Final Product

After much thought and hard work, my design concept progressed from this:

to this:

Development - Stage 3

Once I was set on a particular layout, I decided to incorporate colours. As mentioned before I was going to use bright and bold colours such as those used by the artists of the Futurist Movement in their work. I decided to try out a combination of red, blue, green and yellow. The following are some rough sketches where I tried out different combinations and styles:

Half-way through one of the sketches I took a step back and looked at the drawing. Upon observing, I didn't like the outcome and I realised that it was a design issue. Luckily enough it didn't take long to sketch the dress again and this time I made sure that I was a hundred and one percent convinced of the design! 

I also decided to make a quick change of colour: using the primary colours red, blue and yellow in their raw form while eliminating green. 

Development - Stage 2

The following photos show the incorporation of most of the elements into one sketch:

Development - Stage 1

I personally think that the elements I chose from art, design and film respectively are quite distinctive, therefore blending them together could either be difficult or quite easy. Before moving to this stage though I had to conduct some research on designers' way of sketching their creations since I had never done something similar up to now. The following are some initial sketches which I did, just to get me into design mode and get the hang of sketching the human figure for a fashion design.

The next step in the design process was to sketch some elements which I chose to adopt from Elsa Schiaparelli's designs. As can be seen below, the material for the dresses is gathered in such as way so as to create a sense of fluidity and movement. 

The next element comes from the film Moulin Rouge. I decided to look at three particular aspects of two different costumes. From the Red Gown I drew the train of the dress and the corset while from the Gothic Tower Gown I focused on the one-shoulder strap of the dress. I am still not sure as to whether I will be using the last two elements in my design. I will have to wait until the rough sketch is complete.

As can be seen below, both the shoulder strap and the train of the dress evoke a sense of movement, with all the lines of the material flowing downwards. I have to keep in mind to emphasize the flow of the material in my final sketch.

Overview of my Visual Product

After much thought and research, I finally finalized my idea for the visual product. During the first phase of the assignment I had already visualized what I wanted the final result to look like, therefore I conducted research while always keeping the main idea in mind. 

As mentioned in a previous blog post, a few days before the start of the semester, I had watched the film Moulin Rouge. Being into music, it was highly recommended by my friends that I watch it, and so I did. To be quite honest, I wasn't all that impressed by the storyline - or should I say, I had much higher expectations. Having said this I must admit that the costumes used in this film are outstanding. It looks like a lot of thought was put into their designs, and each one was perfectly in sync with the setting of the scene. Once presented with the assignment brief with regards to our visual product, I immediately thought about the costumes used in this film and based on that, I decided to design a dress with elements of particular costumes incorporated in the design.

As an element of Art, I was intrigued by the Futurist Movement and their burning desire to live up to the expression 'out with the old and in with the new'. In order to do so they made use of every artistic form possible, ranging from paintings to literature and also fashion design. With regards to my visual product, I decided to make use of the colour palettes generally used in paintings produced during that particular period in the history of art - that is, bold colours such as red, blue, green, and white - together with techniques such as divisionism which incorporated lines and geometric forms. This particular element will also help in bringing out the theme of MOVEMENT in my design.

Last but not least, with regards to Design I decided to look at the work of Elsa Schiaparelli. Although highly associated with the Surrealist movement (as can be seen through her collaborations with none other than Salvador Dali), she was also at some point influenced by the Futurist Movement. I think that this link between art and design is useful with regards to my idea in the sense that it could help me incorporate the elements I chose together. For my design I decided to focus mainly on the structure of the dresses designed by Schiaparelli.

I hope that I can implement my design concept into an actual sketch since blending these elements together is surely not an easy task!