Blightee
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Wearable architecture and cultural symbolism 
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2008

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Brief

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An exploration of how structural and historical / architectural vernacular, could be replicated in a textile form.
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These are some sketches for an idea.

Around Perth, Australia there’s plenty of faux tudor architecture. These are an obvious reference to the motherland and english people who imported it.

This led to me think of England and the ‘taking a bit of home with you when moving overseas’. Being overseas at that time myself, it made perfect sense that people ‘recreate’ a bit of the home when immigrating. You see it with lots of other international architectural traits as well, Italian, spanish, chinese etc.

Tudor style is arguably England’s recognisable architectural style. I worked in construction at the time and was making / building on a daily basis. This lead me to conceive taking (a) structure (the tudor framework and (b) historical associations to produce something interesting using architectural methodology in another medium.

Q. Could I make a t-shirt for example the way a tudor house is made, with its individual white panels stitched together on a black framework skeleton?

An exercise in taking design form and to another. Could a faux tudor t-shirt become a subtle shorthand for something english using this vernacular?

I then thought about context and how it could be used. More than being just a t-shirt, maybe it could something like a fencing or football top?

Football jerseys are generally horrible even on professional players - could this be a more classic alternative design; implying englishness whilst pulling away from commercial sport clothing culture.

Although only concieved as sketches I would like to get some examples made again at some point.