The Environments Project
COLLECTION NARRATIVE
CRYOSPHERE : A/W 2021 Collections
Megan Naysmith
The cryosphere is an all encompassing term for the areas of the earth's surface where water is frozen in its solid form, ice.
I began my initial research for my project while at home when lockdown 2.0 hit. There wasn’t much else to do than go for our daily walks, so that’s what I did and I began to collect imagery of the wintery environments I was surrounded by. I wanted to look into how an environment changed over time and was affected by the weather. This led me onto researching places where there are larger areas of snow, ice caps, then global warming, climate change and its effect on our planet.
I gathered close up images of broken ice, frost and the organic shapes created by the falling and then melting snow. I wanted to capture these shapes in my collection and create a sense of ‘melting’ in my garments. I began to look at materials that could be used to do this. I liked the idea of big oversized garments that cover and warp your silhouette the way snow does when it builds up on a landscape. When it snows any sharp edges of the ground and surrounding objects are made soft and fluffy looking which I thought I could play upon. Techniques such as knit or quilting lent themselves to these silhouettes and textures. There was however also a contrast to these shapes; cracking or broken ice, which is sharp, definite and not so inviting to be surrounded by. I thought I could combine the softer materials (such as knit samples) with prints based on the shapes from the ice, or even embroidery, to show the difference.
I wanted to create a textile collection where I included upcycled materials which would otherwise be thrown away as waste. I thought this linked well with the ideas around global warming and how things like reducing consumption, waste and doing things like recycling can help. I was inspired by designers who had used mixed media in their collections and I’ve always enjoyed the shapes and textures that are created through knit so wanted to try and combine these. I began my designs through making textiles samples where I ripped up offcuts of old fabrics or even plastic bags and old disposable face masks and used them to knit with or stitch into. I also experimented with physically melting materials to see the shapes that could be created. I thought the idea of melting plastics and using them as embellishments on some designs could be interesting.
For the garment design side of the collection I looked at various garments that would be worn in the snow. I looked into ski wear and took inspiration from this for the silhouettes of my garments. I wanted to create layered looks that would be both comfortable and cosy to wear but that are also visually exciting to look at.
