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Abstract
Material engagement in fashion and textile design practice using pattern cutting is an overlooked aspect of creative development in the design of garments. This creative practice research is based in my artisanal practice of fashion and textile design, which involves designing and making garments through all stages of development by hand. Material engagement describes the relationship between materials and their handling by practitioners. This complex relationship connects the intentions of the practitioner and their embodied interactions with what materials afford through their handling. Research in the practice of creative pattern cutting is concerned with identifying how creativity occurs through pattern cutting. However, the criticality of material engagement in the pattern cutting process has been minimally expanded upon by fashion designers. In my research, I have identified that material engagement is foregrounded through questioning the conventional notion of the pattern as a plan or template. In this article, I suggest how theories that critique the classical separation of form and material can support this foregrounding of material engagement in garment cutting. Dynamic Cutting is a new method of experimental cutting for fashion and textile design which emphasizes designing the surface and form of the garment at the same time. Dynamic Cutting evidences that textiles are an integral part of cut-led garment design and designer accounts can evidence the variety in approaches using materials when cutting. This research applies a creative practice research methodology which combines design practice research, critical design and reflective practice perspectives. This methodology serves to surface tacit understandings of materials and how material engagement and material affordances are integral to dynamic form creation processes when cutting garments.
Acknowledgements
Figures 1 and 7 photography by Lin Wei; figures 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 photography by the author. Figure 2, Figure 3 textile print design by Armando Chant. Doctoral research undertaken at RMIT University, supervised by Prof. Robyn Healy and Dr Scott Mayson. Fabric pieces made by The Stitching Project, a social enterprise in Pushkar, Rajasthan.
Funding and Grant-Awarding Bodies
Doctoral research supported by provision of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Donna Sgro
Donna Sgro is a fashion and textiles practitioner and Lecturer in Fashion and Textiles Design in the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She has lectured across fashion and textiles design and interdisciplinary design at UTS since 2009. Donna is interested in practice-based research using interdisciplinary methods spanning the natural sciences and fashion and textile design. [email protected]