Yin and Yang

The Yin and Yang are polarizing forces but are important in maintaining a balanced universe. It is the ancient Chinese philosophy which is based on the idea that everything in the universe is formed and influenced by the combination of two forces called Yin and Yang. My ideas and why: Under the Chinese culture influence, l know that everything has Yin and Yang, it is a balance of nature. For example, men are major in Yang and Yang represent sun and women are major in Yin, Yin represent moon, what's more the sunlight is Yang and the shadow or dark side is Yin, if people break Yin and Yang of their health, the balance will be lopsided such as some patients they lack of Yin or Yang hence the got illness. Therefore l wanna express Yin and Yang and l may try to choose this theme to build my project. l could add Yin and Yang diagram factor on garments.

The five elements

According to traditional Chinese med- icine and philosophy, the Five Elements are the fundamental components of the universe. They are: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The Five Elements theory identifies the five different modes (elements) in which chi energy may manifest itself. The five (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water) are arranged into a cyclical sequence that represents the flow of energy between these elements as “phases”.  The five elements interaction, produce infinite change, universe of everything. My idea is that I want to convey the philosophy of Chinese ancestor. we know that the five elements are "metal" "wood" "water" "fire" and "earth" and these elements effect each other. Everything has its own element, people's destiny is made of the five elements, it is supernatural power. For example, some people have more "fire" in their density but some people has more "water" in his density and if they become lovers or couple, they will be argue with each other very often, because we know that fire can't be with water. The world, the universe are made of the five elements, Taoists are representative personage, so for this theme, l want to based on Taoist costume culture to make my outcomes and I will make my own creative one, l could add the five elements on my garments or each element l could make five experiments.

Imperceptible Changes

The theme is about every little changes that people can not discover, it is time perception. I chose this theme because my past experiences are similar to it, I was very fat and I spent half year to change myself, during the period I couldn't see my changes everyday, but I took photos day by day, after half year, I compared my previous photos, I saw that I changed a lot.

I went to the JEWISH MUSEUM to see the artists's works. I saw Eleanor Antin's works and Susan Hiller's artworks. These artworks inspired me a lot, I will explore my own ideas in my this project.

The five elements are one of my three candidate themes, this page is about its sketch, because my discipline is fashion menswear design, so I decided to combine the five elements, metal, wood, water, fire and earth with fashion design. I have drawn a costume manuscript for each element. I first painted five models. Each model has a different dress. Then I wrote each element in Chinese with a Chinese brush and wrote it in front of each model. I have no reason to do this, I just wanted to try quick sketching and if I wrote the word on each model, what the visual impact will be. After I tried this, I found the visual effect to be good, because if I put each sketch If you make clothes, there is a Chinese character in front of each piece of clothing. I think it would be great when I walked the catwalk.

Smoking is also a major cause of changes in the human body. Although not as violent as drugs, tobacco is also quietly changing the appearance and habits of smokers in their lives. I use smoke as an inspiration to express my theme on this page. There are labels on many cigarette packets saying smoking is harmful to your health, and different disease maps that tell you to quit smoking. I have also seen many people who have smoked for several years. Their lungs are very black and dirty, their appearance is quite different from them used to be, and their faces are also dark and yellow. Those are characteristics of great smokers, which they were not conscious of because it is a process of accumulation. But on the other hand, I believe that people who smoke are people who have stories and most of whom understand the feelings of life. Especially some designers who need cigarettes to find inspiration are often with rich spiritual world, so I use colors to represent the rich inner world. But as they always can't escape the control of their addiction of smoke, I pulled off a few pictures of gestures from magazines to express their out-of-controlling of looking for cigarettes. On this page, you can see a pair of chopsticks to pick up a cigarette. As a saying spread among Chinese smokers, "Smoking a cigarette after dinner is better than the living immortals ". Chinese smokers have to smoke a cigarette after a meal, and chopsticks are their tools to eat.

