I am a textile designer and within my practice I like to use processes such as printing and dyeing as well and digital and hand embroidery. I like to use these processes to create detailed surface patterns.
This projects focus is pollution in rivers and how it is more often than not ignored, unpublicized and hushed up to allow corporations such as sewage treatment plants to run with more ease and less cost. A lot of members of the public are unaware how much pollution is pumped into the rivers. The people who spend a lot of time around the country’s rivers are usually sports people such as rowers, kayakers and paddleboarders and they become aware of the river pollution as they see it in the water. This is how I became aware of this issue as I am a rower and spend almost every day on the river. For this reason, the project’s concept is a collaboration with an activewear brand as this targets the sports people who use the river but also those that don’t, and therefore provides publicity to the issue through being a collaboration.
Instead of designing specialist garments for the water sports, it made more sense for the project to design transitional garments that could be worn during activity but also could be worn as casual wear as well as accessories that can also be used during activities. These garments vary from trousers that are designed to be worn over sports kit to a thermal top and sports scarf and then to a pleated tennis skirt.
The materials used in this project are chosen with their environmental impact in mind, for the fabrics this involves the use of silks instead of polyester and lycra as silk has good heat regulation so is well suited to activewear, however there is very little elasticity in woven silk so silk jersey provides some stretch to the fabric. For the thicker fabric, a silk and linen blend has been chosen as the farming of linen is much less intensive and requires less water than cotton.
The dyes are not natural dyes unfortunately, as the colours needed to be bright and eye catching to draw attention to them, and natural dyes would not do this as effectively. The colours of this project are taken from primary photos and paintings or river as these will remind customers of the environment surrounding rivers. However, the brightness of the colours has come from images of oil spills as this is where a lot of inspiration has come from to inspire designs.
The patterns within the designs have come from the shape of rivers cutting through the landscape, the shapes on the surface of rivers, as well as the pattern oil makes on the surface of water. Each pattern was designed with a garment in mind which helped shaped each design in terms of the colours and materials used.
