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# Project Description Collaborative project Eyewear for JooYeon Ahn, BA Fashion Print Summary Final work 2 Contributors College Central Saint Martins Course BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism and Curation Graduation year 2025 Continuing my practice handmaking experimental eyewear pieces, I produced 5 pairs of glasses alongside 2 hair combs, numerous buttons, and zipper pulls for my partner, JooYeon Ahn's BA Graduate collection for Fashion Print. The initial ideation for the project started with Joo drawing a few quick sketches of what she wanted, highlighting a desire to have half of the eyewear upswept, half downturned, with one neutral pair tying the collection together, as well as a strong desire to create a pair of anime-inspired half-rimless frames. I searched through my existing unproduced design portfolio to find frames to jump off from for this project, whilst also thinking of ways to tye the frames more closely to the collection's theme. Since Joo is my partner, I spent a lot of time working with her on my own work in her studio as she was researching, sketching, toiling for the collection, so it's fair to say I knew it relatively inside out. This allowed me to think about the themes of the collection and how I could deeply integrate the eyewear into it, rather than it merely being an accessory. For context, the brief explanation of the collection is as follows: Escapism in fashion is almost solely explored through the lens of clubbing, going out, getting drunk and taking drugs as a means to escape. This collection examines alternative means of escapism; namely staying in bed, playing videogames, cuddling with cats, smoking and vaping and avoiding the reality outside our bedroom windows. The collection explores Joo's own relationship with anxiety, depression, escapism and videogame addiction, aiming to produce beautiful and comfortable garments which allow bedridden, anxious, escapist girls to feel cute and pretty whilst hiding from the world inside their rooms, as well as providing means to take trinkets and hoarded collectibles outside with them as a safety blanket. Fabrics touching the body are entirely natural fibres, enhancing comfort and sustainability, and silhouette references come from Paul Poiret and his work pushing a new beauty standard for women's clothing, 'allowing' them to wear comfortable yet highly detailed clothing such as sarouel pants and baggy slip dresses as opposed to the corsets and crinelines of the 1800s. This collection aims to serve as a new revolution for women's fashion 100 years on from Poiret, allowing the same liberation for women in a different context. Together, we chose to use oversized, thick-rimmed frames to evoke the idea of the anxious nerd as portrayed in 1980's American cinema. From there, we had the idea to use thick, strong reading-prescription lenses to enlarge the wearer's eyes, giving them natural anime-style eyes as a nod to the anime drawing references Joo is so fond of. The larger size of the frames then worked in harmony with the lenses to enhance this look. My final idea for the glasses which really made them stand out was the laser engraving on the lenses. I was drawn to old imagery of LCD screens, which experience burn-in when an image is left on the screen for too long resulting in the image permanently 'burned' into the screen. I wanted to take this idea and recontextualise it on the lenses of the glasses, eluding to the fact that the wearer had been playing videogames for too long and their eyes were permanently 'burned in' with gameplay. To do this, I took screenshots from Joo's Animal Crossing and Legend of Zelda gameplay and turned them into black and white bitmaps made of tiny dots, which were then lasered onto the glasses lenses as though burned into the wearer's eyes. For the combs I produced, the original idea was inspired by the references to Poiret Joo was using for her silhouettes. Ornate combs were common at the turn of the century, particularly in France, to the point that Cellulose Acetate, which we now use to make glasses, was originally created to replace buffalo horn and tortoiseshell in hair combs, not in eyewear. As an homage to this, I researched and redesigned 2 combs. The first took direct references from these 1920's combs in its shape, adding a 3-dimensional rendition of Joo's sketches of anime-style eyes to the front of the comb in a tonal translucent yellow acetate with a similar colour scheme to vintage pieces of blonde horn. The second design was more abstract, taking the form of one of Joo's drawings of her cat Momi in a dark tortoiseshell-effect colour. As the first combs I've made, I was very happy with the results despite a few minor manufacturing glitches. Inspired by the sustainability of the collection using natural fibres for all fabrics touching the body as well as charity-shop-sourced fabrics for the patchwork dress of look 5, I used the waste acetate from making the frames to produce several large, 4-leaf-clover shaped buttons; a signature design of mine which I've been making for frienda and for fun for a few years now. Using acetate waste in this way is far more sustainable than discarding it as the majority of eyewear manufacturers do, and using a grindstone to create my signature shapes, the pieces lean into the sculptural nature of working with plastics. Further, I used more waste to create zipper pulls in a monogram 'J' shape drawn by Joo, using traditional handmade eyewear techniques as opposed