Body
Laboratory

Ninela Ivanova

‘Moulded Mind’ evolved from an inspiring and thought-provoking Russian documentary on mould in 2009 that explored the eternal coexistence of mankind and mould. Mould acts as a barometer of our times and as a criterion for personal mind and body development and has inspired Moulded Mind - a design-based research project into the human-mould interaction. Along the way it not only opens the subject up for a dialogue, but it also looks for fungi applications for future fashion scenarios. My current aspirations and design experimentations concentrate on this human-mould-fashion relationship and the interaction between clothing and the environment, exploring people’s mindset and inbuilt concepts of creation and decay. By playing with these perceptions I am twisting the viewpoint of ‘ugly’ and turning it into a vision of new beauty and harmony. In addition, my research has looked deeper into the microbiology of moulds as a source for material exploration, revealing the scientific aspects and experimentation with mould growth on textiles to inform new body shapes, silhouettes, colours, materials and moods.

Marie Elise Llagas

Reveal conceal is the concept behind my final master’s collection, which was born through examining the importance of the human silhouette. Exploration of shape in context to the body in contemporary times has always played a strong role in my work, a theme that I have continued with for my master’s project. I wanted to strip back and refine my designs to their simplest and most powerful visual forms. By using luxury fabrics versus sportswear materials I aim to push forward the boundaries of fashion creation. I question how we can contemporize un-conventional materials into traditional design-led methods. My exploration of materiality leads to the use of acrylic in the collection, this becoming a key element applied to create blocking, concealing and highlighting areas of the body.

Elaine Tsai

I consider myself a textural designer. Texture is the language of the garment.
When designing, my work is both melancholy and emotional, creating the spirit of my master’s project. Humans are fragile with sensitive skins and hair, the only two things that form the human body shell.
My fascination with texture translates into 3D structure in fabric manipulation. I translate my mood in cracking and fading fabrication, playing with the volume between light and heavy textile constructions, through the use of chiffon, organza, nylon, in contrast to wool and leather.
By using hair as the spirit within the collection, a dialogue of hybrid conveying the “weak” in contrast to nature’s power. I aim to give my menswear a new, unique soulfulness as I adventure through shades of nude, deep purple and black, transferring transparency and dense materials between feminine and masculine. Within my major project I endeavour to find a new balance of gender and hope to bring a uniqueness to menswear.

Han Gu

I have memories of my grandma, who liked to fold the smallest notes to make little triangles. She would use various methods to put the paper together into different shapes, such as that of a dragon boat, pineapple, swan and other animals. This craft of materials became a piece of art. As a child I was fascinated by how these objects were made. We learned from the elderly to fold the triangles and made our own imperfect shapes with our tiny hands. My grandma’s work, an ancient Chinese technique, is the inspiration for my master’s project. A wearable womenswear capsule collection is for the modern, vanguard: and independent female and is inspired by architectural shapes and industrial landscapes with an edge of femininity.
The triangles accent the collection, as I allow my childhood to transform and develop the shared memories of my grandmother, they come alive as origami in fashion, her memory and talent living on.

Wolfgang Jarnach

Arthur Schnitzler’s novella ‘Traumnovelle’ (dream story) is a crucial source of inspiration for this project, which uses garments as a language to express personal observations. It describes a tale of one man’s journey through the hidden depths of his own psyche. Set in fin-de-siècle Vienna, the story exposes the hypocrisies of bourgeois culture by exploring the repressed desires, fantasies, and passions underneath the surface of a seemingly happy marriage. It also addresses themes of sexual fantasy, jealousy, obsession and death in contradiction to unquestioning love. It is a fictional, psychological case study exploring the nature of dreams and the inner workings of passion, desire, and fantasy in the human psyche, dealing with themes of fidelity and infidelity, jealousy and guilt. In the story the line between reality and fantasy is effectively blurred, with the intention that no dream is ever entirely unreal, and that reality does not encompass the entirety of an individual life. In particular, I’m interested in the psychological relationship between the couple (man and woman), the individual and their doppelganger, the protagonists and their antagonists. I reinterpret themes of disguise and revelation of the personal soul, using fashion film

