After i finished doing all these material explorations i realised there was nothing which was coherent amongst them. They were just random materials picked up from a pile clothes and then put together using various techniques, without putting in much thought. Which i believe is also important because its was important for me to explore the techniques i could work with in order to figure what works best with the kind of material i am working with.
But at the same time i needed some focus in my explorations, so that there is a common link between them. I brainstormed on what my inspiration should be based on what do i want my final products to look like. Because i am catering to the Indian market, i wanted to pick up something which is essentially Indian and to which most of the Indian can relate to. While the brainstorming things like spice box, tijori (an extremely ornate Indian safe), Indian royalty, curosity cabinets, bollywood, Indian street art, bangle stands etc...I finially chose COMMON INDIAN HOUSEHOLD BRANDS as my inspiration for my final collection of products. Indian household brands like basmati rice, nirma soap, dhara cooking oil, doordarshan etc. are some brand name which every Indian is familiar with and relates to at some level and these brands are a big part of any Indian household.
I am going to draw inspiration from the patterns, text, font, imagery, layout, colour, texture from the packaging of these brands.
Below are the mindmaps which i did before reaching this conclusion (my final inspiration) during the branistroming session with a couple of friends.
My Mood Board
The mind maps below are the ones which i did after i finished making my moodboard, these mindmaps hepled me extract those elements out of my moodboard which would be the basis of the designs for my final collection. I looked at the visual language which my moodboard followed, i observed the text, images, colours and pattern. I started making connections between my explorations and the moodboard, i realised that there were a few techniques which i tried out earlier especially applique, patch work which are going to be really good to traslate different elements of my moodboard. Because the way colors are, they are pretty bold and patchy, therefore patchwork would be a great way to translate the boldness and the lines are mostly simple, even though there are some pretty complex lines and images in the examples present in my moodborad, applique is going to be extremely useful to translate the imagery, may be along with some screen printing. So, lets see how it goes now...!!!
The mindmaps:
I replicated the hajmola wrapper with two different sets of material to suggest how it can be one design can be produced in quantities with old fabric..All of us can find a number colors in their wardrobes, houses etc...so its not hard to the same thing with two different sets of material
Yeh andar ki baat hai- Rupa, Softline!
A skirt made out of a kurta
skirt turned in a bag
strips of the same kurta braided
I tried doing some stuff with resin, but unfortunately it didn't work because there was something wrong with the ingredients and the consistency of the mixture. So, it was hardening really fast making it hard to work with. Below are a few frames that made to set the fabric with resin
i removed the back of a t-shirt and attached these trims which i got from an export waste market
