Dynamic Cutting Using Material Engagement with Textiles in Pattern Cutting for Fashion Design Practice

Abstract

Material engagement in fashion and textile design practice using pattern cutting is an overlooked aspect of creative development in the design of garments. This creative practice research is based in my artisanal practice of fashion and textile design, which involves designing and making garments through all stages of development by hand. Material engagement describes the relationship between materials and their handling by practitioners. This complex relationship connects the intentions of the practitioner and their embodied interactions with what materials afford through their handling. Research in the practice of creative pattern cutting is concerned with identifying how creativity occurs through pattern cutting. However, the criticality of material engagement in the pattern cutting process has been minimally expanded upon by fashion designers. In my research, I have identified that material engagement is foregrounded through questioning the conventional notion of the pattern as a plan or template. In this article, I suggest how theories that critique the classical separation of form and material can support this foregrounding of material engagement in garment cutting. Dynamic Cutting is a new method of experimental cutting for fashion and textile design which emphasizes designing the surface and form of the garment at the same time. Dynamic Cutting evidences that textiles are an integral part of cut-led garment design and designer accounts can evidence the variety in approaches using materials when cutting. This research applies a creative practice research methodology which combines design practice research, critical design and reflective practice perspectives. This methodology serves to surface tacit understandings of materials and how material engagement and material affordances are integral to dynamic form creation processes when cutting garments.