Gender

Photo from Jean Paul Gaultier's show in Brooklyn Museum.

                    The Actor by Pablo Picasso                                 Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso

Photo from the exhibition in Metropolitan Museum.

     

Lida Fox by Axl Jansen for Encens Magazine        WOMAN by Henryk Lobaczewski

Photos from Internet.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk

       I was sick at Friday, so I went to Brooklyn Museum for Jean Paul Gaultier's show at Sunday, which was the last day of the exhibition. Maybe because it's the last day, I had to wait for more than 40minutes to get into the show, but I think it really worth it. From my perspective, one of the key words of Jean Paul Gaultier's show is "playful", which really matches his characteristic that shows in the video Masters of Style. He is having fun with styles and sexual identities and bringing a very positive attitude to the audience. At the first part of the exhibition, actually I was a little bit scared by the mannequin. While I took the first photo, the eyes of the mannequin was closed, and then when I got closer to take another photo, I found it eyes opened. And I believe I was not the only person in the exhibition hall that was scared by the mannequin. I heard people around me discussed whether the mannequins are real models or not. I think that has a lot of connection to Jean Paul Gaultier's playful characteristic. After I discovered that the facial expression was done by the projector, I definitely got the sense of his humor.

      The show was organized by different topics and with different background. As the audience moved from one room to the other, they saw different topics and different decorations of the room in order to fit the topics. For me I think the decorations of the "Punk Cancan" part was very interesting. At this room, Jean Paul Gaultier shows the designs that has the significant punk style. And all the walls in the room was covered by the graffiti that said Jean Paul Gaultier. And there was a "runway" at the center of the room that moving all the mannequins with conveyor so the audience could see the designs at all the angles of the designs including the back. The movement not only shows the details of the designs but also made the exhibition like a real fashion show. One of the designs on the "runway" really impressed me. The surface of the dress made the dress looked like a wedding dress that has a white color which looked very innocent. And Gaultier used the hand of the mannequin to pull up the front of the dress and show a totally different feeling by the inside of the dress. The inside of the dress has vivid color and a punk style. I think the movement of the runway helped me to observe the dress and notice the details of the design.

Fashion blogger

http://whatiwore.tumblr.com
This website documents how the blogger wears everyday.

final fabric manipulation

        For the three that I've finished last week, I did a revise for the third one. I added a base for the flower and add some more small flowers on to the base so it looked more relate to the other two.

  

          I got the inspiration for this fabric manipulation from the book Codex Saraphinianus. The book was famous for using a unknown language through the whole book and the weird photos in the book which looks like from another world. So I created this fabric manipulation that reviews the orderliness and also the unusual feeling in the book.

          I got the inspiration for this fabric manipulation from my ball-jointed doll. I think the doll is really pretty, just like flowers, but it was made by human, which tells that it's a kind of beauty that's unnatural. I want to show that in the fabric manipulation, so I made this symmetrical fabric manipulation.

        For the last one, I was inspired by the photo of New York at night which was very complex and beauty. It has some kind of order but it's still mysterious for me.


      For myself I feel like the first piece is the most successful one because the curves on the fabric works well and achieved what I had expected. And also I feel really amazing that the simple technique could create this kind of effect.
     My fabric manipulations absolutely show my definition to beauty. I considered natural as beauty while I also love things in order. It seems self-contradicting but all these things really made me feel happy. Just as I said before, I think beauty is happiness. All the things that could bring me happiness is beautiful.

Container of beautiful artifacts.

Fabric manipulation

       For the first manipulation, I was inspired by my hairpin and my shoes which have very fluent and beautiful curves. So I want to create a fabric manipulation using curves. 

      First I use two piece of fabric and sew them together using sewing machine, then I draw curves on the fabric. After that I sew on the curves that I drew using sewing machine. Finally I use scissor to cut out the top piece of fabric following the curves that had been sew. 

     I thought it would comes out with beautiful curves, but actually it didn't work well. Because the fabric was just flat on the bottom piece rather than turning up as I had thought. So I use thread and needle to sew the peak part of the curves to create the final piece.

      Because there were many flowers factor in my beautiful objects: the hairpin has flower on it, the earrings are in the flower-shape, the illustration has flower with the girl, and my container also has flower on it. Therefore I want to create a fabric flower using the manipulating technique.

     I also use two piece of fabric to finish this manipulation piece. I cut a long piece of muslin, and folded it in order to create a fine edge for the flower, and then I sew the folded muslin and gathered it. After gathering the fabric, I connected the head of the fabric with the tail using thread.  Then I cut a larger piece of fabric with the same length but a larger width and did the same thing to it. But this time I attached this larger piece to the smaller piece that I've done before using thread instead of connecting the head with the tail. 

    After doing that, I got a flower. But the shape of the flower was a little bit random and I wanted it to be more beautiful, so I use thread and needle to sew to adjust the shape of the flower.

      This manipulation is getting inspiration from the bracelet that made from vintage clock parts. I think the gear in the clock piece is very delicate and like like the sharpness of the teeth on the gear and I also think that the way that the gears combine together is very fanscinating. So I use triangle to represent teeth on the gear and position them orderly. The only problem I met was that this piece was more time consuming than I'd thought.

Practice for manipulating with paper and fabric