Holly Reid

Harmonious aesthetics have historically been an overarching goal within western fashion design. The ability to enhance cohesiveness by stressing the similarities of the separate but related elements of design (colour, line, shape, form, texture) has been a tacit rule in achieving success within the fashion sector. However, the question of the objectivity or subjectivity of aesthetics is vast and has a tradition of theory and criticism associated both within the fashion sphere and fine arts.

Rather than seeking to redefine fashion as art, what this collection aims to interrogate is the narrow conception of the aesthetic on which its defence as art has been based. While other art forms are not so constrained, fashion remains inextricably associated with the body which this collection explores through the embodiment of pattern.

Questioning the digestion of disharmony and unrest, by experimenting with unconventional applications of traditionally rigid design structures, such as the principles of colour theory and geometric pattern. Reflecting on what the outcome means in terms of defining aesthetics within fashion beyond its current abstruse guise.

Through knitted and screen-printed textiles, the garments explore how specific colour combinations when implemented within certain pattern constraints as well as scale and repetition can offer vibrating optical effect, coined ‘vibrating boundaries‘ by artist and colour scientist Josef Albers. Playing with chaos of print and colour stretched tightly around the body, following the contours of the structure as well as protruding the textile off the body through select exaggerated silhouettes.