I found a kind of fun fact today. As an old Chinese saying goes, disease goes in by the mouth and trouble comes out of the mouth, which I believe is very meaningful and very close to the series of research that I did. Most of the drug users, smokers, and obese people have changed through their mouths. The drug addicts use their mouths to smoke marijuana or eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, the smokers use their mouths to smoke cigarettes, and the obese people use their mouths to eat a lot of rubbish food, so I think the mouth is also one of the culprits. On this picture, I cut a mouth out of a magazine and added my own color, which is purple and medically unhealthy. On this basis, I drew abstract eyes and noses with pencil and ink to express that the changes of the group I mentioned above are negative changes. That group of people is getting worse and worse while other people are going for the better. I have got a lot of inspiration today by drawing this picture, that in my costume design, I can create it as abstract and innovative as this page. For example, without following the traditional sleeve shape, I can design the sleeves into the style of holes, which gives people a feeling of decadent street style, and the style of holes exactly means the life of drug addicts full of holes.

Based on these research on the twisted face entangled with the packaging tape, I found a lot of inspiration, and it has inspired me the inspiration of this topic. Because this is an anonymous photographer's work, when I search the survey on the body changes, I saw this group of photography works, which is a both abstract and realistic picture groups, the author tangled the faces of the people in the different gender, age and work with the adhesive tape to lead to their facial features to be distorted. Their expressions show a lot of emotions, including the excitement, fear, pain, anxiety and so on. I think this is a very interesting photography work, in my opinion, the photographer seems to want to express a kind of unconscious inner emotion, because I believe that every person almost repeats their things every day, follows the rules of their lives and deals with different people. Some people seem to be happy in their lives but are actually under heavy pressure and anxious in their inner world, and some people are seemingly calm, but actually are unconsciously fearful and painful when encountering some unexpected things, and a lot of people are like so, like wearing a mask to live every day. So I think the research is of great help to my topic and there are also some similarities, because my topic is about the change, and the changes of the faces on this group of photographs are just corresponding with my topic, so through this research, I can add the characteristics of changes of the characters’ facial expressions into my work, for example, I can put their twisted mouth and eyes as my clothes pattern or structure, I can also make my design into this distortion effect.

I printed out some of the research that I had done and cut them up to past them on one page, on which I used the collage technique. The reason I'm doing this is to make the rest of my portfolio look orderly, and when people look at this page they would have a question: what does this page stand for? Then when they turn the page back, they'll understand what I mean. It is a connecting link between the preceding and the following and also an outline that I've given to myself. The collage of this page contains several artists' works, such as the comparison before and after drug use, Darwin's human evolution diagram and body art, all of which are inseparable from my theme. My theme begins really from this page. I will establish my own design system from these photography arts in the later pages, and combine them together to form my own elements. It is because people of various types change too much and frequently that I want to be unique.

Today, I put my own photos into my sketchbook. I believe you can understand what I mean by changes through the sketchbook in the previous pages. The photos display my real experience with my before and after weight loss. Before my weight loss, my belly was too big with a lot of adipose to put on pants. And my whole shape was bloated with a weight of 110 kilograms. I could not bear the fact that I was too fat. At that time, I drove a sports car and ate many high - calorie food every day. Chinese food is so tempting. But I was not happy. I had to look at other people's strange eyes every day and could not face the laughter of strangers. So I was determined to change myself. I went to boxing classes, went to the gym every day, and stopped eating dinner. Gradually, my living habits got better and I became more and more sunny. After six months of change, I found myself changing so much that I became a muscle man. This real experience of mine was closely related to my theme, so I decided to put my own photos in the sketchbook. Because it was my own experience, I understood the hardships and it was more inspired and helpful to my design. For example, I can draw a fashion manuscript through the outline of my stomach before I lose weight, and take my muscle lines as the clothing lines. I will implement all my ideas in my sketchbook.

It is about the takeout that I done in this page, because the reason why more and more people gain weight in today's society is to eat the takeout. Many people do not want to go out and do not like to exercise at home every day. They watch TV and play games every day. Everyday they just eat the takeout, it is impossible not to be obese. So I think eating too much takeout is also causing the changes in the body. The takeout is particularly popular in China, where more than half of young people stay up late every night by ordering the takeout. I pasted the receipts for the takeout orders in my sketchbook, which can express the popularity of the takeout well. I also pasted the deliveryman's takeout bags on this page because I think this bag is too big with a lot of space in round and square, which can put a lot of takeout, so the more space there is, the more takeout there is and the more money the merchants earn, and naturally, more and more people are not healthy.

