I have always been very interested and fascinated with war and the massive effect it had and still has on individuals, especially the mental toll it took on soldiers which was ignored and concealed by society. Thus I was motivated to create an Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) WWI soldiers uniform. In order to expose the trauma and negative effects it had on these individuals I created a juxtaposing interior and exterior jacket with the inside showing the reality of war and the outside being an exact replicate of the WW1 uniform. Due to my major work being textile art it rather focuses on aesthetic aspects than functional ones, this includes the interior of the jacket, the collar pins and rank insignia. Functional aspects of the soldier's jacket include the elastic waistband on the pants, the buttoned pockets and the buttoned-up jacket. During the extensive process of producing this piece of work, there were many lessons that I learnt and challenges I had to overcome, one includes adjusting the pant pattern and changing it from buttons to instead an elastic waistband. In addition, another challenge was ensuring that the lining was strong enough to hold the heavy embellishments, thus I decided to use cotton calico as it is extremely strong and durable. The most valuable and enjoyable experience was digging up and collecting old WW1 images and looking into the history of the soldiers, and then incorporating it into my major work and being able to showcase their true stories and war experiences. All these influences, experiences and challenges led to the production of my heavily embellished WW1 ANZAC soldier's uniform.
