Tender Loving Care (2024)
Transformation Design
Honours (Visual Culture)
BA Design
Willem de Kooning Academy
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How is your relationship with your clothes?
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My project invites you to reflect on this question and challenges you to reconsider your consumption habits and their impact on our environment. By fostering a sense of responsibility and affection for our clothing, we can take meaningful steps towards a more sustainable future.
“Tender Loving Care” addresses the pressing issue of textile waste from the fashion industry. Using the concept of anthropomorphism, I created a dress made with living moss, encouraging us to care for our clothes. This approach cultivates a deeper bond between wearers and garments, promoting sustainable fashion and reducing textile waste.
Explore how nurturing a living garment can transform our habits and lead to a more environmentally conscious future. My work offers an inspirational perspective on the intersection of fashion, sustainability, and our connection to nature.
Process
Material Research
With the help of Living Lab, I managed to experiment with different organic materials such as kombucha scoby, wool, chia seeds, moss and bio-plastic
Design Sketch
I took the design motive from wedding dresses because they symbolise relationships. But I designed it to be more wearable with a detachable train.
Making
At first, I needed a base layer to attach the moss to and spread out over time.
I decided on loosely knitted fabric since it has bigger holes to provide ventilation for the dress.
I knitted the base layer dress with a mix of cotton and wool to provide structure and nutrients to moss.I knitted panels with a knitting machine and linked them into a dress shape with a linker.
To attach moss to the dress, I used the hand-stith technique since the base layer is stretchy so fabric glue would not work.
I sewed moss one by one with my hands for 4 weeks straight. I used 4 different kinds of moss- Icelandic moss, Reindeer moss, Plat moss and Ball moss.
Photoshoot
Sony Digital Camera, Ricoh FF9Visual Director: Hansol Park
Photographer: Hansol Park
Hair and Makeup: Hansol Park
Edit: Hansol Park
Location Manager: Kim Feline Nilsson
Model: Yeoni Park