Material INTO Practice, Practice ONTO Body and OUT TO Space; Exploration of sequins as a spatial concept through a new embellishment technique

This practice-led PhD study brings together research about the history, materiality, and development of fashion embellishment, with a particular emphasis on sequins for the first time. It is an interdisciplinary PhD study using cultural studies, art histories, fashion practice and theory, and it expands the subject of embellishment to include sculptural methods as tools, selected fashion theory, spatial theory, and Derridean notions of ‘supplementarity’. This research foregrounds fashion practice to conceptualise the understanding of fashion embellishment for the first time using these selected tools and theories.

The practice produced for this study expands traditional embellishment by adapting sculptural tools for the first time to make visible the proxemic spaces that surround the body. This new embellishment technique, ‘the tensegrity technique’, embodies notions of space and fashion theory and discusses how clothing, and by extension embellishment when used on a garment, draws a en on to how we occupy and move through the space of the world.

This thesis is driven by four distinct themes; ‘material’, ‘practice’, ‘body’, and ‘space’: from a considera on of the materials of fashion embellishment I move on to consider how they are used in prac ce and how, through garments and fashion, they are applied to the body; the materials and practice then extend beyond the parameters of the body and extend out to space. These four themes are the ‘building blocks’ of this study.

The ‘into’, ‘onto’ and ‘out to’ in the title of this project describes the journey of embellishment from loose components to three-dimensional volume applied to the garment and body to explore space. The materials of embellishment, components, and the base fabric, are converted into practice by hand; sequins are attached to fabric with thread. This practice is then applied onto the body via the carrier garment. The garment and body extend out to space through the development of a new embellishment technique. The above themes and prepositions enable this conceptualisation using a methodology prioritising practice underpinned by theory, and ‘design as research’. This project redefines and expands the understanding of what embellishment means and how it can be used spatially, with a novel and innovative methodology of employing sequins, thread, and beads to develop a sculptural form of embellishment that simultaneously defines the personal space of the wearer.