Natasha has been influenced by her own and other peoples experiences from the first COVID lockdown. Natasha has always been fascinated by dreams. She keeps a documented dream journal and noticed that since the COVID 19 outbreak, her dreams had taken a strange turn.
Natasha never realised the importance of dreaming, or how crucial it is for our general brain function and wellbeing. While researching into the ‘sleep doctor’, Matthew Walker, Natasha discovered, ‘we don’t know why we dream…all we know is that it is essential we do so. If we don’t dream when we are asleep our minds will force us to dream while we are awake, causing hallucinations.’
INSPIRATION
On social media I asked everyone if they were experiencing the same change in their dreams as me, and it became clear this was the case. I observed a trend that the dreams demonstrated a form of escapism from what was happening in our world. I asked all my social media contacts to share with me their own dream experiences and I received over 100 different messages from people detailing their personal dreams during the first lockdown. They ranged from sleep paralysis, nightmares and psychedelic dreams.
I love hand drawing and painting and I wanted to create a visual dream journal for my FMP. In my sketchbook I started to interpret my own COVID dreams as well as those provided to me by social media. I started hand drawing these dreams using my own imaginative interpretation, and then I extracted elements from each dream and mixed them together to create a range of bold, colourful and intricate prints; these are the main focus in my street style A/W collection.
DETAIL
When designing my collection I wanted my prints to be the main focus, so I have designed the garments to compliment them. My garments had to embody the same energy as my dream drawings, so needed to be exaggerated and oversized. This is shown throughout my collection and in particular my padded coats. Another element to my collection are my accessories, such as my dream stealers. I brought my prints to life and created a range of different sized padded monsters that are attached with industrial chains, resting on top of my padded coats. When reading through everyone's messages, I noticed that a lot of dream experiences were actually nightmares, and often people are haunted by these distinctive long legged figures with distorted faces. These haunting figures steal the chance for us to enjoy our dreams, causing intense fear which can result in crippling sleep paralyse. By creating these figures into playful accessories, I hope to eliminate the fear and bring a sense of joy.