Student Description

"My wearable textile art piece includes a pleated bubble skirt, layered organza corset and flowing silk cloak. It was inspired by Australian landscape artist John Wolseley, Iris Van Herpens 2019 Collection Hypnosis and the 1950s Bubble dress. I wanted my 3-piece garment to embody Wolseleys respect and admiration of the wild Australian landscape and Van Herpens exploration of the natural and intricate forms of nature. In particular my garment draws inspiration from Wolseleys painting Wild Wings Wild Cries of Wetland and Swamp which represents the Gwydir Wetlands and their importance for the survival of threatened species and ecological communities. The bubble dress is both featured in Van Herpens collection and is gaining prominence in fashion today, linking my garment to the current trends. The creative and innovative techniques used includes multiple dyeing techniques with the silk cloak being ice dyed with burnt orange tones and sky blues to represent the colours of the unique Australian landscape. The cloak rests on the shoulder with a thermoplastic beaded band which creates am organic structure highlighting my inspiration from Van Herpen. It is finished with stencil printed birds that were then painted with soft pinks and greens for depth and French knots were added for texture. The skirt was ombre dip dyed to produce a gradient from orange to blue, and then outsourced pleated to create a unique structured bubble skirt that reflected Van Herpens design motifs. It was then beaded at the bottom to accentuate the gradient of colours and paired with a hand felted asymmetrical belt that was decorated with couching. The corset was boned and decorated with layered organza with a contrasting orange trim and finished with smaller stencilled birds to further the motif. The materials used were habutae silk, glass nylon organza, polyester satin and wool, reflecting my inspiration from Iris Van Herpens structured silk and organza pieces and Wolseleys use of the natural landscape to produce colours. Throughout the process I learnt a lot about modifying and creating my own pattern pieces as this needed to be done for the bubble skirt as a lot more fabric was needed due to the choice of pleating and for the cloak as I couldnt find a pattern that satisfied my design. The most valuable experience was seeing my vision come to life, but it was challenging to work out how it would functionally come together and at some points I needed to change my design as it was physically impossible to create."

Images of Work

"A manufacturing technique that contributes to the success of my project is the use of hand dyeing which can be found on the ice-dyed cloak, ombre skirt and lining. I chose to dye most of my fabrics to achieve the unique, variant and vibrant colours of sky blue and burnt orange. This contributed to the aesthetic design of my project as it drew practically from Wolseley’s design process and allowed the art piece to embody unique colouring as if it had been painted."

"A surface decoration technique that contributes to the success of my project is the use of pleating which is found on the bubble skirt. This was inspired from Iris Van Herpen’s pleated, voluminous dresses in the 2019 Hypnosis collection which created structure and exploration of shape. This furthered the aesthetics of the design as it added movement and 3-dimension that drew from Iris’s inspiration in earthly structures."

Select Student Folio Pages

The pages selected for each project reflect the individual students' interpretations of the syllabus guidelines for the MTP. Each student should develop their folio according to the guidelines, relating to their own individual project. This may result in a variety of presentation styles, numbers of sketches and/or experiments.