Four Digital Fashion Graduates Featured As Leeds Arts University Launches Its Second Online-Only Postgraduate Degree Show
Image Courtesy of Cat Doyle
Leeds Arts University Postgraduate 2021 Show includes work from 46 graduates presented digitally by the UK’s next generation of artists, designers and creative practitioners.
Courses featured in the show are MA Animation, MA Creature Design, MA Digital Fashion, MA Creative Practice, MA Fine Art, MA Graphic Design, MA Graphic Novel, MA Illustration and MA Photography. These courses are part of a growing portfolio of opportunities for postgraduate study at Leeds Arts University.
Sarah Taylor, Head of Postgraduate Studies said: “We are delighted to promote the abundance of talent from students working across our postgraduate courses. All of our students and staff across the University are to be applauded for the vivacity of their work in this exceptional year, the ability to be inventive is an aptitude that every creative practitioner requires. Congratulations to all of our resilient graduates, we hope that our guests enjoy the range of work showcased here as much as we have.”
The 2021 show branding 'In these four walls', was designed by recent graduate Oscar Corbishley. His theme is designed to resonate with students who have had to create much of their work during lockdown, exploring the idea of remaining creative and inspired while having to isolate from the very things and people that can often trigger ideas.
Oscar said: “The created typeface is very condensed and packed – in to reflect how students have felt at times over the last year, however the bold font style is a tale of triumph over adversity and shows the astonishing way we have confronted these challenges and continued to be resourceful, tapping into University facilities while restrictions allowed, and continuously producing phenomenal pieces of work.”
Leeds Arts University Postgraduate 2021 Show will be hosted on the University website from Thursday 25 November 2021 – Monday 31 January 2022.
The Digital Fashion Graduates Included :
Lynn Wood
The objective of my Masters exploratory research was to identify the most sustainable, efficient solution to enhance existing sample development practices within the apparel industry and to determine a strategic theory prototype.
Theories were developed to enable the design of a concept digital application, which utilises elements from digital software, and considers how the traditional sampling process could be modernised.
The application is designed to be used by professionals within industry, without any specific digital software training.
It is to assist in technical communication between buying and manufacturing sources; to assess whether sizing and fit anomalies associated with sizing disparity could be solved; by reducing the amount of physical samples; facilitating cost and time savings; and bridging gaps between technical manufacturing knowledge and creative aspects of a business.
Being from a design and pattern cutting background, my interests are not only in transferring traditional design and manufacturing skills into digital practices, but also enabling experienced industry professionals to gain the ability to utilise digital technologies to their advantage, by introducing new mediums to their skills.
Efe Mayo
My name is Efe Mayo, I am a graduate of MA Digital Fashion at Leeds Arts University. Prior to my postgraduate course, I had completed a degree in economics (Western Delta University), and Fashion Business Creation (M.Sc., Glasgow Caledonian University), and also acquired dress making skills, though limited to traditional pattern making.
The digital fashion course was therefore important to help me develop skills in modern digital fashion.
I am married with two children and I am now at the initial stage of setting up a fashion line that I intend to take global.
My designs incorporate the use of Clo3D software and Adobe Illustrator. I begin my dressmaking process with the use of the Clo3D software to design a skeleton and the various components of a garment in various shades and sizes.
Customers are then given the opportunity to alter these component parts according to individual desire.
The prints for these collections are floral and geometric, coming in bright and beautiful colours with inspiration taken from WGSN and made using the Adobe Illustrator.
My collections target the mid to high end African female consumers, with sizes ranging from 8 to 14 at the initial stage, with room for adjustments according to demand.
Cat Doyle
I am a performance sportswear specialist, combining form with function to create innovative products to facilitate the dynamic movement, physiology and climatic conditions of the user.
Having spent time working in design and development within the sportswear industry, I found several of the traditional development processes to be very wasteful.
For example, the garment fitting process can involve the production of up to 12 physical samples per style, annually this utilises tonnes of raw materials and natural resources, resulting in high levels of CO2 emissions.
For this project my aim was to research the benefits and hurdles associated with a transition to a digital process, I aimed to create a more sustainable digital fitting methodology for sportswear.
Regarding the physical fitting process, the garments are fitted on a model, their physique needs to be appropriate for the chosen sport, in addition they are expected to hold dynamic sports poses in order to gauge the effectiveness of the garment fit.
Therefore, for the digital fitting process to be accurate I created a range of customisable dynamic digital avatars to be used for digital sportswear fittings.
This methodology uses digital garments, reducing the production of physical samples, resulting in less waste and a more sustainable process.
Elizabeth Soffia Bender
Elísabet Soffía Bender started her journey by training to become a tailor from 2015–2018 where she learned and practiced traditional methods and techniques of bespoke tailoring and pattern cutting.
Her interest in tailoring led her to undertake a BA (Hons) degree in Fashion Design from Leeds Arts University.
Following on from her BA studies, Elísabet wanted to dive deeper into the digital aspect of fashion and therefore advanced her studies into completing an MA in Digital Fashion where her strong roots in pattern cutting influenced her MA studies.
Her dissertation titled 'An Exploration into Digital Pattern Cutting and Digital Customisation for Bespoke Tailoring' explored and evaluated methods of bespoke tailoring and digital pattern making techniques.
The key aims of her dissertation were to develop an archive of garments and pattern blocks which allow for garment customisation and enable tailors to co-create bespoke options with their clients online or in-store.
For the practical element of her MA studies, Elísabet created a digital menswear collection using CLO3D software, expanding her digital design skills.
The collection was titled 'The Blitz', inspired by World War II which had influenced Elísabet whilst carrying out her dissertation research.
A range of four outfits were created aimed to appeal to men of different ages and career aspirations. Elísabet aims to continue working towards bringing her dissertation to life.
