School of Design Textile Design
Helena Powell
Contact
A Place I Call Home
In this work, I have explored the themes of contrasting aesthetics between Suffolk’s rolling hills and Glasgow’s cityscape.
My work primarily explores contrasts with tonal blends and mathematically inspired stripes, which have been studied in sketching, thread wraps and digital development before weaving. Sustainable design is the process’s focus, so I have explored hand-painting warps and small-batch dyeing weft. I have worked closely with The Sudbury Silk Mills Shop and Skye Silks to repurpose deadstock materials, such as different weights of silks and cotton.
Through sampling and refined design ideas, I have created a bespoke collection of scarves, using double cloths and different shading within the woven structure to convey the sense of home I feel in each place.
Suffolk Barns
Corrugated Silk Scarf
Sunset on the Clyde
Suffolk Barns
Handwoven Hand Dyed Shaded Fine-Weight Silk Scarves
A Collections of Places I Call Home
Zoom in Details of a Place I Call Home
Corrugated Barns Shaded Silk Scarf
Digitally Printed Scarfs
For this collaborative project, working with a fashion student who is a print specialist and a weave specialist to explore different ways of getting colour onto a woven fabric using printing and dyeing processes. The design and production process has been separated into segments supporting our specialisms. Our aim for the project was to create a contemporary bespoke product that utilised modern equipment by minimalising wastage in water and dyes. We want to create a timeline and transparency within this process and create unique pieces related to our collections. Documentation of the collaborative process has been key to developing a completely transparent production that allows the wearer to be part of our process.
Xerox of a Xerox
This project came from reading “Simulacra and Simulation” by Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher, and media critic. I was inspired by his concepts of the simulacrum, a copy of a copy, signs, symbols, and objects used to address mass production/reproduction and reproducibility that characterise our current mass electronic media and capitalist society. An overwhelming amount of content and production of goods defines our current consumer landscape. We consume these copies, signs, symbols and objects through mass media and consumer culture, which we collect and organise to form our identities and worldviews. I am interested in how we consume these copies, signs, symbols, and objects and how we use them to express who we are, consciously or subconsciously. This relates to fashion in terms of mass production, like walking into Primark and seeing the same t-shirt in six different colourways; a lot of garments do the same thing but have semantic differences, such as a t-shirt and a shirt both cover the torso, but one has a collar, cuffs, placket and so on. I would subvert this in my collection by manipulating details such as darts and looking at combining seam lines to create one-seam garments. I will also be including print work related to music videos, film, and album covers as a literal nod to moments in time, craft is at the heart at my work employing traditional men’s tailoring methods and techniques such as canvassing.