BA4 - Reflective Journal

Hello, everyone, long time no blogging. Sorry got distracted a lot!!!!

Anyways for my new project, i thought I would complete my reflective journal as normal in a little book, but halfway through I decided I wanted to venture into the blogging world instead. So the first few (or more passages) are actually from my book....Enjoy!

Summer Initial Inspiration

My initial inspiration came when I took my family holiday to Scotland back in August. Whilst walking up the royal mile, we went into the Royal Mile Edinburgh Weaving and Textile Mill. Once walking in, i knew my project was going to be about tartan and highland dress....

 

What led me to look into Sherlock Holmes dress

 

What perceived me as strange is that men who would wear highland dress; wore kilts while being commando - this brought me on to the strange revelation of including revealing elements to my designs

Not just the tartan poncho/cape it was this plain anorak with the overflap/cape top part to the coat - which made me think how it might be interesting to incorporate the Sherlock Holmes detective coat made completely of Tartan!

Then these jackets made me think more on including some sort of military influence in my research as well

Campbell of Loudoun Tartan - this is my father's clan tartan and is very rare to find these days as they stopped producing this tartan as it was not very popular 

On the way home, I started doing sketches such as:






As you can see, I used a lot of the tartan in my designing as that is the main component of the theme and will be for the final design. I was looking for an almost dramatic look in reference to my earlier idea of using Sherlock Holmes period dress as the shape and silhouette.

I was thinking of reflecting more from the costumes of the latest film adaption, starring Rachel McAdams, Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. This is because I think Jenny Beavan (the costume designer) has made the costumes almost modern in the way they are styled but still historically correct to the time of dress.

Once home, I looked from some of my most recent vogues, to find inspiration in the tailoring aspect of my design, making me ask myself questions and writing things like:

"What length do I want...."

If I want the jacket to be in all of tartan, will a simple silhouette be the best fit......"

"Research more into couture tailoring....Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga...."

"Look more into men's traditional tailoring.....androgyny"

"suit all in tartan....in contrasting directions"

"double breasted or single breasted..."

"To make final design into an ulster coat...."

:design aesthetics in different places - buttons down the shoulder and sleeve or using another tartan for pocket linings, lining for top collar and lining for bottom of jacket..."

"Revealing parts of dress in reference to kilts in highland dress...."

"Colours - bold colours such as classic stewart clan red and a deep green  for the Campbell of Loudoun tartan inserts..."

"Stand collar..."

"buttoned panels across shoulder and chest area  - modern interpretation of ulster coat..."

"different texture on lapels - leather panelling on lapels and idea of leather trim to frame jacket...."

"use of different fastenings....toggles, epaulettes...."

"altered shape to suit jacket - curved lapels, A-line shape, shorter sleeves..."

By the end of including all these different images into my research file, I realised I wanted to keep the tailoring very traditional - i.e. design the suit for menswear - who the suit was originally made for!!!!!

Therefore, this started me on my deep research into menswear and the history behind the tartans!!!!!