Body Adornment. 1993.
This was a project called Body Adornment in the Textile and Fashion area in the one year BTEC Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art and Design. On TV I saw a documentary of how the Marcos regime in the Philippines came to an end and I was struck by the visual impact of the vertical upright wing like statement shoulder sleeves forming part of the dresses that were worn by Imelda Marcos, the president’s wife.
I decided to use that vertical statement shoulder sleeve to form the basis of my Body Adornment. The vertical statement shoulder sleeve would be a fixed shape to fit vertically onto a shoulder and would be linked to a contrasting horizontal section made up of different moveable parts. The shoulder part was then formed by two upright vertical sections of stiff thick cardboard, cut to fit over a shoulder and both linked together by a horizontal tube of cardboard that was glued to each of them to give rigidity to the whole. Some of my various coloured paper prints taken from the Intaglio printing project were glued to all the surfaces of this vertical section. Also joining the two upright vertical shoulder sections was a horizontal length of stiff thick cardboard also covered with my intaglio prints, which projected out, to join to the contrasting horizontal section.
The contrasting horizontal section was made up of different shaped parts joined together, each part being filled with fabric padding fixed to a thin wire frame, the whole then covered by my cloth prints taken from the Intaglio printing project and sewn into position. I used the thin wire frame to allow those different shaped parts to be twisted into other interesting shapes and to keep their shape. Joining these different shaped parts together and joining this contrasting horizontal section to the projecting length of stiff thick cardboard coming from the vertical shoulder section, was achieved by means of largish buttons. I made these buttons from stiff card, fabric padding and covered them with small pieces of my Intaglio printed cloth. The buttons were then sewn on to fix everything in place, but also to allow the different shaped parts of the horizontal section to be able to move into different positions.
I was commended by my sewing ability by the Textile and Fashion area tutors.
Please see my back story regarding my Intaglio Print.