the leek straps, her meat A-Z Fleisch is also fantastic but not as pretty.

3D Dress

I don't often offer up fashion items on this blog, but I loved this because it is so clever. Fashion student Jennifer O'Flaherty and Textiles student Charlotte Helyar collaborated to create this incredible dress for there degree show at ECA, viewed through 3D glasses the cityscape dances before your eyes and makes you laugh with wonder, fantastic!

Hussein Chayalan's Airmail Dress with graphics by Michael Langkjaer and Rebecca Perry

Hussein Chayalan, made a papery material dress that could be folded into letter form and attached with stickers.

I love sending odd things through the post, a jar of jam and a par baked baguette probably the naughtiest. A painted t shirt with the recipients address painted on folded and posted and even a love letter on vegetables that I had in my shopping.
This wonderful dress by Hussein Chalayan really caught my eye, with graphics by Rebecca and Mike (see Comment), it was made in 1999.

Extreme Knitting from Yoshikazu Yamagata

Had to include this wonderful photo from Yoshikazu's portfolio.

Murakami Mafuyu

I have seen the collaborative works of Murakami Mafuyu and Yoshikazu Yamagata before but the image above is so wonderful, and I didn't realise that these knitted garments were considered as fashion and possibly toy houses for children.

Yoshikazu Yamagata

Yoshikazu Yamagata is a multiple disciplinary designer, primarily working in fashion, innovative and wonderful. He is not interested in fashion just as product and design but also the story behind fashion. In this way some of his projects would seem more like costume design or sculpture, a very interesting designer.

Cardboard Catwalk

Wonderful work from students at Stode College, found at hautenature.

Budding Shoulders

My hair is wild enough for a bird to nest in, but it would be great to have a dress with shoulders like these so the birds could roost, now where to put the feeder...

http://www.com-pa-ny.com/ Zany and brilliant at the same time the design duo Aamu Song and Johan Olin of Company.

Fernando Brizio's Felt-Tip Dresses

Beautiful effect of bleeding felt tips on Fernando Brizio's dresses.

Mashallah Design

Top: Wolf

Bottom: Juki

http://www.mashallahdesign.lacaptas.com/public/indexpage

I've been wanting to share this fantastic Wolf T-shirt with you for days, Mashallah Designs collaborated with Linda Kostowski http://www.realfakewatches.com/ to create this digital T- Shirt.

Wolf has been produced digitally and has 419 component faces. Three people were digitally recorded and their three dimensional data was converted into two dimensional sewing paterns and ultimately these interesting clothes.

Brian Walker Fashion Photographer

Fifty Lashes 2007

''Sydney based artist, Brian Walker's credits his desire to seamlessly fuse fashion, illustration and the element of surprise as the driving creative force behind his artworks" Friday Arts

Brian Walkers photographs are very scary and wonderful see more of his work here:

http://www.lickthesun.com/2007.htm

Tim Walker high fashion coloured with childhood

Tim Walker's photography captures the magic of life, it embraces so much wonder that it reminds you of childhood and brings an innocence and freshness to the fashion he is enhancing with his art.