Throughout my final major project I believe I’ve successfully examined and thoroughly explored my initial ideas, I first started exploring the prospect of prison wear, institutionalisation within society, death row, concentration camps and war, which further expanded into themes surrounding the refugee crisis, specifically the composition of camp formats and infrared recording. The ground breaking work of Richard Mosse highly influenced my thought process, ‘Incoming’ at Barbican Curve focuses on the treacherous journeys of refugees with border surveillance and ballistic targeting devices, which challenges the viewer to find their understandings within it. Mosse's work ‘Incoming' has an aesthetical brutality, dehumanising any subject, portraying people in unrecognisable form, stripping back as much as the individual from the body and portraying a human as biological trace. The refugees are portrayed as vulnerable organisms, corporeally incandescent, our mortality foregrounded. Mosse has used this as reverse psychology to show the detachment from the crisis, we are left slightly confused, alienated and the world feels suddenly unfamiliar to us now.  Another highly respected inspiration would be Jon Rafman’s work at Zab Collection. I take obvious influence from contemporary artists and respect this highly when designing. 

 The crime, security and poverty stricken atmosphere’s that can be seen within prison institutions led into channels of research which go hand-in-hand with the idea of taboo. After watching a large amount of prison documentary and visiting a Reading prison first hand, It seemed almost inessential that I aimed to create something to complement my clear interest. Prison uniform serves the purpose to make prisoners instantly identifiable, to limit risks through concealed objects and to prevent injuries through undesignated clothing objects. It can also spoil attempts of escape as prison uniforms typically use a design and colour scheme that is easily noticed and identified even at a greater distance. I have exhausted research into the psychological affects of the lethal injection and what it means to live life on death row. I also hoped to portray the pain staking, pure emotion inmates experience and stress this high concept through experimentation with colours, drape and fabric and I successfully created small examples playing with concealment, and entrapment. I looked at the importance of inmate uniform, and discovered a ream of information about the consequences of wearing the uniform in certain ways, for example, the way they choose to drape fabric can indicate signals from inmate to inmate. 

As expected, my project altered quite drastically towards the final stages, a more medical route enabled me to explore my colour palette, I addressed colours such a green, grey, plastic and also aluminous materials. On which I decided to run with a colour I would describe as ‘pharmaceutical’ which was an intense blue green cotton drill. A mixture of black strapping, metal, knit-work, padding and quilting can all be seen on my final piece. For me, the most successful aspect of my project has been the correlation of blending knitwear with metal. My textural work which can be seen as a form of textile has developed greatly since the start of the course, I enjoy creating this conflict between shape, form and construction.  The design decisions I persistently made were highly influenced from styling exercises with one dimensional objects, the aim was to make numerous types of gestural from which links back to all the political themes and aesthetics from collages.

 I promised myself to experiment more than ever before and this is definitely something that has positively nurtured my practice. My strengths are the vigorous concepts and meaning behind my design, I have told a story within my final outcome. The clear relation to padded cells, bent metal, venting through circular shapes, barbed wire are clearly visible. I am confident my final garment enhances all these features and works in harmony with one another. It also helped having looked deep into bondage/knitwear in the past, this set an sadistic nature which I have explored throughout the whole of Foundation. 

 If I could spend time developing my final design I would put pressure of the fluidity of the garment, the physical construction of the piece could also been far more defined. For example, the belting and back restraints could be put attached through use of boning, and could be portraying off the body. Ideally, to improve my submission I could’ve highlighted on the lethal injection and tenting earlier in the process,  I feel it is an area that could of become an integral concept within my project. I admittedly shyed away from it as It was such an overpowering subject, but the aesthetic and morality of the subject was a curiosity throughout these few months. I organised and managed my time wisely within this project, and have gained a huge understanding on what it means to deliver a self-direction art/fashion project to a high demand.