Our brief was to research into a group of people, so I chose the menopausal mermaids. I chose them as I have worked with a lot of menopausal woman and have always been interested in how they are viewed within society.
This is a mood board on how I interpreted the theme. With chunky bold textiles and bright primary colours, I developed these concepts further.
I then looked into Kintsugi which is a Japanese tradition of celebrating the imperfections in pottery. I applied this concept to menopausal women and celebrating all the imperfections created by menopause like weight gain, fatigue, cellulite and many more. Below are some samples that take inspiration from the body and the symptoms of menopause. The bright colours are from the swimmers and their bright swimming suits so they can easily been seen.
Reflecting on these samples I didn't like the colour palette as I thought it was very naive. But I did like the looseness in the laddering sample and decided to develop this.
I then looked into a nude colour palette as it was more connected to the body. The top image was exploring form within the laddering technique which I decided to develop more as I thought there was a lot to play with. The images below was when I tried to explore the same theme of loose skin but through fabric manipulation. Even though I liked the outcome I thought it didn't really add much to my theme so I didn't develop this anymore.
I then decided to continue with the laddering processes and changed my colour palette to a more sophisticated selection of tones of blue which was taken from different shades of the sea. This selection then lead me to my final collection.
Through out this process I have tried with a lot of different narratives and aesthetics, however, I am glad that I did try out all these ideas because it took me to a good idea which I could then work with.
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