IsabeauxStudio

The influence of the Japanese culture on my senior collection is pretty apparent.  I was really poor during college,  and couldn't afford expensive silks or other high end fabrics for my design projects.  I needed to find creative ways to use more basic fabrications and evolve them into something special.  For me that meant applying technique and texture using layers, embroidery, pleating, wrapping and quilting techniques.  I was a huge fan of Issey Miyake, a Japanese designer who makes brilliant use of technique and texture in his garments.  Many of his garments have sculptural elements.  His innovative use of pleating, wrapping and texture, was a huge inspiration in how I approached my own collection.

 
This jacket and dress were submitted as Drexel's entry to the Air France Competition.  Two students are chosen from each university to design based on a theme.  That years theme was "A Party."  The winning submissions are then sent along with their designers to compete in Paris.  Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to go but was grateful for the opportunity to submit.

The jacket is made from strips of irridescent nylon fabric.  I sewed and finished the edges on over 500 strips of fabric.  These strips were then woven in a basketweave pattern and then stitched to a base fabric for stability.  This newly created fabric, was then cut and sewn into the jacket you see at left.  There is a hooded dress underneath, that also has a woven strips on the bodice, and is beaded.  The jacket alone took me 11 weeks to complete. 

For the fashion design majors at Drexel, their senior "thesis" was to create a collection that would be presented in a group show at the end of the year.  This was a huge "to-do" and often had guest designers to host the event.  The pictures below represent part of my collection.

In the collection images above, my materials were fairly inexpensive.  Cotton gauze, linen, rayon, and pleated poly.  I applied traditional Japanese quilting patterns (Sashiko: see reference section) as part of the embellishment and embroidery.  In retrospect, knowing what I do now about fabric, I wish I chose more sturdy fabrications for some of the pieces (especially the pants in the outfit at the far right.)  Overall the designs are not day to day practical, but are fanciful, and a little extreme.  These pieces were really the last opportunity that I had to be really "out there" in designing apparel.  The apparel that I worked on in my future jobs was much more mainstream and more saleable.