About Me
Hi I’m Connie and I’m in my final year studying fashion design @ KSA
I specialise in womenswear and have a keen interest embroidery, print design and embellishment. I have a year of industry experience gained during two design based internships with Tommy Hilfiger in Amsterdam and Shrimps in London. During which, I acquired a valuable insight into the research, design and development processes of these successful brands.
Through out my time studying at Kingston I’ve developed a love of research and an enthusiasm to learn more about fashion outside of westernised and Eurocentric based systems. As a result these influences as well as my Nigerian and British heritage are often a starting point to my design work. Print and textiles also plays a big part in my design process as I enjoy experimenting with new ways to interpret classic fabrics through print.
INSPIRATION
My graduate collection is inspired by my Nigerian heritage and love of African textile traditions.
As a starting point for my research I wanted to look into ways to highlight traditional African dress practices but show it in a way that was personal and individual to my own lived experience. I started by looking at photos of my family in Nigeria, fashion photographers from the African diaspora and academic texts around the importance of traditional textiles and the significance of cloth in Nigerian tribal cultures.
As part of my design process I focused on the key items of Nigerian women’s dress buba, Iro and pele and used collage, draping and drawings to try and re interpret this classic silhouette My final outcome for this project is a six look collection including hand crafted beaded pieces, batik inspired textiles alongside more classically western fabrics like wool and denim as a way to show the contrasting cultures that influence me.
MY WORK
PORTFOLIOS
TITLE PAGE AND INTRODUCTION
CONCEPT AND MOOD BOARD
FIRST HAND RESEARCH AND PHOTOGRAPHY
DIGITAL DRAPING
INITIAL DRAPING AND COLLAGE
FABRIC BOARD
BEADING EXPERIMENTATION AND DEVELOPMENT
PRINT DEVELOPMENT
PLEATED JACKET DEVELOPMENT
COAT DRAPING AND DEVELOPMENT
BLOUSE DEVELOPMENT
BODYSUIT DEVELOPMENT
BEADING DEVELOPMENT
BATIK AND DYE DEVELOPMENT
DRESS DEVELOPMENT
JUMPSUIT DEVELOPMENT
FINAL LINE UP
FINAL COLLECTION PHOTOS
FINAL COLLECTION PHOTOS
DETAIL
My focus on beading, print and dye techniques aim to highlight the importance of Nigerian textiles
I found beading as a domain of dress was a lot more popular in Afrocentric fashion systems as opposed to those in Europe. While developing my ideas for this project I wanted to communicate the concept, which is popular in many African fashion systems, that clothing should not just be limited to cloth and fabric. Through the use of beading and textile experimentation my work aims to convey a different aspect of African fashion that is not often seen in western mainstream media..
"Tradition implies that something is bound, confined and limited, but these assumptions must be questioned" (Eicher & Ross 2010:4)"
Graduate Fashion Week in partnership with:
