T-Shirt: Cult, Culture, Subversion Exhibition

Seemingly, it doesn’t matter how many posts you’d like to write, if you don’t have enough hours in the day, your blog is slowly going to die a painful death.

New tactic.

To incorporate your degree with your blog, so you can be blogging and still technically be doing uni work.

In all seriousness, my second year at university has kicked up a gear and I’m struggling for time to do anything. My Fashion degree is obviously something that consumes me and therefore needs to filter through into this blog. Starting with a recent visit to a T-Shirt exhibition that was a part of the British Textile Biennial.

The first stand I was drawn to in the exhibition was the selection of climate change t-shirts. They varied from hand drawn pieces overlaying commercial graphics to simple yet effective stand-alone text tees. Luckily, the t-shirts stood for what was printed on them. One read ‘Single Use Plastic is Never Fantastic’ (designed by Henry Holland in collaboration with BRITA) and was made using recycled plastic and salvaged cotton.

4 From climate change to political issues, specifically titled ‘Personal/Political’ deriving from the slogan ‘the personal is political’. I thought that this section in particular covered a lot of issues in one. Which only highlights the aim of the exhibition as a whole to start the discussion of fashion being an avenue for communication and personal expression.

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A big influence in the exhibition was the work of Vivienne Westwood. The pefect choice, that I thought encapsulated what the collection stood for. The particular piece above was from Westwood’s runway for Spring/Summer 2018 and I think its a t-shirt in its peak  of importance during a time of awareness against fast fashion.

Another selection of t-shirts came bearing empowering quotes which further highlights the premise of the collection, demonstrating t-shirts being a really impactful communication tool. Whilst I feel the one on the right (‘We should all be feminists‘) has a great importance it has definitely circulated a lot more. Whereas, I particularly loved the left tee ‘What other people think about you is none of your business’.

7Finally finishing with this masterpiece, obviously I adore the quoted t-shirt and once I’ve finished writing this I’ll be googling where I can get my hands on one – a sustainably and ehtically produced one of course. But I just really appreciate the scale in which Vivienne Westwoods face has been printed onto the t-shirt behind. Go big or go home, I guess.

 

S.S.S

Bowes Museum- Photography

What a tiring couple of weeks it has been. Does anyone else have a busy/stressful time and as soon as it starts to calm down you end up feeling ill? Well anyways, a little while ago I took a trip to the Bowes Museum in County Durham with my University. I wanted to post about this last week but my Mum unexpectedly ended up in hospital, hence why I didn’t get to post anything. Anyways, she’s feeling a lot better now so I thought I’d share the pictures I took.

1The exhibition itself was so much better than I could have imagined.

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The sparkle on this dress could only be appreciated in person. You can also tell how luxurious it is because it was one of the few garments behind glass.

63This Comme des Garçons garment really took my breath away.

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9It was such a beautiful stately home which created the most elegant setting, contrasting well with the garments.

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I spent the majority of the day in absolute awe of the garments. But a couple of garments caught my attention immediately, this being one of them. To the point where I had to get a selfie. During a-levels, Vivienne Westwood was a big inspiration, particularly the pirate collection. So to see the garment in real life was amazing. I also got to see the other big garment that inspired me a lot during my design was the Alexander McQueen, The Horn of Plenty collection.

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Sorry for the shorter post this week, life should resume as normal now and its officially the start of Christmas?! How very exciting…

Lots of Love,

           Sophie


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