Kyle Kreitman's collection was one of the most pure fun collections of this Parsons graduating class. She was inspired by the way children draw clothing and attracted to this concept because children have no knowledge of construction or seams and don't recognize any restrictions. They are so inherently curious about the world around them, that she felt that was something to be explored.
photos: Aneta Genova
Kyle Kreitman: "I started by going through old children's book that always inspired me as a child and still inspire me today and noticed that many of the drawings were simplified either through line or pattern for the viewer to understand. I then asked my younger cousins to draw certain articles of clothing for me, and since children don't understand construction, I received some very interesting work! I was looking to see what they were drawing, how they were drawing it, and where they were pulling their own inspiration from. And looking through all of the images I had compiled, I started to pull what I thought was the most interesting or strange from a design perspective. I noticed that children have this wonderful, uninhibited creativity, but are practical in their thinking at the same time. And this practical, yet uninfluenced origin was what I wanted to reflect on in my thesis.
A huge part of my concept was based on the purity of a child's creativity and how their mind was spontaneous, so it was essential that this be the theme that connected all the individual pieces together. The cohesiveness of the collection was dependent on the fact that I created a visual representation of my creative process just like my cousins did in their drawings. I chose screen printing as a way to translate the pages from my sketchbook into actual garments. And by printing elements of the garments on I was able to translate the 2 Dimensional world as seen in the illustrations. The black animated lines were what tied all of the pieces together. Also, to get the garments to actually look like the illustrations, I had to take my knowledge of formal pattern cutting and apply it to the drawings to create the unusual and very asymmetrical shapes. But the physical translation of the garments is what represented my journey through the imaginative process."
After reading through Kyle's inspiration words and looking at her look book photos I fell in love with her child-like drawings as part of her presentation!
Photos: David Wang
The Clothing:
All of the pieces have a special touch to them, or a nod to the process itself. The long pleated skirt is hand painted and then drawn on with fabric crayon because children don't just paint on paper, they prefer to draw on walls and furniture really anything but paper, so why not draw on my clothing. And it's signed because every drawing that I received had the child's name on it because we are told to sign everything we do, and I felt that was something that needed to be included as well. Most of the other garments have screened elements like cuffs, buttons, stripes, ribs, pleats, bows, etc.
A Note on Accessories:
For the jewelry, I looked through books and magazines pulling out images of stones and jewels and mixing them together. Later turning those original images into a screen and printing them on art board, and going back in and adding real stones and more images to create this game of 2D vs 3D, whats real and what's not. I customized the shoes by painting on them and making bows out of paper and wire ribbon and sewing those back onto the front. The handbags were laser cut out of mirrored plexi glass from one of my illustrated bags and then I screen printed the hardware back onto it.
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