Clothes Renaissance

Having had a successful show at my local Open Studios event, I decided some time for reflection on what I had achieved would help me move forward with the project. By thinking about how my clothes-making micro business came about, I hope to define how I want it to develop in the future.

A few years ago, around the time of my fortieth birthday, I realised that I felt I was at a dead end. After spending a few years caring for a family member as well as raising children, my career as a maker and artist had stalled and emotionally I really needed a kick-start.
Whilst comparing myself to my peers on the daily school playground treadmill, I decided that a style overhaul would be a good way to assess where I was personally and more importantly where I wanted to go.

Most of us, even if we might deny it, use our clothes as a way of identifying with a tribe, social set, a lifestyle. My alleigances if I'm honest were a bit chaotic, eclectic at best, but being neither 'good-looking' or a natural clothes horse, my years of magpie-like acquisitions allowed me or rather forced my look to be increasingly confused.

I've always been  a veteran list writer, so it was natural to start with multiple lists on what and who I aspired to be. By trying to separate the process from the garments I already owned, so that sentiment wouldn't cloud the process too much, I succeeded in giving myself a rough outline of what I should be putting on in the morning.

At the beginning, my thought structure was quite simple. My wardrobe had always been full of pattern and colour, and plenty of it, yet I never seemed to have enough to choose any coherent combinations. So the variety of colour and pattern went. Like that. I wrote a list of the handful of colours that I look and feel my best in. Anything that I owned that didn't fit was put in a potential out pile. 

 

Next came a list of recognizable shapes that worked their best on me. I allowed myself to put on this list, garments or styles that I aspired to or had a romantic notion of.

 

Around this time I allowed myself to buy a few things, some plain round neck cardigans, some plain long t-shirts. Beyond that I quickly found that the garments that would work my wardrobe magic either didn't exist or were outside my price range.
The hoarder in me had a separate list of clothes that I already owned that could possibly be altered or dyed to fit. Once I had a new alteration pile, it wasn't a big step to having a long list of new garments to make from scratch. I spent a good few months obsessively shape collecting, mainly through signing up on Pinterest, but also collecting second hand patterns, mostly vintage, and shamelessly staring at people in the street.

There are plenty of artists and makers who I discovered through the internet who were and still are on a similar quest for self discovery or transformation or reinvention. The particular direction my own making has gone, I will talk about in another post, but I've linked below to a few of the people who I've found the most interesting and inspiring. They may or may not be new to you but if this is a subject that interests you, I think they are essential reading.

Sonya Philip  

Katrina Rodabaugh 

Handcrafted Travellers