brazen transitions - the first collection synopsis

Adj.1.bra-zen – to be unrestrained by convention or propriety ; tran·si·tions. - 1. Passage from one form, state, style, or place to another. Brazen transitions draws inspiration from my personal environment, looking directly at the public stairs that go pass my window and the weird and wonderful who use the transitional space. Drug addicts, homeless, business suits, school kids, a brazen coalescence of personalities all use this space day to day, merely an unconsidered blip on their journey. I wanted to capture the essence of this clash of characters and simulate their common connection of these structural stairs. I paralleled this idea with the visual metaphor of graffiti, which covers the area in which I live. I looked at how graffiti is a ‘mark’ of personality on the space and how these people are metaphorically and unconscious ‘colouring’ the steps as they use them.

My collection uses the stairs as a structural framework for my designs, drawing from the linear makeup and simplifying it down into geometric shapes. The people are mostly referenced through the colour, in which I chose bright and clashing colours taken directly from the crazy outfits and also from the grafitti. I didn’t want a literal interpretation of graffiti but rather draw from the important aspects, the colour, the expressive quality and the texture. I also hint at the ‘personalities’ through detailing, such as on the collars where I have embroidered ‘crack whore’ and ‘drug addict’, I wanted these details to be small and unexpected, adding a bit of humor. I am becoming increasingly interested in the idea of fast versus slow fashion. I wanted to contrast this idea of the constantly changing movement in the space with using slow fashion, as I believe it is going to be a real issue in the future. All the garments I created are to be worn for many seasons, designs that are interchangeable and beautifully crafted. I started to explore this with my sample fabrics manipulations, where many took hours to make just even a small section, as I felt detailing was very important. Kate Fletcher sums up this aspect of my collection, “using the ideas of speed to promote environmental and social quality”, while creating ‘slow’ fashion and how “combining the two brings newness underpinned by resilience, revolution bolstered by remembrance and fashion supported by nature and culture.”