Through the previous research and my sketchings, I found that the process of the human body changing from fat to thin for is actually the process from round to square. If the other designers design something on the basis of the shape of human body, they often make it according to the appearance of human body such as the fat belly, they will design the clothes into round and fat, and may join the cotton or sew the clothes to be very big and very loose, just like in my research, a designer will follow the original fat belly to have designed a fat clothes. However, it is different from mine that I don't want to be rigid. I have done a lot of research and drawn many drafts by myself and I found that the change of human body is actually the process from round to square, or from square to circle. In the beginning, I also designed my sketchings in the fat body shape inspired by the fat body shape, or I drew my sketchings in the thin shape inspired by the body of anorexic patients. But I reflected on it and I looked over the research and sketchings I had done before, and I could not help asking myself, why are the body shapes different? There are all kinds of people in high, low, fat and thin, so I found a diagram from fat to thin. There are five different bodies in the diagram, which are the change from fat to thin respectively from left to the right. I used the red lines to outline the five human bodies, and I found that the fat lines were round while the thin ones were square. This discovery has brought great help to my final design, because I was an obese person before, and I experienced the change from fat to thin. I understand its sadness. So I don't want to design my final outcome into a fat appearance, but I want to design a square one.

As I said before, I was inspired partly by my body shape in the obese period. According to the diagram on the muscle’s changes I made earlier, I pasted my photos in the sketchbook. I chose four variation diagrams from the fattest period to the muscle period. From the left, I drew the outline of the big belly as the lower part of a coat. Although the stomach is very fat in the photo, but as long as I find the characteristic of big belly and combine it with the fashionable thinking, and then design it into the clothes, the visual effect is also good, for example, the outline of the thick fat on my belly bulges like a balloon. Then I add this feature into my design as the lower part of the coat, while the upper part is the normal shape of coat, but the two buttons on both sides of the chest like the two nipples, which is an interesting design, not following the traditional coat. Although the bottom of coat is in the style of the wider round, but the waist part is the boundary between the lower part of the coat and the upper part of the coat, which has the effect of reducing the waist. And then for the design on the right, this is my picture in the two months after I began to lose weight, and I lost a little bit of weight so I got a little bit less belly, so I reduced the contour of the lower part of my coat a little bit. Again let’s have a look at the design sketch of the lower left corner, I have a few abdominal muscle, and the little broader shoulder, so I drew a design sketch of the normal coat, and I added a round part like armor in the shoulder, because my shoulder’ muscles are more and more slowly, so I think it will be an interesting design based on this change. Finally, the design sketch at the lower right corner is my photo when I was finally success in losing weight, I have a six-pack, the muscles of shoulder and chest are also obvious, so the design of the coat is big and tall, the shoulder is very wide but the bottom is rather narrow, the clothes have the pattern like the abnormal muscle, which is in line with my looking in the muscles period, and this design can achieve the result of highlighting the figure.

The anorexia patients are also the necessary survey for my project. I also put the photos of the anorexic patients in my sketchbook. This page is my spiritual interpretation for the patients with anorexia. I think this group of people are miserable, and their life colors are dark blue and the blue sometimes also represents a depression. In most cases, a lot of anorexia patients are depressed, they can't accept any food, and they exclude all nutrition which leads to their body be skinny just like a skeleton, so they hate their bodies. In fact, in my opinion, they do not want to live like this. They also want to change their life and have a healthy body. The patients often suffer the irksome views from the others and also want to be understood. I paint a lot of drafts not only through the appearance’s characteristics of the emaciated body of the anorexic patients, for example, the bones of their fat-free bodies can be seen at a glance, while I design the shape of their bones into the shape of a clothes, but this page is my spiritual expression to them, because now I want to create the design from the spiritual things rather than simply from the appearance’s characteristics of things themselves.

Hats Workshop

White Hat (Facts): A collection. Sketchbook, Workflow, Final outcome.（The Skin Bag and Desire Face with zippers and buttons）

Red Hat (Emotional): Have to be very patient when sewing the patterns on "Desire Faces" and using hand needle to sew on garments. Many details have to deal with.

Black Hat (Negative): I haven't used sewing machine to make a whole garment for a long time, I felt not familiar at the beginning.

Yellow Hat (Positive): Based on my own experiences and my researches, it's good to create a collection. Good ideas from my sketching and outcomes are related to my experiments. Coherent, logical and creative.

Green Hat (Creative): The final outcome is a collection which has two garments and both are based on my own body changes. These garments are not normal garments' shape, it is bag-like and both of them are completely follow my designs.

