Pathway 2: Fashion and Textiles

Reclaim the Night

Reclaim the night is a movement against rape and all forms of male violence against women, the first reclaim the night protest happened 44 years ago following women being told they should stay inside due to a set of murders in Yorkshire by Peter Sutcliffe. The protest is highly against women taking extra measures to be safe simply because of male violence against them and argues women should be able to walk home at night wearing whatever they want. Last year in 2021 there was a march in Exeter which I attended and helped lead along with Fridays for future which was sparked mainly by the murders of Lorraine Cox and Bobbi-Anne who were both killed in Devon within the last 18 months, a huge amount of Lorrain Cox’s family was there and a few of them gave speeches for the movement after the march. I think this

The next step for my reclaim the night project was to find some artists and protest ideas that inspired me, the main two inspirational artists I found were Katherine Hamnet and Vivienne Westwood, I really liked how Vivienne Westwood mixes high end fashion with protest, she creates these protest pieces which look like protest signs worn over clothes, they are very effective and use images mixed with text. However Katherine Hamnet creates very simple pieces of protest fashion with BOLD text to create a strong point, her fashion is also very accessible as anyone can buy or wear it. To try out a Katherine Hamnet style I sketched a design with her influence and practised some screen printing in her design.

The next step in my process was to try out many types of experimentation, I started this off by creating a few designs with some initial ideas, I was really set on the idea of creating a chain, based on the way women are chained to what they can wear in public to not be harassed. So I practised the different ways I could create the loops with a practise piece, I also responded to some of my other ideas by spray painting some slogans on fabric pieces, experimenting with felt and some machine embroidery which I thought I could use to create a chain like look on the white shirt material. This really sparked a few ideas for me as I realised I enjoyed using felt, and the idea of fabric painting onto felt and the machine embroidery idea.

Finally I began to work on my final piece, I stayed with the idea of the chain, however due to the amount of material I had with the shirt I decided I would make it into a sash, inspired my the ones which was worn during the votes for women protests, to do this I created lots of loops out of the shirt which I chose, I then machine embroidered onto them with bright red thread with lots and lots of slogans which I pulled directly from signs I had seen. I am really pleased with the outcome of the sash, however the one downside is that when the sash is worn you cant see whats written on it unless you look really closely, therefore if I had another chance to make it I would make the slogans a lot bigger and with thicker writing so it would be a lot easier to read. I then did some more trials with painting onto fabric with fabric paint so it sticks and went onto creating the felt top. The aim was to create a top which looked like night time and I think this outcome was pretty successful as the purples and blues really create the look of night, the fabric paint on top is also really good because it stands out and is a lot easier to read than the sash. The only thing which I would change would be that I would make the straps a lot thicker so they aren’t as thin because felt is quite easy to break and quite fragile so I had to reinforce them with some sewing.

Reflection on my project

Overall, I am feeling very positive about my outcome for my Fashion and Textiles Pathway, I am very pleased with my choice to use Reclaim the Night as my protest of choice because I think its one of the most important protests as it supports women’s rights and protests for women to be able to walk alone down the street without falling victim to sexually harassing comments. To express this, I created my first A2 piece which was through the form of collage, and I used some of my own primary resources since I had some photographs from past Reclaim the night protests which I had attended, I mixed this with secondary research I found from some articles online which related to Lorraine Cox and the origins of Reclaim the night. I experimented with many different types of textiles experimentation during this project, the first of which was screen printing, a method I had never used before, it required cutting out a design onto reflective paper, mixing colour with fabric binder and pulling a board over a printing screen to transfer the ink through the gaps. The results weren’t the best because it was my first time doing this process so I didn’t pull the board hard enough across the fabric, however upon reflecting I really liked this process, It was a lot quicker and easier than I first thought it would be, while it was a good way to respond to Katherine Hamnet, one of the artists I looked into for ideas for my protest shirt, I didn’t feel like it was right for this project since for my final piece I decided to create a felt top and screen printing needs a flatter surface to print effectively. Felt is one of the newer techniques which I learnt about during skills week, I had only created one piece before, but I thought that I would try and be ambitious and create a whole night themed top which I then used fabric paint to paint “Reclaim the night” onto. I was very pleased with the result, I toyed between using white paint onto the felt however during my experimentation work l used some white paint on red felt and it didn’t look nearly as effective as I thought black would stand out a lot more and fit with the night theme, although the white would have looked complimentary to the sash. The sash is one of my favourite pieces that I have created because I was able to use a lot of machine embroidery and practice my precision with the machine as machine embroidery is also one of the skills I learnt in skills week and was one of the things that really sparked my creativity. The outcome of the sash was really effective, minus the fact that the words are hard to read since some of them are a bit small, I think my overall piece is quite strong as the top and sash would be something you could easily wear to a protest while reflecting the cause, while the two pieces don’t match in any way I don’t really think they need to, protest is not necessarily something which matches or requires a certain look, it is meant to be something which has a message or meaning and represents a bigger cause and I feel like my piece does that effectively.