Final Illustrations for Noble Savage Collection... Luisa Maria

These are the final illustrations for the Noble Savage collection, for Jun, Lilla, Mimi, Myself and Luke.

Noble Savage - Presentation pages...

Birds and Bones... Final Garment Photoshoot

Modelled by Juliet Gaishauser

Noble Savage...Some recent hand embroidery samples-

I am currently working on a team project with a group of Menswear students and one other surface textiles student, our project is based on sustainability and multifunctionality and our garment concept is drawn from traditional dress in North American Indian cultures- particularly the use of blankets and draped garments.

These are some of my Hand embroidery samples and their inspirations- which came from the idea of the 'external soul' in folktales- this concept is based on some extracts from a book called 'the golden bough' by Sir James George Frazer- in which he describes how;

"In the opinion of primitive man, the soul may absent itself from the body without causing death. such temporary absences of the soul are often believed to involve considerable risk, since the wandering soul is liable to a variety of mishaps at the hands of enemies and so forth. But there is another aspect to this power of disengaging the soul from the body.
The savage thinks of the soul as a concrete material thing of definite bulk, capable of being seen and handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to be bruised, fractured, or smashed in pieces"

In folktales the world over, the soul is described as a physical entity- a thing that can be stored in secret places, within other beings and imbued with magic- i took the inspiration for my embroideries from this particular extract-

"in another Hindoo tale an ogre is asked by his daughter- Papa, where do you keep your soul?

"Sixteen miles away from this place," he said "is a tree. Round the tree are

tigers and bears and scorpions and snakes; on the top of the tree is a great

fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage is a bird;

and my soul is in that bird"

Fetishism ... Hair and Lace samples...

Sample from the Fetishism project-
These are some of my final samples for the project- the basic concept was attempting to create something beautiful out of something conventionally perceived as unsettling, I was using hair and lace- creating lace out of hair, or imitating hair with threads and using dissolvable fabrics and reverse applique with organza and tulle.

2nd Year Term 1 project-

Fetishism 

Fragmentation

Femininity

This is some of my most recent work, the brief was originally a study of the Dada movement, chaos and irrationality, and from there my thought process kind of spiralled into some slightly stranger places- i adored Hans Bellmer's dolls and Nobuyoshi Araki's shibari and japanese bondage photography. Fleet Ilya's leather work and Givenchy's latest couture collection were also influences. The main concept developed from a quote I found from Bellmer talking about the dolls-

"i tried to rearrange the sexual elements of a girls body, like a sort of plastic anagram... The body is like a sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real nature becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams..."

One of the recurring themes of this project was flesh, bulging, contracting, metamorphosing and endlessly renewing itself...

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