Rekha Rana Shailaj
Lecturer, Fashion
I am a graduate with a Bachelor of Design (Fashion) from the Otago Polytechnic. For the past nine years I have been working as a lecturer in the area of digital pattern making, fashion Design and textiles. I am currently researching the fluid boundaries of fashion, exploring issues like subjectivities and identities towards Masters of fine Arts.
As a designer and artist have actuated in a multicultural environment. The studio practice has made me encounter creations which have resulted from the mixing of familiar with unfamiliar, past with present, known with unknown. These creations born out of lived differences are examined and expressed through narratives of identities. While studying for Bachelor of Design I learnt how to use slopers/blocks which fit the human body as bodices, and bifurcated garments. The process of pattern drafting is complicated. I want to challenge these methods by exploring alternative design methodologies such as using geometric shapes and three dimensional forms to inform garment design. While garment has to be constructed from patterns drafted using blocks, sometimes using unconventional patterns like squares, triangles, circles and other geometric shapes bring an element of interest and twist in what can be finally produced as a garment. This is a generic process which trusts the designers understanding of body form, the 3 dimensional aspect of a body and also breaking the body into geometric shapes.
Many Eastern garments originate from these geometric shapes. Like Kurta (an Indian shift dress), a kimono is made from predetermined woven/embellished lengths of fabric into rectangular shapes, which minimises fabric wastage. My research work is informed by both eastern and western methodologies speaking of my multicultural identity. With the reflexive response to cross-cultural blend of aesthetics, techniques and material, it is not easy to claim possession of one acculturated fashion. At this point it goes beyond possession and identity and becomes global and yet also very individual and specific. It is this paradox which intrigues me in relation to my work.