Spirit of the Times: A Design Lesson in Thinking

Marcy L. Koontz, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
The Department of Clothing, Textiles and Interior Design, University of Alabama
E-mail: Marcy.Koontz@UA.Edu

Thinking critically and creatively is a skill taught in every academic discipline. When learning a new skill, it must be practiced over and over by students and constantly evaluated by instructors. The specific discipline of apparel design is complex, requiring students to learn a variety of new, practical skills ranging from flat-pattern design to computer-aided design. Many apparel design skills require a hands-on learning environment and the use of specific tools to accomplish certain tasks . In contrast, students also have to learn to develop their thinking skills, which is often a challenge for both student and instructor.

The motivation for this paper was the "Grist for the Mill" column in the March 2003 issue of Academic Exchange Extra, in which the idea of "Education and War: Uneasy Bedfellows?" was posed by the editor. (AEE, March 2003). While reading the list of questions, I started thinking about my classes and the issue of war, specifically the war in Iraq, and if/how it was being incorporated into my classes. After careful contemplation, I was glad to recall that I was indeed using it as part of the learning process in my fashion illustration course. This paper demonstrates how a five-step process was created and implemented to assist students in learning how to think critically and creatively within a fashion illustration course.

Introduction

The CTD 217 Fashion Illustration course is part of the apparel design curriculum which includes coursework in apparel and textile design, fashion illustration, historic costume, fashion merchandising, apparel production, marketing, quality control for textile products, and computer-aided apparel design. Career opportunities for graduates include designing of couture, which is a fashion industry term often referred to as haute couture and includes the high-end, custom-made garments or apparel and mass-produced apparel, pattern making, fashion illustration, fashion coordination, sales representation, product development, costume curatorial positions, fashion consultation, industrial engineering, and entrepreneurial enterprises (Apparel & Textiles).

This fashion illustration course is required of all apparel design majors. In this course, students learn how to: draw the human body from a fashion industry viewpoint, referred to as a croquis; render fabrics and garments; and create two original apparel design collections. In addition, students are required to develop the necessary critical and creative thinking skills associated with the design process and apparel development. This has proven to be the most difficult building block in this particular course.

In general, apparel designers use fashion illustrations to communicate their ideas. How does one develop the skills to think like a designer? For some reason, students have difficulty grasping the concept that ideas do not just occur out of thin air on a regular, consistent basis. This point is quickly demystified when students are asked on the spot to communicate a specific number of original apparel design ideas related to a particular inspirational source or idea and presented in a collection format.

Apparel designers, on average, create 700-1,000 original designs each year, but only a fraction make it to the final round, and these are presented in one of their two yearly collections. Usually, designers create a collection based on a particular theme resulting from a single inspirational source of information. This source could be as simple as an insect's iridescent wings to a piece of glass found on a beach. How can a designer create such a volume of designs? Where do their ideas come from, and how does one attempt this process?

Using critical and creative thinking skills, an entire collection of garments can be created from a single idea. Five necessary and sequential steps were identified to facilitate the critical and creative thinking process: discovering, exploring, focusing, sketching, and creating. Each of the five steps is described below in detail, along with the visual documentation of one student's journey through this process.

Instead of working individually, as they had in previous classes, I thought that if the students had the opportunity to work as a group, the learning curve might not be as steep since they would have the opportunity to obtain input from their peers. I also felt it would be of great benefit to the students, individually and collectively if they were to begin the process using the same collaborative inspirational source.

Figure 1: Screenshot of the Fashion Illustration course website

View the course website <http://bama.ua.edu/~mkoontz/ctd217/>

Step 1: Discovering

Students were asked to think about what was happening in the world and if they believed there were any significant "signs of the times" which could/would make an impact on a variety of fronts. The overwhelming response was the war in Iraq.

I asked the students a set of probing questions concerning ways in which the war could/would impact the fashion industry specifically as well as their roles as apparel designers. In our class discussion, we generated more questions and ideas and wrote them on the board. Together, we explored specific concepts and crossed out those we perceived more as individual than societal concerns. In the end, the word "safety" emerged--a concept/idea that each of the students could relate to emotionally and physically. I then formulated a series of questions to facilitate the thinking process regarding the concept/idea of "Safety." I created the graphic below to assist students in the next phase of the critical and creative thinking process.

Figure 2: Graphic depicting the "Safety" logo and the series of related critical thinking questions

Step 2: Exploring

During the exploration phase, students were required to first answer the questions listed in the graphic using words and sentences. I suggested that they ask not only themselves these questions but also their friends and family members. Students began to develop long lists of answers for each of question, which were then organized into specific topics/categories. It was from these topics/categories that strong personal attachments began to emerge. Students were then asked to select what they perceived as the most meaningful, top-three topics/categories and then begin searching for representational images.

Figure 3: Exploring--croquis book of apparel design student, Lalla McGee (McGee 2003). This is the first page of a student's book illustrating what appears to be two distinct concepts-- religion and food. However, the student soon learns the two are quite similar. The words on the page, as well as the sketches, provided the starting point for the next step.

