Jane Bowler

     Not only have I got the ability to research fashion designer Jane Bowler, I also had the amazing privilege to meet her in real life and even attend one of her workshops. Bowler is known for collecting recycled plastics from junk shops and creating them into something beautiful for someone to wear. She does this by dying, heat pressing, foiling or even studding the plastic to create spectacular garments. When I was doing the workshop with her, we all had to make our own body piece and I also had extra time to make a visor to accompany the garment. It was very exciting to work with a material which is not common on fashion wear garments, but Bowler has worked with high-ranked celebrities such as, Rita Ora, Ellie Goulding, Azealia Banks and Will.i.am.

     I love how unique her work is and how she started off in a small business and managed to work herself up the chain, which has proved to have worked brilliantly for her. Moreover, when I met her she was very fun and bubbly and showed me all the skills I needed to create a similar piece to her collections. Despite this, she was very advising very strongly how accurate all the pieces must be, whether that being patterns on the garments or for accessories, otherwise it would had looked tacky or incomplete, hence why plastic is such a difficult material to work with. Below I have gathered some images from her new Autumn/Winter 2014 collection.

    The workshop really made me realise how something so simple and minimalistic can be turned into something completely different in such a creative flair. I think Bowler really relates to our theme of 'Structural Attachment in Mono' in many ways. For example, the structure of how she arranges her garment pieces, whether it's the small plastic pieces she cuts out or the way she places each part of them back together to fit on the model. Plus, it is attachment in the sense that plastic is used daily by practically everyone around the world in many different ways and in Bowler's case, she decides to collect recycled plastics (bags, shower curtains, sheets, rods etc) and juxtaposes them completely. I quite like the look of her new A/W 2014 collection in which she has gone down a more modern approach. However, it could also relate to the structure of the body with veins or cells within the body, which again relates to both words 'Structure' and 'Attachment' whether that being mono or not.

    Overall, Jane Bowler has inspired me towards my project and it is an incentive for me to try recreate something relating to her pieces, but not necessarily from plastic, although it would be interesting to work with different medias and materials to see the end results.