This dissertation is a written component of a thesis, which was developed and articulated over four years in the construction of a narrative of the fashion designer and their practice. The hypothesis developed by the fashion designer as practitioner, is that it is both possible and necessary, by careful notation and reflective practice, to arrive at a better understanding of the fashion design practitioners cognitive and behavioural reasoning through the creative practice process than exists in current literature and archive. In comparison with the archiving of materials that testify to the complexity of creativity in painting, sculpture and orchestral composition, for example, the archiving of the process and practice of fashion design is negligible. Collections of designers' ephemera often constitute little more than ‘the retrospective’ or materials of celebrity culture that further mystify the 'author function' role (Foucault, 1969, p.113-138) of the fashion design practitioner. This research aims to suggest a critical visual method for and in support of constructing a narrative of fashion practice as it is lived towards a new culture of compiling, recording, noting, classifying and analysing the tacit process of the fashion design practitioners relationship to their practice. The practice therefore comprises the designing, draping, cutting and making of an eight-piece collection of fashion womenswear. The research comprises extensive documentation of the (research) practitioner’s subjective-objective1 dialogues as purposeful acts of thought (Burnette, 2009b) and action whilst developing a body of creative work. In addition to the researcher's journey this narrative inquiry extends documentation to include the responses of five other practitioners as willing participants in the project aim: to develop a new research method for documenting and understanding the fashion design practitioners cognitive and behavioural narratives. Whereas there is a significant literature on design theory written by theorists and not necessarily practitioners, and a considerable literature on fashion as object of sociological, historical, cultural, anthropological, semiotic, psychological, political, philosophical, economic study, there exists almost no serious study of fashion design practice from the perspective of the fashion designer (as practitioner). This research aims, without artificial abstraction of the creative practice from its cultural and social milieu, to start a serious, scholarly, rigorous study of fashion practice as design method. It may be that such method will be met with reactions that it could meddle with the illusion of a designer's intuitive sense of knowing and that it is an unwelcome complication of what should remain an invisible or tacit (because as yet unrecognised) process. The aim of the research is to develop a method that can be customised and adopted by the fashion design and design research communities and fashion designers in training and in professional practice, to understand more about their creative practice process in both cognitive and behavioural terms. To this end I use the forms of auto ethnography to collect data through sketchbook work, diarised journals, photographic and film reportage and interview in order to consider how a method of (doing) practice may refer to theories of practice. Literary theory of Bakhtin is offered as an example of a dialogical method to consider how the process of fashion practice can be considered as communicable knowledge. The Kantian philosophy of the 'a priori' knowledge and Foucault’s relational systems of thought and knowledge are also offered as discourse and a foundation of thought that structures the tacit dialogues in the here and now as a telling of a knowing of a doing of fashion practice. The written dissertation is a text, which co-exists with the narrative traced through the making and visual realisation of the collection exhibited and photographed at the viva voce (Figure 1 & Appendix H).

This research by practice explores our relationship with and attachment to shoes. Focusing upon the shoe as an everyday object, and on the embodied experience of wearing, it examines how through touch and use we become entangled with the things we wear. Drawing on anthropological and psychoanalytic perspectives on attachment, affect and the self, it asks: How can the act of wearing create attachment between the wearer and the worn? What is our relationship with the used and empty shoe – the shoe without the body, the shoe no longer worn? It suggests that our particular relationship to footwear is located in our intimate and tactile relationship to it; that touch and duration of wear create attachment. This research suggests that through use and wear shoes become, not only a record of the wearer’s lived experience, but also an extended part of them - a distributed aspect of the self. That the affective power of the worn shoe is a result of this intermingling, the cleaving of garment and self. Despite a growing body of research on footwear, the worn and the used shoe is absent from much of fashion research. The shoe tends to be interpreted as a symbolic, metaphorical, or imaginary artefact; its material qualities and the embodied experience of wearing the shoe are seldom referred to. This research seeks to place the artefact, the shoe, at its centre. Through an iterative process of making, wear, and observation, it aims to make apparent the intimacies of our relationship with shoes. Rather than record the narratives which we apply to footwear, it seeks to highlight the material traces of these relationships: to present the ways they are embodied within the artefacts themselves. This research is research through practice, into the nature of our relationships with shoes, through making artefacts and images (installation, film and photographs). It is material culture research enacted through the production of artefacts. It situates itself as art practice; the shoes produced are not footwear in a conventional sense but instead are objects designed to amplify and make explicit their role as records of gesture and experience. These empty shoes are records of an absent performance, of gestures which are lost to the viewer, so that only their traces, the marks upon the shoe, remain.

