Survival of the Outfit

Dates: 16/01/23 – 20/01/23 (5 day project)

Group Members: Weiting Chi, Slavi Kaloferov, Cristele Saric and me.

DAY 1

We had to “design and make a garment for surviving social breakdown” as a part of this brief. Being a super short project, we started the ideation and prototyping right away. Beginning with an “8 ideas in 8 minutes” exercise, we got a nice set of ideas to get started as a group.

Some of the initial areas of interest that emerged within our group were maternity, a climate emergency and interactive technology.

We then had a mini workshop with Clare Farrel, a climate change activist, a creator and a fashion designer among other things. She introduced us to the tricky nature of cloth and how one may transfer 2d shapes to 3-dimensional ones while designing outfits and vice-versa.

After this induction to making wearable clothes, we wanted to try our hand at the same process too. With no particular idea in mind, we dived in.

Taking reference from discarded pieces of cloth and tracing that to understand where the seams come and how the shapes look once flattened out on paper. Continuing our process and using paper as fabric and tape as stitches, really helped us to make quick prototypes by tearing, sticking, adding pieces of ‘Dot and Cross’ paper to our learning process.

Video Credit: Self | Video Models: Slavi Kaloferov, Cristele Saric, Weiting Chi and me | Audio Credit: David Gives

As a group, we were more interested to explore the maternity theme and so we decided to go ahead with that.

DAY 2

We began by trying to understand the problems woman faces during pregancy whether that is social, psychological, emotional, mental or even political. We were looking at i) homelessness and ii) single motherhood as our two areas of inquiry where the ‘mother’ would be dealing with social breakdown.

This was done through primary and secondary research. We reached out to people who were either pregnant or had been in the past and interviewed them using a ‘Directed Storytelling’ framework to help us structure our interviews better and hear about the participant’s lived experiences.

We also decided to bodystorm as a pregnant women by adding similar wait to our bellies. As this was the closest we could get to understanding the kind of physical barriers and difficulties that these ‘mothers’ would be dealing with, we went ahead with it. Not going to lie it was tough!

DAY 3

Both these research methods gave us a better idea about how to proceed with our design. Through our research, we found out that the participants’ families, particularly their partners, provide a lot of support throughout the pregnancy and after. In most cases, single mothers find it difficult to find similar support.

So we came up with a conceptual idea for a communal backpack, that helps lessen the load for single mothers by sharing it. The idea also stemmed from the fact that pregnant women are advised to not lift or carry heavy weights. We began by using a discarded white bedsheet as a quick prototype. This helped us feel the huge difference in load when 4 people were sharing it.

Then we quickly did some measurements using existing pieces of clothing as reference and built a paper prototype using the ‘Dot and Cross’ paper.

At this stage of our process, we were ready to start ideating our forms and shapes with cloth itself. To be honest our idea reminds me of the Hindi word ‘Jhola’.

DAY 4

Then we began to stitch and sew the final prototype for the communal backpack. As a team, we wanted to give each wearer, a personal identity within that backpack as well, so we decided to use different fabrics for the same. Our material choice was inspired by the interviewees’ who mentioned the comfort of loose, cotton clothes.

After a lot of hand sewing, we had our prototype. While sitting and sewing this together, we talked about how the presentation would look like since it was going to be in a ‘Fashion Show’ set up and we wanted to add an element of performance to our protototype. Something that might add to the meaning of this shared load.

Our initial idea was to have bags of rice flowing down to the centre as we walked the ramp. This idea later translated to throwing grains of rice by hand, from our individual pockets (our personal weight) to the communal backpack (shared weight). The performance was a metaphor for sharing the load that single mothers carry and that they may seek to do this at their own pace.

We added elastic bands at the corners to add structure and elasticity to the backpack. Especially while trying out our prototype with rice, it was falling out from the corners, so this would also be a solution for that.

Video Credit: Slavi Kaloferov and self | Video Humans: Slavi Kaloferov and self | Audio Credit: Yarin Primak

DAY 5

We were finally ready for our fashion show, which was accompanied by cryng baby sounds as background music. We decided to represent motherhood at different stages by including an infant mother, a father and pregnant mothers as our wearers for the ‘Ramp’.

Video Credit: Qibin Cheng | Video Humans: Lingjia Fang, Slavi Kaloferov, Weiting Chi and self |
Audio Credit: Peter Baeten, Sunville Sounds

Post our performance we received feedback from our class and mentors. The metaphor of rice being open to interpretation was appreciated by some, while not so much by others as it hindered the clarity of context. Although the ‘babies’ and the background music helped situate the context a little. Interviews were praised and the fabric choices were questioned. Our mentor Clare advised us to use well-structured fabrics for the backpack as opposed to ‘stretchy’ ones.