Blue Hat (Plan+Control): Finish the first final outcome of my collection which is "Skin Bag", complete the buttons and sleeves, sew the string at back side. Add zippers and use shining leather to sew the "face" to the second final outcome "Desire Face".

S.C.A.M.P.E.R

S-Substitute: Materials: I may use leather to substitute in my outcome but I use calico for my experiments first. Then I can use leather to develop my experiments or create a new outcome.
Location: I planned to place my outcome in hospital or laboratory as well. Because l focus on human body changes and I did research about obesity and anorexia patients hence I would like place in hospital to express my ideas.

C-combine: Ideas: Yes, l will make two final outcomes as my collection, for the second outcome, l will combine the sketching of taped faces which is in my previous pages (seen in the sketchbook) and the drug users, obesity people's desire feature to create my second outcome.
Purpose:

A-Adapt: Small adaptation: The samll changes I could make is that I can add more details to my experiments, such as I can add buttons on the front of my garment or cut a half of the sleeve. And add a string on the back side of my garment.
Large: If I had another 4 weeks, I would create more same style garments as my collection.

M-Modify: I would like to change some shape of my outcome, as I said above, I would add some details and patterns on my outcome, for example, I can cut a half sleeve of my experiment 3 and use hand needle to sew buttons on it and sew a string at the back of it.

P-Put to other use: I changed the materials and the normal garment shape,my outcomes are bag-like, they are irregular.

E-Eliminate: Take away the previous designs shape, just a bag-like garment to summary all my ideas.

R-Reverse: Concept: Trying to change my designs and create new outcomes with leather.

This is my second experiment after the calico. I choose the artificial leather to do an experiment about the sleeves, I want to try to expand the sleeves with the cotton, but the experiment fails, and the cotton is not a good choice. And it is not a good idea that extending the sleeves looks like thick as much fat, because the cotton is not stable, and it is messy, even if I put it into, it also causes the uneven sleeves, and the man-made leather is not suitable to combine with the cotton, so the experiment ends in failure.

This is my third experiment, based on my first experiment which is made of calico, I changed the material, I used leather to create it, I want to show a feeling of skin, leather is the best choice. Because my project is about human bodies changes and you can see some of my researches are saying the changes of body shape such as fat body to thin body, I also experienced fat to thin, before I changed myself, my skin was full of fat but after I changed then I felt like got a new skin hence I used leather to express this feeling. I like the shape of this garment, it is a bag with sleeves and collar, I think it is fashionable and creative because I used bag to represent the feeling of the body is encased in fat. I will continue to do this garment, my final outcome will based on this experiment and I will give more definitions.

From my previous experiments and past sketchings of taped faces, I want to create another outcome because I want make a collection as my final outcome. I think I improved a lot because in my previous projects, although I drew some sketchings but I didn't make them out, they are just on papers rather than real things, I think I should change this habit otherwise I won't improve, therefore, I chose the sketchings of taped faces to create a real garment because these sketchings are one of my favorites and all of my researches are showing changes but if you look deeply then you will find that all the researches are also expressing desires such as drug users' desire is drug and obesity people's desire is food and from my view, when I look at their faces, they are screwy just like the taped faces. Further more, based on the previous experiments, I also will make my new garment in a irregular shape because the taped faces are distorted.

I went to workshop to create the second outcome. I cut the pattern of main body first and sewed it on the sewing machine, then I made a sleeve and added on the left side of the garment, then I cut the pattern of eye, mouth, and teeth and I sewed each pattern on the front of the garment.

           Desire Face

I have explained that why I created "Desire Face" garment. Now I'm going to give the reasons of why I designed this shape, why it has only one sleeve and why I added zippers

The shape: A irregular shape to token the irregular life of negative people, such as drug users, obesity people and anorexia people, their life are negative and their negative life habit cause them change into unnormal, hence their features are ugly and not normal, therefore, I designed my this outcome in a irregular shape.

Why only one sleeve: Because as I said above all, I think the negative people seem like unhealthy hence I only create one sleeve to express this thought.

Why zippers: When the zipper is pulled up, the person begin mental and physical closure, this is what I want to express. 

