You wouldn’t wear human baby skin.
So why wear animal skin?
For my Final Major Project I have tackled the use of animal skin/fur within fashion, and the abuse that the leather industry promotes, through an installation piece. I aimed to achieve this through the element of shock in order to provoke a reaction from the public. I have exhibited the cruel conditions of the animals who are slaughtered, along with highlighting the inhumanity within these acts. The shock factor, is that I have reversed the prey-predator roles, by using ‘human’ skin to create garments - not just human skin, but babies. This way I hoped to create an emotional response from the spectators.
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| The Skin of Plenty is exhibiting on Tuesday 28th April 2015, 6-9pm at London College of Communication |
I feel that I have done well to maintain my original idea and plan, while making necessary alterations which have improved the piece in terms of aesthetics and communication. I feel that my original plan was good in theory, but practically I felt that some of the components were unnecessary. I decided not to include the medical table with bloodied tools, or the contrasting poster. I felt that I reached a stage, where The Skin of Plenty communicated the idea well enough and anything else would have lost the rawness and distracted the audience from the message. If I continued to work on the piece by adding elements, I knew that I would have over-worked it.
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| Original Design Idea |
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| View of the installation from above |
I think overall the materials worked well together. I initially had a few complications with how I was going to create the skin-like texture without using leather. I had originally hoped to melt the tattoo practise skins, to create a distorted mosaic of skin as my ‘fabric’. I tried applying heat to the skins to melt them, however they just turned to ash and crumbled.
As an alternative I decided to use liquid latex and tissue to create the texture of damaged skin. These materials were easy to mould, to peel back, to rip etc. thus I was able to create any effect I wanted such as holes and cuts in the ‘skin’. Brown and red acrylic paint stippled onto the latex and tissue worked well to create a dried-blood effect, while also enhancing the texture (by applying Brilliant Red to the high-points on the surface, and a dark brown to the sunken areas). Also, as the practise skins are slightly rigid, it was difficult to design a garment that could be created using these materials.
I do not think the actual design of the dress that I pursued was the best out of my sketches, however it is the one that worked well with the materials. However I really like the long latex part of the dress which was inspired by David Koma’s debut for Mugler Autumn/Winter 2015-16. I think that by contrasting the effect of thick flesh with thin, stretched skin, worked well. The pieces on the hips are a nod towards Jean Paul Gaultier, as he uses leather in his work and often has pieces on the hips within his designs.
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| My Dress Design Idea |
I also had an issue with the overall presentation of the piece. I had to consider the possibility of not using a dark, isolated room when being exhibited, thus my design had to be suitable to be displayed in the dark, and a bright open space. As you can see through the cage, this would have made it problematic to really view the design as a whole, as there would be distractions. However, I combated this, by throwing a black photography back-drop sheet over the cage, and then throwing back the front. This actually worked very well as it enabled me to isolate the design, without relying in the design to be in an isolated area. As the front is thrown back and all other sides are concealed externally, it also encourages the spectators to walk around the design, curious, until they reach the front and then they are in total shock, then it would be completely unexpected. This also aides the effect that I was hoping to achieve. I feel that because of this, the design works well in a bright, open space.
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| Design in a dark, isolated room. |
For a dark space, as I have played with composition in order to create shadows using lights with green lighting gel. The green gel gives an eerie and uncomfortable tint, whilst giving enough light in a dark space to make the design gently emerge from the darkness. Due to this lighting effect, it conceals some elements of the design at a first glance, causing you to look deeper into the design. This means that the audience will learn more about the design, the longer they look, as nothing is clear at a first glance - exactly what the leather industry is like. There are so many secrets within the industry that people are ignorant to, which I hope to reveal; such as the fact that you do not no what your leather came from - or who.
The lighting and sound design was highly inspired by Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty exhibition (an exhibition that was full of animal materials used for fashion). I admired how the designs were enhanced with the use of lighting to create shadows and sound to add an uncomfortable setting. Each collection had a unique set design suited for that inspiration. I feel that this exhibition strongly influenced my final design. Audible sounds in the exhibition are similar to sounds within my own, such as the use of Savage Beauty using a mother’s voice singing to her child, while I used a child’s voice singing about laying beneath a weeping willow, (“O Willow Waly”, Isla Cameron, The Innocents, 1961) whilst my babies I created, are discarded in a pile beneath the skin dress. My sounds were also inspired by Lou Reed, ‘Berlin’ album, 1972 “The Kids”, as the producer used audio recordings of his children calling their mum as they have been put to bed. I on the other hand, recorded babies crying and repeated/overlapped them in my piece.
I think ‘The Skin of Plenty’ is successful in creating an atmosphere and playing on the spectators emotions. I’ve asked peers and other sources to view my piece and they all had a very shocked and speechless reaction - exactly what I hoped. Many of them exclaimed that I am “not normal” and “need help” due to how “disgusting and messed up” my piece is. However I am very pleased with this response as when I reversed the accusations and highlighted that the leather and fur industry actually do this, they were in agreement that the industry is wrong. The Skin of Plenty was able to highlight the leather industry behind-the-scenes in a new light, causing the spectators to see leather in a different way, while educating them on how “disgusting and messed up” the industry is and that it should be stopped.
Overall I am pleased with how my piece finalised. I learnt about the leather industry in detail, and whilst being inspired by artists, exhibitions and museums, I was able to recreate the scene in a dramatic and shocking format. I also visited animal shelters and hospitals to inform my final piece and experimented with solutions when working with materials. Some of the materials were great in theory, but in practise I found that I had to make alterations. However I now feel that they worked well together and created a similar effect to what I originally designed. If I could improve this, I would maybe recreate the dress, as visually, I’m not too fond of it, however as I have designed this to appear as though it’s ‘in process’, I’m not too disappointed. I feel that if I was able to take this idea further, I would love to create furniture, car interior and shoes out of the same materials, as a collection.
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