The London couturier, Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell (1901-1979) is famous today for dressing Their Majesties Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1900-2002) and the current British Monarch, Elizabeth II (1926) from 1937 until his death in 1979. His legacy is understood to lie in the establishment of the fixed British royal style devised for Queen Elizabeth in 1937, still worn by Her Majesty the Queen today. Hartnell was, however, far more than a provider of dress to British royalty. Evidence in the form of bound volumes of international press cuttings extant in a private archive indicates that he commanded great respect as a couture fashion designer between 1923-1953. He was also the first British fashion designer to attempt to develop as an international fashion brand in the immediate post war period. Neither Hartnell' s production of two couture collections per year between 1923- 1979 and ready-to-wear from 1963 nor his signature looks or house style, have been examined in-depth to date in terms of his legacy. This thesis unpicks Hartnell's work, closely analysing his sketched designs, fabric swatches, embroideries, couture and ready-to-wear garments extant in a vast, privately owned and relatively unknown archive. I suggest that the roots of this signature house style lies in the identity of the man, which is also scrutinised here, in particular, his sexuality and life-long cross-dressing. Hartnell's taste in overtly feminine styles is evident in his use of colour, fabric and embellishment and is present in his all his fashion work. This is rooted in his personal taste and the use of these signature elements in garments designed and made at his couture house for his own personal use. The major business decisions taken at his couture house between 1946-1979 will also be discussed in the context of his complex gendered identity and reputation as the royal couturier. The research on the life and work of the London couturier Norman Hartnell undertaken for this PhD, probes through his vast, privately owned archive and collection of possessions, hidden from public view since 1985. This interdisciplinary investigation will track the relationship between Hartnell' s identity, both the public professional 'face' of Hartnell and the impact of his private life, in the design work of Britain's most prominent couturier. Theoretical 10 approaches to Hartnell' s life and work include material culture approaches to analysing these specific objects of couture and decorative art objects collected by him. Issues of self-presentation, performance and memory are addressed in order to unpick his personal choice in interior design as well as his wardrobe of normative masculine styles and his coded style of dressing, and his queer identity, using studio photographic portraits taken between 1928 and 1970. Oral histories recorded between 2006-2011 with those that worked with him and were close to him in life, offer unique insight into the working regime at the House of Hartnell and a further understanding of Hartnell's personality and character. This research re-evaluates Hartnell' s contribution to British couture in order to position him, and the design and production of couture at the House of Hartnell, at the centre ofthe finally emerging, growing body of research on London couture recently established by Breward, de la Haye and Erhman. This thesis addressed how the identity of a person can be read through what they leave behind and, in particular, what can be read of the celebrity couturier Norman Hartnell's identity through the residue of his life and work.

Orientador: Marizilda dos Santos Menezes / Banca: Roberto Alcarria do Nascimento / Banca: Marly de Menezes Gonçalves / Resumo: A pesquisa mostra-se como instrumento para propror uma reavaliação das ementas das disciplinas relacionadas ao desenho inseridas no curso de Design de Moda da Universidade de Londrina. Para tal, é realizada uma avaliação da utilização desse tipo de representação gráfica no âmbito industrial, ou seja, sua utilização no contexto industrial de vestuário local. A pesquisa baseou-se em uma fundamentação teórica acerca do papel da representação gráfica no design e no design de moda, que norteou a construção de um protocolo, que foi aplicado a seis designers de moda, atuantes em empresas de confecção diferentes da cidade de Londrina e região. Integrando os resultados dessa pesquisa de campo concomitante às análises de fundamentação teórica aplicadas no âmbito acadêmico e pesquisa bibliográfica, têm-se então uma visão geral das necessidades das empresas no que tange o desenho de moda. A partir destas necessidades delimitadas ocorre uma comparação das mesmas com as ementas, buscando atingir uma congruência de resultados que satisfaça as necessidades mercadológicas sem desvincular-se dos valores acadêmicos fundamentais / Abstract: Research shows itself as an instrument to propose a reassessment of menus related to the design of the disciplines included in the course of Fashion Design at the Universidade Estadual de Londrina. For such an evaluation is perfomed using this type of graphical representation in the industrial field, ei its use in context of local garment industry. The research was based on a theoretical foundation about the role of imaging in the Design and Fashion Design, which guided the construction of a protocol, which was applied to six fashionb designers working in different companies in the city of Londrina and region. Integratind the results of this research field concomitant to the analysis of theoretical and applied research in the academic, literature, it has been an overview of the needs when it comes to fashion design. From these needs is a bounded compared with the same menus, trying to achieve a consistency of results that meet the market needs not closely related to the fundamental academic values / Mestre

Can a sound itself be a garment? This practice-led research explores the sound of garments and fashion, which is unheard, unspoken or overheard, to suggest a new perspective for reconsidering garments and fashion. Through experiments with making, wearing and displaying, the research examines the sound, voice or silence embedded in garments and fashion and affective experiences aroused from garments as atmospheric spaces. A new term, ‘dress-scape’, is introduced and discussed through a series of practical and theoretical approaches to the concept. The research suggests that the dress-scape of a garment emerges as the resonance of sound, voice, noise or silence from the interplay between the garment and the maker, the wearer or the viewer. As the research attempts to locate fashion in a new place, the practice varies significantly from that in conventional garments. The maker rather explores non-wearable garments, other artefacts, installation, film and sound-making using diverse mediums. The practice, in turn, oscillates between fashion and art practice. The journal entries exist as a documentation of the maker’s reflections on the research journey and contribute to the development of both practical and theoretical renderings of the research. Inspired by the notion of ‘tacet’ (broadly, ‘silence’) as used in John Cage’s work, 4’33”, the research aims to invite the reader, the viewer and the listener to be silent and to ‘listen’ to the research, together with the maker, who also acts as the author and the composer. Thus, rather than acting as a series of problem-solving investigations for knowledge acquisition, the research is essentially the journey of the investigation of the maker’s tacit awareness of other related issues including modernist artists, film, architecture, the relationship between fashion and art, and curatorial display. This, in turn, adds to the value of the practice-led research, elevating it to an interdisciplinary study.

