MY DIPLOMA PROJECT
THEME WANDERING
Mandate in collaboration with «Galerie C» in Neuchâtel. The task is to design and create a full silhouette on the theme of WANDERING. The fabric is predetermined, and as a starting point for inspiration, a Swiss artist is assigned to us.
My artist is «CHRISTIAN GONZENBACH». Some of the work he does is about death, bones, skeleton and mind maps created with magot beforhand tempered in Ink. I’ve been inspirated by all those work.
What I wanted to express through my mannequin and creation is the physical body of man and his astral body. His soul will wander in an in-between space, caught between life and death.
Wandering has the ability to connect places through the paths it traces. It consists of missteps and detours, following winding roads that the wanderer traverses.
The artist Christian Gonzenbach creates mental maps that evoke both the complexity of neural networks and the simplicity of a Rorschach test.
He uses maggots, which he dips in ink, then lets them wander across a sheet within limits that he sets. In my view, his work make sense with the idea of a meandering, never-ending path that is somewhat chaotic and disorganized.
The idea, therefore, is to blend these two concepts by creating a mental map inspired by the artist, while also delving deep into my own mind to visualize what my life path would look like. The fact that it might appear more chaotic and hesitant is completely normal because, to me, the human brain is more complex than that of an animal.
I noticed that the artist works a lot with animal skeletons, which inspired me to incorporate them into my creation to symbolize the physical body that connects the different parts of the garment.
The black veil represents a part of the soul that tries to escape the garment, which is why the garment has multiple cuts, allowing the soul to slip through the spaces between the bones and the heavy, rigid fabric that reinforces the physical body.
In conclusion, the black veil symbolizes the soul, while the bones and rigid fabric highlight the physical body, which serves as the soul’s external prison—one that the soul can only escape through small means.
CONCEPT
To create this garment, I decided to appropriate the denim jacket, which is a staple in both men’s and women’s wardrobes. By adding cutouts and making it asymmetrical, this is my contemporary and unconventional version of this classic piece.
Since the full denim look remains timeless, I also chose to reinterpret the jeans, creating a matching pair that would form a «remastered» denim ensemble.
For the black veil, I needed something fluid and transparent to match with the idea of a wandering soul.
The bones refer to the prison cell bars. I painted them in black to represent despair and dark thoughts that are often felt in bleak, and joyless places.
They are held together by wire loops, which I created myself, inspired by the chains that imprison detainees in prisons.
I did choose a male mannequin simply because, while creating my mental map, I searched deep into my body and thoughts. The result is that I’ve always felt more connected to masculine energies than feminine ones. This is also reflected in my everyday clothing style, which tends to be more masculine.
To bring this mental map to life, I projected my design onto the garment. I then painted the lines with acrylic and recreated them as accurately as possible using cables.
Today, technology is embedded in many aspects of life and is an integral part of this century. This is why my life path, and thus this mental map, is represented by cables. It emphasizes how we are constantly connected