to CAD and a CNC to create the shape, creating a more hadmade-feeling piece to match the collection's vibe. Overall I'm incredibly proud of Joo and her collection, and honoured to have been able to contribute, especialy in a way which pushed my creativity and making practice. Final work Look 1 from JooYeon's BA collection featuring half-rim anime-style glasses with Zelda engraving This frame was my first attempt at anime-style half rim frames, and was incredibly difficult to make, with issues plaguing the frame up until 20 minutes before the show. The colour scheme of translucent red with pink sides was punctuated with an ivory-coloured built-up lug on the sides and front of the frame, with a raised pad at the back of the sides punctuating the design as well as providing additional comfort, allowing the frame to hold onto the head tighter to compensate for the heavy lenses used in the design. Look 4 from JooYeon's BA Graduate collection featuring glasses with macramé attachments This frame features a butterfly shape and attached macramé 'tears.' This piece used vintage acetate which would have otherwise been discarded, maintaining sustainability throughout the collection. This green horn-effect material had to be used very efficiantly to create the frame, with waste from the side slab being used for the nosepads, and waste from the front slab used for the thickened pads at the back of the sides crucial for comfort with such a heavy lens, counterbalancing the weight of the lens. The macramé was an integral part of this design, with the tears representing the internal struggle of anxiety and depression which compell some with a need to escape the world and an inability to leave bed, feeling comfortable with being inside whilst simultaneously grieving for an unattainable life outside. Look 3 from JooYeon's BA collection featuring handmade cat-shaped comb Inspired by ornate hair combs from the 1920's, this cat comb takes the form of a drawing Joo did of her cat Momi. The 'Momi' comb ties to the idea of carrying objects of importance with you when out and about as a safety blanket. Recontextualising the ornate comb with this cutesy, anime-inspired drawing style further supports the concept of the collection with a playful nature. In addition, the reference of the comb ties into not only Poiret's work which inspired silhouettes from the collection, but also harks back to the origins of eyewear, as cellulose acetate used for eyewear today was first developed to replace the buffalo horn and tortoiseshell used for ornate combs in the 1920's. Look 5 from JooYeon's BA collection featuring Ivory-coloured cat-eye frame and red handmade button This frame is perhaps the most classic of the collection, evoking the 1960's designs of cat-eye glasses as 'attractive' glasses for women to wear. Chamfers on the front, all done by hand, add three-dimensionality whilst a pale translucent pink punctuates the nosepads and the backs of the sides. The 'paddle' or 'bayonet' sides also reference vintage frames whilst giving the frame a sense of weight. This frame features the Animal Crossing engraving, which, whilst not super visible from the front, appears subtly at an angle such as this. This image in particular captures the essence of what the eyewear was trying to achieve excellently. Also, the large red button on the blue striped gingham shirt collar adds a pop of colour to the ensemble whilst its slight unevenness and handmade nature adds to the overall effect of the patchwork dress in the look. Made from charity shop fabrics, the dress pairs well with the recycled acetate button and vintage acetate frame as an ode to the sustainability throughout the project. Research and process Laser engraving process documentation These images show the process of creating the laser engravings. The first and second row of images relate to the Zelda engraving in look 1's lenses, whilst the left side of the bottom row is the Link engraving for look 2, and the right side of the bottom row is the Animal Crossing engraving from look 5, with both looks 3 and 4 having different Animal Crossing screenshots as their engravings with the same image creation process. First I used a threshold filter to create a black and white image with no greys as is required for engraving. I then played with posterising filters to create dot-matrix style graphics which would allow the image to be visible without it impacting the viewer's vision too much. Once I had the process figured out from the first design, it was easy to replicate thereafter. Due to the Animal Crossing screenshots being more complex images with more shadows, these designs had to be more subtle to ensure the wearer could still see out. For look 2 though, because the graphic is small in the lens, I was able to create a more realistic interpretation of the original image, which I think turned out the best of the set. View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery Share this project Continuing my practice handmaking experimental eyewear pieces, I produced 5 pairs of glasses alongside 2 hair combs, numerous buttons, and zipper pulls for my partner, JooYeon Ahn's BA Graduate collection for Fashion Print.The initial ideation for the project started wi... A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Access, Ability & Inclusivity Body Craft & Process Mental Health Materiality Places & Spaces Identity Play Craft Macrame Plastic LaserCutting 3DModelling 3dDesign Fashion Accessories Accessibility Games
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