Unit X: Today I am Inspired! (Part 1: Lauren Bowker)

Following on from our lecture with Lauren Bowker, a textiles designer and innovator, I was reminded of just how much I loved Textiles in my foundation year. Having originally applied to Manchester School of Art to study Fashion Design, she did not make it to the course of her choice and was instead offered a place on the Textiles programme. In spite of this initial setback her work today is a testament to the fact that as a design student you are not limited to a set field. Now, her work spans across the board with textiles, fashion, chemistry and more recently the field of engineering.

What's most exciting about Lauren Bowker are her efforts to bridge the gap between technology and design. This pretty much began in her final year as a BA student, where she developed dyes that reacted to the level of pollution in the wearer's environment. This is something that she continues to develop in her practice in which aesthetic appeal goes hand in hand with function and innovation. With her ongoing research into thermal-chromic inks Bowker has utilised textile technology for a Fashion context. These take the form of wearable sculptural pieces for a successful Parisian fashion brand that have also been photographed by Tim Walker with Kate Moss as the model. This is encapsulated in the mantra of 'See the Unseen' in which her beautiful feathered pieces seem to take on a life of their own as a showcase of renewal and decay right before our eyes.

Learning about Lauren's practice has gotten me excited about experimenting with materials on a surface level. I have been struggling within my course when it comes to shape-making and designing and feel that I havent quite gotten the hang of it yet. I am also a little afraid that perhaps I wont be able to find my own stamp. This is why I feel elated since this lecture as it has brought back to me something that I truly enjoy- and that is working with and manipulating materials, both traditional and unconventional. From my previous course I picked up textile sampling as an effective and enjoyable way of generating ideas. I love nothing more than an afternoon of simply messing around with machine embroidery and scraps of fabric. This curiosity about fabrics and how they work together to create something new has fed into my current sketchbooks. My tutor Sarah pointed this out to me in a recent feedback tutorial as something I keep revisiting and should continue to develop through the duration of my degree. I hate to say it but I haven't quite found my flair for the designing and shape-making element of each project. Though I know there is plenty of time to figure this out, it is still a constant fear of mine that I will not have a designer's epiphany any time soon! But what I have gained from today's lecture is that it would be a shame to give up something that truly excites me in pursuit of trying to be something that I am not.

Hence why, I have decided to return to my textile background as research for this unit. What I hope to achieve is to find a way of incorporating the textile techniques that I am interested in a fashion outcome as an amalgamation of all that I love.