Inolé Crockart

During my year on the MA Fashion programme I have learnt about how the role of the fashion practitioner is changing and how fashion is opening up as a discipline through digital and physical media is transforming the industry. MA Fashion at Kingston encourages student designers that the process is as important as the final outcome and tracking and documenting your findings as you invent, archive, edit and development ideas is critical. The course exposes us to new materiality, new developments in fashion communication and production. It also enables us to experiment in unique ways through the practitioners who teach on the programme. Inter-disciplinarity is promoted and collaboration with other designers across the schools, the university, and beyond, helps us to network and position ourselves with an international design viewpoint.

Being an avid blogger I realized I was more interested in the content of others and began reporting on the exciting work of my peers, first through Fashion Lens my blogsite, which has progressed into MA Fashion TV. Through my interviews I am able to challenge the designer to think outside of their normal routine and question their work as well as think about how the fashion industry today works, what might needs to be changed, and how they might be part of achieving innovations in fashion. MA Fashion TV is also allowing me to become a mediator for the general public into the classified world of fashion. 

Stephanie Jane Price

The design process has been hijacked. The borrowing of ideas from across disciplines, brings together an interesting collaboration. There is an excitement in this disruption, inviting design to reform, rethink and reiterate. Taking inspiration from the work of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, the displacement of mind and body brings together a process of designing through making. Pen and paper are no longer sufficient in creating 'new', we now revert to a cognitive design method. It is often difficult to conceive new ideas, beginning with nothing other than sensory instigators to inspire and begin. It’s through doing, being and making that the narrative forms and concepts begin. Is design then inverted?

Collection ‘276.2’ began by chance cutting patterns and cloth. The essence of building a garment begins without control, design or silhouette. Through a snapshot of design through making, iterating, capturing and rendering the story began to form. There is a restriction between inner and outer, a third skin and the placement of the body in the subject space moving into a fourth dimension: an anchor point for the body in the choreography of design. The garment becomes part of the environment, and the body finds a place to be entangled and manoeuvre. The atmosphere is dark and the ethos questioning.

Fay Gascoigne

Fragrance is an emotional driver. Smell is the most primitive chemical sense, which influences mood and individual feelings. Human psychological responses to fragrance indicate that scent can trigger memories that often evoke strong emotional experiences. My project explores the personal sensory perception of scent and its therapeutic qualities: I discovered lavender oil has many healing qualities and was widely used in the First World War by soldiers on cuts and bruises. Soldiers would send letters to loved ones back home impregnated with lavender to confirm their safety and to represent calmness and hope. I researched into past and present day love letters from the military and interviewed a young soldier who had recently returned from Afghanistan to gain a deeper understanding of the emotions felt when away from home and how fragrance can comfort and reassure. My research subsequently developed dramatically into a womenswear collection that focused specifically on the intricate form of the lavender pod as well as its scent. I created print design linked with camouflage and fragments of colour, silhouette and detailed cutting to inform my garment designs and to visually accentuate the representation of lavender.

Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse

The Biomimcry project strives to create a luxurious sustainable garment using nature’s natural patterns and shapes, also known as bio-mimicking, such as reptile skins. By combining modern techniques such as laser cutting with hand-sewn details I have created a garment with a luxurious appeal without depleting any natural resources; using discarded pieces of plywood and cutting the shapes out as efficiently as possible, and applying them on the fabric. This process is both sustainable as it is durable. It is this quality to both retain nature by mimicking its attributes, and making use of the product’s tendencies to last, by means of its lifespan and its aesthetic perception, that makes it sustainable. The process of biomimicry and its tendency to endure, creates a perfect natural balance; creating a biological ecosystem of a simulacra of nature, without discarding nature’s inherent harmonies.