Learning to Bloom
Learning to Bloom was a project for my final assignment for my Fashion Heritage subject for Collarts as a first-year student. This assignment involved creating an illustration of a 6-garment collection and a resolved prototype of one of the garments in the collection
Look 1, Look 2 & Look 3 (From left to right)
Look 4, Look 5 & Look 6 (From left to right)
For this project I wanted to showcase a collection that represented the story of growth; my constant journey of self-acceptance and self-love. I wanted to illuminate the painful endurance it takes for one to keep growing, to show that it takes a lot of self-inflicted violence to finally be kind to oneself.
This is what the artist taught me, growing oneself is a constant and bittersweet journey, we must accept our faults and our past in order to bloom.
The physical prototype I created was Look 5 of the collection; the stage of growth I am currently in. The embellishment is a plethora of flower petal layers that open in the middle to reveal a crystal core. Signifying that my scars are also a part of my journey, that they also make up the constellations of who I am.
The embellishment placement at the back of the blazer signifies that I haven't fully reached self-acceptance, that my self-love journey is constant am still at the very early stages of learning and growing. In due time, with a lot of patience and self-nurturing, I will become Look 6 which is the version of me that I am wholeheartedly proud of in this lifetime.
As part of this assessment, this garment was actually inspired by a concert tee with a simple graphic print. However, rather than replicating the design details of the t-shirt the route I chose when designing the collection was to emulate the strong emotional connections I have with the artist. Through embellishment techniques, I was able to reflect my emotions successfully and reveal the life lessons that the artist has taught me upon discovering them.
