Rose Sparks, design process

Rose Sparks’s collection was heavily inspired by the handheld fan, a device that has tapped into codes of mystery and concealment for more than two thousand years. It takes the sculptural elements of the fan to blur the boundaries between fashion and architecture, creating starkly geometric fantasies that become an extension of the body. In this way, each garment transcends the mundane, existing in a dimension where elegance and imagination intertwine. Here tradition is subverted to produce a boldly unconventional aesthetic that flatters as much as it provokes.

Within the collection, unusual materials such as plastic, paper and wood have been used as the foundation and interior structure to create shapes that would otherwise be hard to achieve. Umbrella sticks have been used to design one look while a 3D Doodler pen has been used to make another. The ambition is to engineer designs that ultimately become wearable pieces of art.

The concept behind the collection was to play heavily on the idea of taking something that would normally be stiff and static and making it work on something living, breathing and moving. Creating a hard shell to evoke the organic body beneath. The body can still be seen but trapped within a space that has been divided into an unusual and playful way. Being limited by the medium of fashion, the challenge is getting them to still be wearable. The juxtaposition of the body is fluid, and architecture which is ‘concrete’, means the body must be dealt with in a particular way.