Skin+Bones

Visiting Somerset House always brings me back good memories. About a year ago I joined a program with the Sorrell Foundation, called Join Up For Design. It was an innovative scheme where students studying design would take on younger students from public schools and develop a brief about what they want/need in their schools. Their ideas ranged from new uniforms, new school logos, a better playground or social space. So we take them on as our clients, and as group of designers we work together to build these spaces that they could use. It’s mostly conceptual, but the scheme is a win-win situation to the students as they are heard and learn more about design, and us as designers to give back and design to ‘real people with real issues’.
On my way down for the Skin and Bones I went into the Sorrell Foundation Young Design Center to reminisce on my year 2 project.

Being a student studying interior design I find it quite ironic the clothes at the Skin+Bones xibit totaled my complete attention instead of the architectural models and floor plans. I found I was up close and personal with the fabrics and pleating and gave the models a quick glance. The curation of the show was well organized and easy to follow. The exhibition starts off with shifts in architecture and fashion in the 1980s and by 1990s there is an introduction of sophisticated computer aided programs that turned ideas on paper into reality.

The exhibition then starts classifying itself by themes found in clothing and buildings such as

shelter, geometry, structural skin, volume, deconstruction, wrapping, pleating, printing, draping, folding, weaving, cantilevers and suspension.

Structural Skin
A-POC (Miyake Issey and Fujiwara Dai)

Constructing Volume
Alber Elbaz/Lanvin, Hussein Chalayan, Junya Watanabe


Wrapping
Comme des Garcon


Printing
Printed Motifs-usually used to lend a narrative element to structure by reflecting identity in some way. On the left Ely Kishimoto dreses from Dark Wood Wander collection. A collection inspired by a story of a princess trapped in a tower, who escapes and flees through a dark wood only to find her own fairy tale castle in flames.

On the right we have Dries Van Noten and his design refrence textile history and pattern fabric from India, Morroco, Romania, Turkey, and Thialand.


Draping

Vivienne Westwood

Shigeru Ban
Curtain Wall House


Folding

Wilkinson Eyre Architects
Royal Ballet School: Bridge of Aspiration


Synthesis

Elena Manferdini
Laser Cut Fabric
Appraoches design of a garment like that of a building by using tools and techniques more commonly applied to architecture and aeronautical design. She was trained as a civil engineer and as an architect.

Nanni Strada
Laser Cut Chasuble


Pleating