Idea generation: using collage to design a clothing collection
What methods do you use as part of your creative process? Do you find collage to be an effective method for you? Here, I will document how I use this medium as part of my research when creating clothing collections. The images used are all personal photographs taken over a period of time from my many walks on Crosby beach, Merseyside.
As one of my favourite places, I had wanted to use Crosby beach and Antony Gormley’s Another Place installation as a stimulus for a creative project for a long time. I spent my teenage years living in the Crosby area and it is rare for me not to squeeze in a walk - or two - on the beach when I am back visiting family. The daytime scenes of the water, the sand dunes and the golden sand (and let’s not forget Soul Man and his ice-cream van!) are punctuated by dog walkers, or others like me who pop out for some fresh air whilst appreciating this area of natural beauty. With it being situated on the western coastline, the sunsets are truly mesmerising, with the sun appearing to drop slowly into the water. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed two sunsets on the beach that are the same, and the range of colours that can be seen is truly spectacular.
Over the years I have built up quite a collection of photographs of Crosby beach, covering various times of day and of the year; one thing that always struck me when looking back at the images was the textures and layers that could be seen in each take. Sometimes that patterns are created by the tracks of the water in the sand, sometimes by the shapes of the waves or the clouds, or by the different stripes of colour in the sky. I knew that, when using the beach as a source of inspiration for a clothing, I would want to layer fabrics and have blocks of different colours in an attempt to replicate the landscape. I had in mind that I would have big, floating and flowing skirts made of tulle and chiffon and that the colours blue and orange would be predominant. As I set about working out how I would translate these ideas in my sketch book, I began to cut up some of my photographs, using the different layers or segments of the picture as my cutting guidelines.
By laying everything out on the floor and piecing together the different sections to create collages in the form of garments (and experimenting in a very tactile way), certain shapes, patterns and colour groupings began to emerge. They prompted me to explore garment ideas I would not have uncovered through sketching alone, and I also began to consider fabrics - such as lightweight denim - that I had not even contemplated previously. For me, collage has become an important part of my research and design development, so much so that I would now consider it to be a vital first step to all of my projects.
Have you every tried anything similar? Or would you be tempted to do so?
