A Dress Unearthed

I hereby today throw my hat into the blogging arena, hurrah! As the blog title hints, it is with intention to share images and words about recent or current works in progress of an artistic nature (with final pieces also going on my website - www.suzymargulies.com). As it happens though, this debut post, a few months in coming whilst I puzzled over thinking of something worthwhile to write about, is actually about work completed last year.

So whilst catching up on Tuesdays final of the brilliant Great British Bake Off yesterday, something made me do double take. Was it Jesus's face in the moist crumble of Frances' winning wedding cake?! No, not quite. It was Beca Lyne Pirkis' dress. Welsh contestant Beca reappeared on our screens at the concluding garden party wearing a pretty floaty blue and black summer dress and the reason it struck me, was that the very printed fabric it was made of I had a hand in creating.

Last summer I did a placement with a freelance textile designer called Lauren McCalmont at her print studio in Hackney. In the 5 or so weeks I was there, I gained a good insight into aspects of the fashion industry and best of all, hands-on experience using silk screen printing in ways I hadn't before.

I was primarily producing hand painted prints for Lauren's  Spring/ Summer 2013 and Autumn/ Winter 2013 sample collections which she would then sell on to high street labels. This process usually entailed painting directly onto a silk screen with acid based (liquid) dyes and then transferring them (screenprinting) onto pieces of silk with this thick bean-based paste (technical term forgotten!). Once dried, the silks were then rolled up and steamed in a tall cylindrical steamer, rinsed through, trimmed down, ironed and prepared for presenting to buyers.

Some of the prints I painted in progress (colours were much more vibrant when transferred to silk)

The samples were often grouped together in small series (anywhere from 3 - 5/6), each being a variation on particular shapes/ patterns, colours, textures or techniques. One group I worked on started life as tie dyed pieces of silk which had been previously dyed to great effect by Holly, the studio print assistant (tie dying is itself, an exciting technique that can create quite stunning effects and colours and there needn't be a whiff of 70s hippie in sight. I had a go at it in a Textiles short course I did last year). Then, using example images selected by Lauren from her mood boards as inspiration/ a guide or working from thumbnail doodles she had done, I either painted designs onto the screens or papercut stencils which were then screenprinted on top.

So the print that became Beca's dress belonged to that group. The black linked painterly brush marks that make up the print were enjoyable to do and had me using a fanned paint-brush for the first time.

                                                                                    

Close up (above) of the print and complete sample (right)

 The sample (below) trimmed and taped to a headed piece of card ready for meetings with buyers

The reason why I was so pleasantly surprised to see it flash across my TV screen though was because I never knew it had sold. Towards the end of the placement we prepared a large collection of S/S 2013 samples for a meeting with French Connection. They bought just the one - not the one in question - but another I had done in the tie-dye series.

So this one must have sold at a subsequent meeting after I had finished there. But who had bought it?! I couldn't remember the labels Lauren had said often purchased her samples and didn't have much to go on, just the assumption that if Beca had chosen to wear it on national television, perhaps it wasn't your average Primark number. So I began Googling 'Summer 2013 Print Dress' together with Topshop, River Island, Next, Dorothy Perkins, New Look et al.. No luck. Then I typed in REISS....success! There it was, at an original price of £169 (!), the 100% silk 'Lunata Amanth printed fit and flare dress'.

I like the fact that REISS did very little, if anything, to the original sample, including leaving the snippets of white between the dyed areas. The blue and black work really well against one another and if I'd seen it in store and had the £169 to spend on a dress (or even the £68 I think it was finally reduced to in the summer sales) I'd have bought it.

Once a sample is sold to a label though, I believe they are at liberty to manipulate or tweak it however they wish, which is precisely what French Connection did with the other tie-dyed sample I did that they bought. Until I started my search for the REISS dress yesterday, I had basically forgotten about it. I'd been in store a few times over the summer to see if it had been incorporated in any dresses/ other garments but didn't spot it. Google found it for me of course!?!....

 

This one was created with a stencil - a large zig zag papercut which was placed on top of the dyed fabric, through which navy ink was screenprinted. We all agreed that it had a beach vibe about it and could envisage it being turned into a sarong/ maxi dress, we were right! I think their change of colour worked really well too.

So I hope you enjoyed reading about my foray into textile placements past. Let me know if you happened to buy either dress!