The Ethereal Warrior Avant Garde design was created for a second year college Avant Garde project. The story includes an inspiration board, a hair and make up styling board, a story board as well as photographs of the realized garment.
The main element of the brief was to create a warrior woman outfit using mainly the South African textile isishweshwe.
The silhouette of my design, draws inspiration from a Samurai Princess Warrior and other oriental aspects but other than that its abstract.
The garment features graphic paneling of the variously bleached and redyed Shweshwe as well as the prints which I created myself which were inspired by the Shweshwe designs themselves. I wanted a palette that was more washed out and ethereal than the otherwise bright textile, so I bleached the three types of Shweshwe that I used into various different tonal levels.
I used pleating to create an armor like breast plate, I embellished the shoulder panels with candle-wicking embroidery and I also used PU and organdy overlays to create surfaces which reflect light in varying capacity.