Sophie Rogerson : Unpicked

Deconstruction Reconstruction

In this week's workshop I went forth to practice a technique called deconstruction reconstruction. This involves the deconstruction of a ready made garment and putting it back together into a new form. For this I used an extra large men's shirt bought from a charity shop and unpicked some seams; removing the arms, cuffs and collar. To reconstruct my shirt into a dress, I decided to fit my bodice to the stand, using one arm as a bodice panel, one shirt side as the other panel and gathered the cuffs as decoration. I pinned in exposed darts and gathered up the excess material to fit against the body and give a textured look to the bodice. To create my skirt, I removed my garment from the stand and began randomly pinning areas of fabric to the garment before reapplying it to the stand and seeing how it draped. Some areas I moved slightly for aesthetic pleasure and for better drape but most areas I kept as pinned. To finish the back of my dress i took round the remainder of the collar facing as a one shouldered strap and attached it to a pocket at the centre back of the skirt; allowing me to fasten the dress with ease. I played around with the draping of the garment for a while before settling on my final garment. This workshop will help me a lot when developing my designs and is something I will definitely consider using in my final garment.