Emotion Collection - Black Point

This is part of a series ‘Emotion Collection’ comprises two performative garments drawing on research into new methodologies for design and communication at the intersection of fashion and performance. This has informed two costume performance films art directed and developed by the researcher in collaboration with a dancer Fukiko Takase from Random Dance company and film maker, Tim Keeling.

This emotion collection practice seeks to connect designer, wearer and viewer on an experiential level that is derived from and performed through body and clothing narratives. The methodology of oral history interviews draws upon embodied experience, memory, emotional and sensory responses to clothing that through analysis uncover shared responses, which are employed as physical and emotional triggers in garment design. This challenges approaches to fashion design where the wearer is not actively engaged and linear narrative in costume design and dismantles hierarchical structures in the production of an interdisciplinary work that places clothing and the body as a generator of meaning and performance through design.

‘Black Point Dress’ was shown as a performance Installation (garment, film and live performance) at Wye Arts Centre in Berlin for Berlin Fashion Week 2013. The researcher conceived, designed and directed the work applying the methodology developed through her research.

1,000 visitors attended the Wye exhibition, the website attracted 1500 visits and press coverage. Resulting in an invitation from Niccolò Montanari Creative Director of Berlin Fashion Film Festival to curate a fashion film screening for BFFF 2013.