In my Master's thesis, I deal with the issue and discovery of Slovenian identity, as well as the Slovenian culture and heritage of clothing. In the theoretical part of my work I explore and research the notions identity and its significance. In the continuation of the theoretical work I write about the clothing and cultural heritage found in the Slovenian territory. I explored the development of Slovenian peasant/folk costume from Carantania up until the 19th century and the discovered what pieces of clothing were worn for many centuries and what has been preserved to this day. Clothing in Slovenia developed relatively slowly and the costume remains with little changes to it. I also describe the phenomenon of folk costume as a strong element of cultural heritage and its significance in today's time. In the transition from theoretical work to the practical, I also presented some examples of the transfer of elements of cultural heritage into modern fashion, both in Slovenia and abroad.
The Slovenian cultural heritage is rich and unique. With my research of various elements of clothing and other symbols of cultural heritage, my objective is to preserve our cultural heritage in an upstyle and modern fashion. With fashionable clothing items designed for the modern women, I would like to bring attention to the importance of cultural heritage and bring this awareness and interest of it to the public. The questions I asked myself when designing are: is it possible to tranfer elements of cultural heritage to the modern world, are the patterns approachable and attractive to todays consumer, do people have respect for cultural heritage, or can modern elements and elements of cultural heritage be preserved through a modern approach in design? The goal and task at hand is to bring people closer to the cultural heritage, to draw attention to its existence with the rich symbolism of patterns and recognition of folk costumes. The clothing items created in my practical work transmit and carry the messages of cultural heritage into modern day. They are designed as wearable fashion pieces for the modern women who work, live, enjoy and are aware of themselves and the world around them.
Thus, the main starting point and the central theme by which I designed these two collections of women's clothing, were cultural and clothing heritage for recognition of our identity. By changing and manipulating the elements and patterns of cultural heritage, I have created new and contemporary patterns and designed and transferred them to create modern pieces and items of clothing. The patterns are different in both collections. The first patterns are multiple magnification when I created patterns for digital printing and screen printing using digital manipulation. These patterns were created by scanning old woven textiles and transforming them with various computer programs into patterns that are visible in the first collection. The silhouettes in the first collection, are inspired from typical silhouettes of women's and men's folk costumes. The second collection consists of a completely different transfer and modification of the cultural heritage pattern. The patterns are hand drawn in watercolor technique, taking my inspirations for support from the woven patterns, embroidery and woven folk embroidery and weave. These patterns were then printed using digital printing techniques. With this mode of transformation, the pattern takes on a distorted form of a traditional pattern and results a new fresh appearance. The patterns become softer compared with traditional patterns, and are no longer so graphic, but rather quite romantic in color and shape. The clothes are inspired from the silhouette of the 40's, where some pieces of clothing create a contrast with the elements, which was typical for the folk costume and contain further details from the 40's of the 20th century.
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