EVE VICTORIA: Punk / Anarchy / Textiles

ANARCHY

During the fashion & textiles taster week, we were given a brief in which we had to create a body adornment suitable to help survival during a sudden and irreversible natural disaster (which we had to come up with). I was initially really stuck on what to base mine upon, until my tutor asked me 'what are you passionate about?' .. or 'what AREN'T you passionate about?' I then told her I don't care much for politics, which then led me to base my whole project around the idea of the punk influence, and anarchy. I began mind mapping and collaging to generate some ideas around the people, the setting and the general atmosphere. In a world where there are no rules, heirarchy or authority; living conditions would be extremely poor / chaotic. Food would be greatly sought after however hard to track down or contaminated. This would then lead to some cases of cannibalism, either led from insanity or purely for survival. I started looking at some of the saw films for inspiration for an adornment - as they always have a very sinister and twisted idea behind them. The one I looked at in particular was the most iconic of the whole series the 'Reverse Beartrap' which essentially rips your jaw apart if the key is not found in time. As gruesome as it is, the Beartrap itself is something that I adapted within my own designs, but came to the conclusion that it would be extremely difficult to make considering the materials I would of had to use (steel, iron etc), and the construction would of been near impossible. The idea behind the contraption however , would have been to prevent cannibalism. Which got me thinking on other designs in which could do the same. This is when I thought of creating an Elizabethan style collar. which of course has a very regal feel to it, but in this modern day an age, is used daily on household pets to prevent them picking at stitches or attacking other animals. I wanted to somehow combine both these aspects with a traditional punk influence also. So I chose to use a green fabric for the main body, and used a red tartan ribbon to line the bottom. I had great difficulty pleating the fabric as there was so much of it, and it wasn't until third time lucky that I was influenced to use a gathering stitch instead, which was extremely time consuming, but effective! I then added the elastic and hemmed and wired the bottom to create a pliable and structured finish. I was actually very pleased with the outcome considering it was mainly done in a days work.