Muscling in on the fashion world
02/06/2010 14:00
A fashion line that will stimulate body muscle is one of many cool and creative collections that’s on offer at this year’s Summer Show at UWIC’s Cardiff School of Art & Design.
Laura Niehorster, an Art & Design Foundation student who hopes to follow in the footsteps of groundbreaking fashion designers such as Rodarte and the late Alexander McQueen has created a radical collection of organic sportswear garments, designed for protection and survival.
Laura commented on her inspiration behind the pieces: “I am fascinated by the human body and how fashion relates to and can manipulate it. While researching these ideas, I came across an artistic duo that created art by distorting the body, one of their approaches being muscles, which I thought was a really interesting perspective to use for fashion design.
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Working Out In Style 01 & 02: Laura Niehorster’s designs
Photographs: Robyn Alexandra |
“I looked at numerous ways to simulate muscles, such as stitch, fabric manipulation, deconstruction, and abstracting the shapes - but in the end was inspired by the avant-garde fashion designer, Georgina Godley. Her clothes made her famous because she padded them in order to warp women's bodies, which fitted in perfectly with the power dressing of the 80’s. Therefore, I decided to create padded sections on my garments which would make the wearer look muscular.
“The process was a huge learning curb for me, as I have never made garments before which couldn't be created from a conventional dress-making pattern. I had to create all the patterns from scratch, create toiles then alter the patterns, also taking the model's measurements into account.”
Laura’s plans to study BA Fashion Design at University for the Creative Arts, Rochester next year, following in the footsteps of Myrto Stamou, who won the Gold Award at Graduate Fashion Week in 2009.
Her work will be on display at the Cardiff School of Art & Design Summer Exhibition which runs from Saturday 5 June to Friday 11 June at UWIC’s Howard Gardens and Llandaff campuses. For further details visit http://www.csad.uwic.ac.uk/
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Note to editors:
Picture Captions:
Working Out In Style 01 & 02: Laura Niehorster’s designs
For further information contact Laura Anderson, Communications Assistant:
Tel: 029 2041 6041
Email: landerson@uwic.ac.uk
Web: http://www.uwic.ac.uk/