BA (Hons) Art and Design, Module:4103, Creative Mis-Fitting: Creative Mis-fitting Blog

Creative Mis-fitting

"In this video we see someone walking around the street wearing a succession of body sculptures, that prompt a variety of responses."

"our project is to create a body sculpture/ accessory that will enable a response such as the one shown in this video, using part of the city, sculpturally or the ideas of the city do inspire and to use as a basis for our development and creation."

Summary:

look at different aspects of consumerist culture in Birmingham
look at the idea of waste in Birmingham
the expense and cost of being "fashionable"
look at the cost of making clothes compared with the prices that the clothes are being sold for
Re-cycling & Re-using clothes: there are many ways that clothes can be re-used or re-sold for the benefit of other people.

Idea 1: Re-cycling and Re-using old clothes:

"initially i intended to make my costume out of old or unwanted clothes that i had bought from charity shops and give them a new lease of life. re-designing them and altering both there purpose as well as the styling and design qualities."

Idea 2: Consumerism:

"i then went on to alter and develop my initial starting point for my idea, i decided i wanted to focus on the idea of consumerism within Birmingham including both the repetitively necessary purchase of sometimes overly expensive clothes as well as the purchasing of one off items or even items that never get warn that could be given away for a better purpose and use."

"This is initially how I wanted to finally present my costume, but since this point both my initial ideas and my ideas of final presentation have developed and changed."

My Area

Map of my route from Margaret Street...

Photos of my journey

"documenting my journey through town to my final destination taking photos as i go."

Artist inspiration: for my Photography

David Hockney

"David Hockney has inspired the way i intend to document my work for this project i decided i wanted to take a series of snapshot type photos and then re-create and re-organise them in a similar style to David Hockney"

Design ideas

"I am going to make each outfit out of the bags from the shop that where the outfit could be purchased from, I am also going to make the clothes I the style of the clothes that could be purchased from that shop."

North face jacket/coat made out of North Face shopping bags

Superdry T-shirt made out of orange and camouflage shopping bags

Prom style dress made out of House of Fraser shopping bags

(in the end i didn't make this dress due to time restrictions of the project)

Selfridge's skirt made out of yellow Selfridge's shopping bags

Shirt and Skirt covered in money Design

other pieces crated using the same principal

"Plastic shopping bags are a scourge on the environment. What to do with all those plastic bags that seem to be just hanging around everywhere. One idea that seems to be a hit amongst the DIY and creative arty crowd is to fuse various plastic bags together and make fabric out of them. The basic process is to iron the plastic bags, with a sheet of baking paper between iron and plastic, until two or more sheets fuse together. Sound easy - well in theory it is, but it takes a little practice to get the timing and heat just right. Once you have it down, you can start experimenting with colours and patterns, using the plastic bag labels as decoration. And then you cut, sew, glue or whatever the plastic fabric together to make all manner of things. Such as this plastic bag wallet at Vestal Design, and Karin Carter's SLiK Nonwovens: Textiles made from recycled plastic bags."

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/diy-plastic-bag-fabric-reclaiming-plastic-shopping-bags-for-good.html

Consumerism Facts

In every woman's closet, 22 items she never wears - and the guilty complex that stops them clearing wardrobes out

"Their wardrobes are bulging with dresses, tops, trousers and skirts.

And with so much to choose from, it’s hardly surprising that most women don’t actually get around to wearing everything they own.

In fact, the average woman has about 22 garments in her wardrobe that she will never wear but absolutely refuses to throw out, a survey shows.

Added up across the country, women spend more than £1.6billion on more than 500 million items of clothing they will never wear. Placed on a clothes rail, the great unworn would stretch 15,534 miles.

That is equivalent to four and a half times the distance between London and New York.

Millions of purchases that were a good idea in the shop – perhaps they were a bargain or a design worn by a celebrity – have turned out to be a waste, it seems.

Some may have been vanity purchases; little designer numbers selected as a reward for losing weight.

Rash buys are the main reason for the unworn clothing pile-up, according to 45 per cent of those questioned.

And despite these items taking up as much as 5 per cent of storage space, just one in eight women regularly clears out their wardrobes.

As many as one in nine say they would not dream of culling their wardrobe more than once every three years, while one in 50 delays the dreaded day for at least ten years.

Jeans are the most common item of unworn clothes, with 88 per cent saying they own at least one pair that they would never be seen out in.

One in five hoard up to six pairs of shoes that will never be worn. And almost everyone owns at least one top they ‘would not be seen dead in’.

More than half of women say that guilt over wasting money keeps them from throwing out unwanted clothes.

And 41 per cent insist they are planning to lose weight before getting some use out of their unworn outfits. Some 17 per cent are hoarding particular styles in the hope of a fashion revival.

Women from London are the nation’s top hoarders, with an average of more than £300 worth of clothes lying unworn in their wardrobes.

The Scots ranked second in terms of money wasted on items that never leave the wardrobe.

But before they start pointing the finger, men are not much better, it seems. They have 19 items of unworn clothing lurking in their wardrobes.

Impulse buys are just as apparent in their shopping baskets, with more than a third admitting their unworn items are largely sales items."

Textiles Waste: Just the Facts

An estimated 13.1 million tons of textiles were generated in 2010, or 5.3 percent of total municipal solid waste (MSW) generation.
An estimated 14.0 percent of textiles in clothing and footwear and 17.1 percent of items such as sheets and pillowcases was recovered for export or reprocessing in 2010.
The recovery rate for all textiles was 15.0 percent in 2010, 2.0 million tons.

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/textiles.htm

What could we do instead of throw away out old & un-wanted clothes

"instead of throwing away tones of clothes every year you could send them to a textiles recycling plant or even donate them to charity. there are many ways to to this either by taking your unwanted clothes to your local charity shop or by using genuine charity collection bags that are posted through your door for you to fill up and leave out on the day of collection."

there are even departments stores and popular clothing chains that are giving end of season stock and partly damages stock (that is still fix able but cant be sold in shop for profit to places such as new life that sell the clothes on to the public for the benefit of their charity."

"there are even charities that take our un-wanted clothes out to people who are less fortunate than ourselves, for example they take clothes out to children who are living in the slums of Brazil as well as parts of Africa, and less fortunate people closer to home including the homeless on our streets."

My inspiration for money covered clothes

At Greek Weddings there is a traditional money dance at the reception where people dance with either the bride or groom, pinning money to their clothes.

The newly-wed dance

This dance is performed half way through the night by the newly- weds to honour their guests. It is also a chance for their guests whilst the couple is dancing to pin money on them as a gift.

http://www.yourgreekweddingguide.co.uk/greek-traditions/

My Money covered clothes

"i am going to be ironic an wear money covered clothes whist standing outside a bank and next too a cash machine."

"i decided i wanted to include money into my project to reflect both traditions as well as the amount of money people spend on materialistic items such as clothing, that will only ever be warn a few tines (maybe even only once) or clothes that have been purely purchased just for the label or the store they came from."

My final photos:

" instead of my initial idea for displaying my work, I decided to refine may places i wanted to visit on my journey through town, I choose to take photos outside Margaret Street, the Halifax Bank and shop on new street on my way into town."