Designer Series, Knitwear: Metamorphosis Knits

  

The second post in the Designer Series, Knitwear with Cynthia F. aka CFST, a knitwear student with the goods from Central Saint Martins, focusses on her Metamorphosis Knit project, which she worked on with Jess Quinton. Taking her cue from the Tracy Emin sketch My Abortion she produced a series of sketches and illustrations (don't you just love her illustrations?) that incorporate elements representing a pregnant woman's spine, which Cynthia views as the strongest and weakest part of her body - in the form of panels, as well as lump-like shapes. Her colour scheme comes from the black and white of an ultrasound, and the yellow from the umbilical cord as 'the sign of life'.

Cynthia has taken a controversial work (or at least a very uncomfortable one) in Emin's crudely drawn sketch, extracted themes and translated them into two conceptually driven garments that are wearable, feminine and fun:

Cynthia's first outfit is made with yellow jersey and black acrylic wool. The black strips that create the ruching are inspired by the human spine.

The second look is completely machine-knit. It's made with yellow acrylic wool and the pattern is black wool and white elastic for a tight fit around the torso.

Cynthia has a photo shoot soon so we'll get to see how these will look on a model. I'm very curious to see how the first one moves.

Here are the remaining illustrations for the project, they're too good not to show:

 

Watch for more posts in this series that bend and stretch your perceptions about knitwear, coming soon and ongoing. And let us know your thoughts on any of these designs or the series, we want to hear from you!

Update: See the comments section for discussion about the subject matter and a more indepth explanation from Cynthia (CFST)

Comments

[Julie Bettiol]

Agree that it will be interesting to see these on models and to see their movement. And to see how the black spine sits on the breast of a woman. Too high and it will lose it's sexiness, but too low and it might be too cheap?

And I do like those sketches - they remind me of old French drawings. If you hadn't told me the topic was abortion I wouldn't have figured it out - the drawings are pretty to me and not sad.

jb

[Denise @ The Swelle Life]

I should clarify that it deals with both pregnancy and abortion, for which she derives colour and form. So it's not a statement of any kind on the issue(as far as I'm aware!)

[iole]

Stopping by to say hi!
Cool blog.
xo xo
Iole

www.ioleinfashion.blogspot.com

[Tammy]

I absolutely adore the sketches, they're lovely. As for the pieces themselves, they're interesting and I love the colour! I'm looking forward to seeing takes from the shoot. As far as her 'inspiration' I'm not in the least offended...I'm not sure I 'get' the connection, but that's just me.
Again, really looking forward to seeing more of this!

[Denise @ The Swelle Life]

Glad to see discussion is opening up!

Just look at it as pregnancy and abortion being the reference point. When Cynthia saw the sketch she took her ideas of the colour and shape of the two and translated them into the major elements of her final garments (as described in the post).

Conceptually driven design is sometimes obvious and sometimes it's not - it depends on which approach works best. There's literal, like Hussein Chalayan's Spring 09 dresses that represent speed and appear to be frozen in aerodynamic motion from the side profile, and abstract like what Cynthia is doing. The subject matter tends to dictate. A literal translation in this case would be ill-advised! And of course Cynthia recognised that. And that's the difference between the talented and the hopeless.

I'm talking off the top of my head so I'd be curious to hear what Cynthia's response to this would be and if she agrees with what I've said!

[CFST]

Thank you very much for the comments about this. For my initial idea I did take Tracy Emin's sketch, and it triggered the relationship between abortion and the key work of the project 'Metamorphsis' as it can be part of pregnancy (well... if I may say that) and pregnancy in itself is a process. So from that point I researched into the process of pregnancy, the different types of foetus you can get including conjoint twins, and that inspired the more spiral and cable shapes design in my sketches. These aren't actually my sketches throughout my project, these are my final illustrations, and I tried to insert part of the sorrow into the drawings by having the girls with 'sad' eyes. I am more than happy to scan in some other ones of my design process, to show you the differences between the two. Actually comparing my design sketches and illustrations, my tutor much preferred the sketches.
And in response to Julie, I agree very much, I haven't had much chance to see it on an actual body apart from my own so I have yet to judge whether or not the placement of the panels are complementing the body in the right way.

[CFST]

One more thing, one of the reason for choosing this colour scheme is because I really wanted to stay away from red, pink and all that colour. I didn't want the colour to be cliche and almost common for the topic if I'm allowed to use those words. You can say I am trying too hard delibrately, but I wanted to give it a try! :D

[Denise @ The Swelle Life]

Thanks for extra info, Cynthia. Looking forward to the photos!!

[Knitwears garment]

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