London Trip

I went to London for 2 days as a course trip this week.  We visited the Japanese exhibition on Thursday evening.  It was really interesting to see this style as I had expected it to be different.  I took a lot of notes and sketches related to my modules research.  I really liked this exhibition, it was full of interesting detailed garments expressing the human form and also pushing the fabrics to limits of what they can be used for.

Unfortunately I went to a talk on future of fabrication to find out that they are thinking of using bacteria to grow frocks… this to me defeated the purpose of textile designers and the process of knit and print and weave which is what I’ve been learning on my degree which I am enjoying.  It will also push fashion towards science and technology more rather than designing and creativity and most importantly artistic.  Also it will remove jobs from the industry as textile designers will not be needed and I don’t think they will pay for someone to sit and watch the bacteria grow.  They also said they had a sample of pig skin for leather that they could grow to create leather – this would save a lot of hassle with killing animals for their skins and also will allow there to be a sustainable quantity of the material.  So why haven’t they presented this and done something about it?  This annoyed me quite a bit.

On Friday we visited the Design museum and I jotted some notes of some of the fashion illustrations which I thought were interesting and inspiring.  They were all very unique and I was also able to see the vogue cover designs, I noticed how they were different from the recent vogue magazines and I really liked them.  The architectural design was also interesting and I was able to take photos so I created bird’s eye views and was able to see lines and textures that I linked with knitting and weaving features.

Overall I thought the trip was good and useful for my own personal understanding and research into fashion and textile design.