Collaborative Wearable Art Design Process for Wearable Art Designers, Artists, and Industrial Designers

Abstract

IntroductionCollaborations between fashion designers and artists, traced back to 19 th century, bloomed in early 20 th century when fashion became a modern desire and was mass producible (Mackrell, 2005). Due to the complexity and ambiguity of the wearable art design process, wearable art designers usually explore inspirations from a multiplicity of sources, sometimes drawing from fine arts. Collaborations often occur between wearable art designers and artists that contribute differential resources and various talents to achieve complementary goals (Dodgson, 1994). For this design process study, the initial goal was to develop a framework for: (a) initiating and completing collaborative design projects, (b) evaluating the design ideas involving a wearable art designer and an artist who provided the artwork as the inspiration, and (c) integrating a review critique into the design process by presenting design ideation to a professional reviewer (with fashion design and wearable art background), an industrial designer, and collaborating artist. ExperimentationThe artwork used as inspiration for this wearable art design was CN-II created by the collaborating artist. Before developing the wearable art, the designer visited the gallery that exhibited a series paintings of the artist and interviewed the artist in the gallery to comprehend the concept of the paintings. Based on the ideas of the painting and discussion with the artist, the designer started creating a series of sketches regarding the silhouettes for the wearable art piece. The sketches were sent to the professional reviewer for the review critique of the silhouettes and fabric options. A total of six silhouettes were finalized according to the discussion between the designer and the professional reviewer. The designer then developed final fashion illustrations along with the six silhouettes and the textile prints based on the drawing CN-II.In order to collect the trustworthy feedback for the six designs, the designer developed a web-based survey including a detailed description of each design idea, fashion illustrations, score options according to the aesthetic of the design, and open-ended comments. The link of the webbased survey was sent out to the artist, the professional reviewer and the industrial designer to that each could the score aesthetic concept and reflections for each design. The designer collected the quantitative and qualitative data to compare with her own self-reflections about each design idea.One of the designs was rated the most successful design. According to the comments and suggestion about that design, the designer modified the fashion illustration and sent back to the review critique members through email for the second round of review. There were three rounds ProceedingsSt. Petersburg, Florida of reviews via emails until the design was agreed by each group member. The aims of the reviews were to determine whether the: (a) the wearable art expressed the spirit of the drawing, (b) wearable art reflected the overall aesthetics, ...