Step 3: Focusing

Students then examined the collected visual images, with my assistance, to identify specific areas in which further research was needed; this often resulted in a new direction and/or focus. Many of their main topics were actually abstract concepts, and the students had to learn how to visualize what their ideas meant to them. This proved, at times, to be a frustrating task, since, for most of them, it was their first attempt at such an endeavor. I realized one of the advantages of collaboration during this third focused step: many of the students who were struggling would often ask their cohorts for assistance and guidance as well as assurance. This dynamic proved to be a valuable component throughout the remainder of the course as the students continued to seek support, encouragement, and constructive criticism from each other.

Figure 4: Focusing--croquis book of apparel design student, Lalla McGee (McGee 2003). In order to visualize religion, the student was asked a series of questions in order to identify tangible images. Throughout this process, religion was further refined to include architectural elements of buildings related to specific faiths throughout history. Words alongside the visual images of the buildings provide the student with a wealth of information, and the sketches reveal some of the emerging design ideas.

Step 4: Sketching

Using the collected images as inspiration, students began to sketch apparel design ideas. They were asked to create as many apparel designs as possible to exhaust all design possibilities. Many students produced twenty or more sketches, and, from these, twelve were selected. For those students who followed the steps and complied with the instructions this step proved to be very rewarding, since they were able to quickly sketch many design ideas. Students who missed a step, or who did not fully complete each step, found it more difficult to begin and had to return to particular steps before they could proceed.

Figure 5: Sketching--croquis book of apparel design student, Lalla McGee (McGee 2003). These two pages are representative of many on which the student has begun to explore a variety of apparel design ideas related to the chosen theme. Not all the garments will make it into the final collection.

Step 5: Creating

The last step in the process involved the illustrating and rendering of the croquis and the final twelve apparel designs, which were presented in a professional layout. In addition, the students were also required to write a summary about their collection, incorporating information regarding not only the apparel designs, but also the inspirational source of the collection. Once again,, students had to rely on all of the documentation, visual and written, collected throughout this process to communicate their ideas in words.

Figure 6: Creating--Secret Places fall 2003 collection by apparel design student Lalla McGee (McGee, 2003). She began this process with "Safety" which was then broken down into two main topics for further research: religion and food:

"Safety""religion"architecture"Secret Places

"Safety""food"comfort food"color"Secret Places

The following is her collection summary:

Secret Places _{fall 2003}

Imagine yourself in a room filled with confusion & disorder; you can feel it on and around you. You look around the room for some ease and comfort, but the room is empty, except for a full-length mirror, far away. You walk toward the mirror and begin to notice what you are wearing is not what is reflected in the mirror. So you touch the mirror with your finger and notice your hand just passes through. This strange and unusual occurrence is tempered with the irresistible sensation of what your hand felt on the other side of the mirror. As you walk through the mirror, your clothing transforms into a long sleeve, bias-cut linen dress, and then it is transformed into an Irish linen dress, shaded with rich colors, including deep reds and yellows. You suddenly look back at the mirror, from the other side, and see a horrible storm, the cause of all the confusion and destruction in your life. As you turn your head back around, a brown, woven box catches your eye. Inside, you find a note. After carefully unfolding it, you read:

"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide in the shades of the almighty."

Psalm 91:1

Providing the students with a starting point, along with a set of questions and specific steps to follow, was vital to this process. Even though each student began with the exact same tools, each was able to create their own viewpoint; no two students ended up using the same topic. As mentioned previously, the work of one particular student has been used throughout this paper to illustrate this creative process. For the final step, I will present two additional examples of student work, for contrast and comparison. In Figure 7, the student created this militarily inspired collection based on a more literal interpretation of "Safety" in the New Recruits collection (Reed 2003), while "Safety" of childhood and a visit to the circus was the impetus for the Circesque collection presented in Figure 8 (Strain 2003).

Figure 7: New Recruits fall 2003 collection by apparel design student, Shannon Reed

Figure 8: Circesque fall 2003 collection by apparel design student, Lauren Strain

Conclusion

Developing effective methods of instruction for thinking critically and creatively is rewarding for not only the students but also the instructor. Finding a main theme, the war in Iraq, and then narrowing it down to a common topic, in this case "Safety," and allowing the students to work together proved to be essential for this type of five-step process.

It may appear odd that a course in fashion illustration has such a topic in the lesson plan, but the major appeal of apparel design is one in which a variety of topics--and even many disciplines--can be related. When I speak to students who are unfamiliar with this course, I often compare it to the game, "Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon," in which one can link Kevin Bacon to any other actor within seven moves; the same is true of the apparel design major, and this analogy usually works well with students. Having the skills to be able to discover what is happening in the world is liberating, whether it is economic, environmental, or cultural. Exploring the various developing topics, focusing on one's own resulting personal viewpoint, and then being able to articulate an outcome--whether verbally or visually--is indeed like assembling a garment.

Works Cited

Apparel & Textiles--Apparel Design Concentration."

College of Human Environmental Sciences. University of Alabama. (Accessed: 15 May 2003).
http://www.ches.ua.edu/undergrad/ad.html

 

Heise, Karen.

"Grist for the Mill: On War and Risk." Academic Exchange Extra. Karen Heise, ed. (March 2003). (Accessed: 14 March 2003). <http://asstudents.unco.edu/students/AE-Extra/2003/2/Grist.html>

 

McGee, Lalla.

Croquis Book Images, May 2003. University of Alabama, Tusclaoosa.

 

-- -- --.

Secret Places. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

 

Reed, Shannon.

New Recruits. May 2003. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

 

Strain, Lauren.

Circesque. May, 2003. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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