The poster texts drafts:

Text 1：Time and Perception Theme is about Imperceptible changes and I will focus on human body changes. Imperceptible changes means that something is changing every day in our daily lives and we can't discover it is changing but after several hours, days and years we can see the results of these changes significantly. when you are not paying attention on something, something has changed.

Text 2：My Theme is time and perception, it is about Imperceptible changes and I focused on human body changes. My inspiration is from my own experiences, I was very fat and negative, I saw the world was dark but after I changed myself, my life became positive hence l chose colorful color for my outcome. My body was encased in fat and my skin just like a bag to wrapped me in but now I'm a muscle and sporty man. My changes are my rebirth, I felt like that I got new skin, therefore, l used leather to express my feeling and I call it "Skin Bag".

Text 3 (final text): Skin Bag
This project explores how imperceptible changes happen over time with the human body. The inspiration comes from the negative feelings I used to have about my own body. I no longer have these and now feel that I am living in a new skin. I used leather to celebrate the new feeling and called the collection "Skin Bag".

Final Evaluation

My own experiences and some artists affected my project a lot, such as Eleanor Antin's artwork, she put her body’s changes in her work, I admire her, because she recorded the process of her body’s changes from the fat to the thin, I deeply understand the process of this change, because I also have experienced the changing process of the fat and thin, and I know this bitterness and pain of the author. When I see her works, I felt as if I found a bosom friend, her artwork is one of my main inspiration and I combined her changes and my changes to express my ideas. I followed my plans well, I made a list of artists and designers such as Susan Hiller, Ted Lawson's sculptures and the designer Charles Jeffery, their artworks are about human body, they affect my project a lot. I have built my own designs by these artists in my project as well. Every day I would re-read my works and I would perfect them.
I have done what I set out to do, for example, my theme is about human body changes and I said I would create a garment which is based on my own experiences and researches, I have achieved these plans because the garment is completely based on what I said in my proposal and I have made a model and my work is fully completed.
The project developed by my researches and sketchings, for example, from my research of "Taped Faces", I drew 6 garments' designs from it and I also sketched some garments from the research of obesity and anorexia people. I used different skills to develop my ideas, collage or technical drawings and every step of my project is attentive.
My most important decision and breakthrough is my discovery, I found human body changes are based on a rule which is circle to square or square to circle, for example, fat body to thin body is a circle shape to square shape and vice versa. Before I found this phenomenon, my designs are based on the shape of fat belly or skeleton shape, it is common to see that many designers design their garments from something's shape, for example, in my researches, the designer Xander Zhou's collection is based on fat pregnant belly's shape, I appreciate his works but for me, I want to break the normal design rule, therefore, I combined my own experiences and my discovery to design my final outcome, l changed my previous designs, my past designs are based on something's shape but now I started to draw my sketchings from spirit rather than just a real thing, the transition of my designs was very jumped but after I sketched more draft to connected the previous ideas and designs then it make more sense, this is my breakthrough.
Experiments helped me to develop my project, I showed my ideas on sketchbook then I chose one or two of my designs to do experiments, such as the experiment with calico, I used calico to made a "bag" garment. The researches and reflection are very necessary because these helped me to review my daily works and I could see that I did good or bad.
I created a collection as my final outcome, they are mainly made of leather and the one I named it "Skin Bag" and the other one I call it "Desire Face". For the "Skin Bag", my inspiration is from my own experiences, I was very fat and negative, but after I changed myself, my life became positive hence l chose colorful color for my outcome. My body was encased in fat and my skin just like a bag to wrapped me in but now I'm a muscle and sporty man. My changes are my rebirth, I felt like that I got new skin, therefore, l used leather to express my feeling so I call it "Skin Bag". The other one "Desire Face", my inspiration is from my researches of drug users, obesity and taped faces, these people are controlled by desire and their faces look like full of desire and their body seem like out of shape hence I designed a irregular garment. The materials, I used leather, calico, zipper, buttons and hair bulb because I want to express a feeling of skin for my outcomes and leather represents skin, calico helped me to make a simple model of my outcomes and zipper, buttons and hair bulb are necessary materials to create a garment
My final outcomes are successful because I got a collection and the quality of them are good, I fixed the details of them again and again, it has achieved my expectations. I really enjoy this project and I learned a lot through doing this project such as some technical skills of stitching, I knew how to add zippers on garments. I improved my ability of designing garments and I became more skilled for doing a project, hence these experiences helped me to prepare for BA study.