Stories

Alrighty Everyone!

I have been wanting to write this post for a while now but have never had the courage to do it. However, today with Christmas just around the corner I am in the festive mood and thought, why not!

As you may have guessed from my blog I am very much into fashion and this interest extends far from just putting together outfits. As part of my school studies and hobbies I also design and make fashion garments. I take my inspiration for my creations from many things, from my favourite novels to my surroundings and my family. I like to think of my pieces as aspects of my memory, in some ways they are a part of me.

The garment I am going to show you today is my final piece for my Art-Textiles A level. The idea surrounding this piece is stories. Words create stories and for me words are essential to life, they are the basis for the society we live by. Words can touch the heart like nothing else, can make a person change their mind and entire personality and can bring whole countries to their knee's, just a few words are the difference between life and death. One could argue that without words the human race would cease to exist.

Just think what you could do with a few words?



This is why I love writing, creating my own words and phrases, weaving and twisting ideas, slowly building up my own story to tell and as my life progresses those words and story will expand, morphing into something unknown. Perhaps this is also why I am so intrigued by other peoples stories, to see their development and progression, the complications and discoveries which can force the story to veer off of its previous track. Moreover the storytellers who can take an idea and make it blossom into a novel, play or poem, who are able to use the simplest of words and create a fantasy far beyond their readers imaginings, from J.R Tolkien's Middle Earth, to Steinbeck's Depression ridden America and the epic warrior tales of Beowulf. Anyone who delves into these worlds changes and alters them, putting their own twist on the original words of the writer. Consequently, I became fascinated by the idea that once an object is passed on  the story of that object also exchanges hands and is altered by the next person who possesses that object.

Thus the dress itself resembles a novel. The bodice of the garment draws on the origins of stories and the layers of the skirt and leather binding show the slow development of the story being built upon by other peoples interpretations. I used the words of famous storytellers such as the Grimm Brothers as well as my own to weave into the foundations of the dress. I also added a few illustrations which demonstrated how the medium of art can also be used to tell stories.

I wanted to create my own interpretation of stories and the legacy which they hold.

I hope you like it!