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The ancillary trades of the London based élite fashion industry are the focus of this practice-based research, which is founded in material culture studies. Hitherto these trades have not been the subject of any in depth scholarly work, and therefore this thesis seeks to make a contribution to knowledge by assessing and documenting their historical and contemporary application and significance; by examining and assessing the potential of laser technology to those trades that are concerned with embellishment; and by developing and applying a material culture framework to the execution and analysis of practice. The ancillary trades serve the material production of luxury fashion through the small scale, bespoke manufacturing of items such as artificial flowers and buttons; and the provision of specialist finishes such as bead-work, embroidery and pleating. These trades have developed little over the last century or more and most still involve varying degrees of skilled hand-making processes; but while their French counterparts are widely recognised as crafts, they remain an entity to which scant attention has been paid in assessments of either élite British fashion or of the crafts in Britain. Through a series of material culture analyses this research critically evaluates these trades, examining their contribution to the necessary distinction of historical and contemporary élite fashionable dress, and investigating the making practices and wider circumstances of key trades and practitioners. The contextual research not only situates the empirical practice-based case study in the field of interest but also is significant in informing the aesthetics and techniques invoked in practice. The potential of laser technology is investigated in the production of items of embellishment, alternatives to the more ubiquitous sequins, beads and faux jewels. Presented and critically evaluated within the thesis, the outcomes, a series of embellished textile proposals for the élite fashion industry, are hybrids of industrial process and hand-making techniques. Artefacts are central to this research. The interdisciplinary material culture theory and method of Jules David Prown, foregrounding the artefact as a repository of information, has been adopted for the contextual research and further developed in relation to the analysis of the objects that inform practice, while the outcomes of practice serve as material mnemonics in the retrieval of the intimacies of the making process. Referring to a range of associated literature, archival research and interview findings, the outcomes of the ancillary trades and of practice are examined in the aesthetic, cultural, technological, and socio-economic circumstances of their production and consumption.

Prepositions describes relations between different things. In this collection thosethings refers to the soft and moving body, hard and stiff sculptural shapes, colours,prints, fabrics and shoes.I have a great passion for sculptural shapes and for this collection I have used thispassion as an important source for inspiration. Interesting and challenging meetingsbetween the choice of especially materials and colours is another aspect of this project.Wholeness has a significant meaning to me, as the important thing is not to put focuson the garments themselves rather than the combination of all elements, in the compositionof each outfit and in the line-up. I have looked at the different componentssuch as the sculptural shapes, garments, colours, prints and shoes as if they wherebuilding blocks. I have arranged and rearranged and combined those building blocksin different ways trying to achieve a dynamic and balanced composition. I have triedto simplify all parts as much as possible when aiming for a clear and strong result. / Program: Modedesignutbildningen

Prepositions describes relations between different things. In this collection thosethings refers to the soft and moving body, hard and stiff sculptural shapes, colours,prints, fabrics and shoes.I have a great passion for sculptural shapes and for this collection I have used thispassion as an important source for inspiration. Interesting and challenging meetingsbetween the choice of especially materials and colours is another aspect of this project.Wholeness has a significant meaning to me, as the important thing is not to put focuson the garments themselves rather than the combination of all elements, in the compositionof each outfit and in the line-up. I have looked at the different componentssuch as the sculptural shapes, garments, colours, prints and shoes as if they wherebuilding blocks. I have arranged and rearranged and combined those building blocksin different ways trying to achieve a dynamic and balanced composition. I have triedto simplify all parts as much as possible when aiming for a clear and strong result. / Program: Modedesignutbildningen

This dissertation examines the acquisition of design techniques among Antwerp trained avant-garde fashion designers by focusing on the aesthetic, communicative, and moral aspects of creativity in design. This required drawing on 15 months of fieldwork in design classes and studio workspaces where student designers are socialized into particular ways of conceptualizing, translating, and constructing design forms. In analyzing these exchanges this dissertation develops methodological and analytical frameworks for ethnographically investigating the practice of design, itself. As such, this thesis develops a number of conceptual tools for describing how designers organize sociality through material and aesthetically designed forms. Thus, this dissertation offers new ways of understanding how the social effects of design forms are linked to the cultural theories and practices that produce them, while also describing the social life of Antwerp trained fashion designers.