Impressive impressionism

La grenouillère Renoir, 1869 

I grow up on the border "La Seine", the river crossing Paris where French impressionists as Renoir, Manet or Monet used to paint and find inspiration, representing fugitive movement of light. 

Le déjeuner des canotiers, Renoir 

In a way,  I was already leaving in a painting and I was suffused with this atmosphere beautiful lights and green shades, shimmering reflection of willow trees in the water which blur the line between vegetation and aquatic element. (sorry for becoming quite lyrical) 

Impressionism painting have became commonplaces,  but I'm not afraid to appear as lowbrow if I say that it's one of my favourite art movement.  I like the way Impressionists learned how to transcribe directly their visual sensations of nature, unconcerned with the actual depiction of physical objects in front of them. I see them as the first painters who live their Ateliers  to paint  outside in the nature in order to seize the natural light.

As an apprentice costume designer I like to stage my dress and rebuild a whole universe. I like the idea to make  a living painting in opposition to "still life", as you have "tableaux", in theatre (still image on stage)  and be part of a that painting by jumping into the frame.

Moreover, l like the elegance of the woman in the 1880-1890 who had really classy accessories like gloves, hat, and sunshade, things that's we are really wearing nowadays anymore. 

And for a more English painting movement which occurred at the same time in History, for this series of pictures, we were also inspired by pre-Raphaelite paintings, with crown and flower, red hair dreamy girls in bucolic landscapes. 

Ophelia, John William Waterhouse, 1868

By Constance Doyle 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868 

At the begining I wasn't supposed to go into the water but I slipped into the pond! 

pictures by Constance Doyle 

Wearable Art

For a party which the theme was "Fête'art", a play on words in French between art and party maker, basically you had to dress as a an artist or a piece of art.

I wanted to be a kind of live canvas, actually calicot is used for painting and for making clothes which is a kind of common point between the two fields but I liked the idea of used the volume of the body whereas painting is  flat to make something between painting and sculpture which is more rounded-based, going from the two dimension of painting to the three dimension of sculpture and costume making.

I found a white suit in a charity shops and I splash some colourful painting on it. Actually, my Mum did it directly on me, in our garden in order not to make the house dirty,  it was in february and really freezing outside! 

It was already quite perforative, a bit like that but less stylish!

Alexander McQueen S/S RTW 1999, No. 13

Then I build a kind of structure with frames and wire which were from a set of my friend performance (carried them in my luggage from London to Paris) 

I liked the idea of becoming myself a piece of art embellished by a frame dress. which I guess have something to do with Body art, or more precisely to embodied art! The costume became quite architectural,  nearly an installation,  introducing  rigid material which hinder body movements, but bring line and dynamic to the whole outfit. 

Van Gogh, Dali & their piece of art 

It wasn't really easy to dance with the costume but I manage to keep it all night. I can't understand people who arrive dress up in a costume and half an hour latter they are back to normal clothes because it wasn't comfortable, I think it just ruins the whole effect. Sometimes I feel like in this French comic Gaston Lagaffe improbable and cumbersome costume and asking to his colleague and "if we dance? " 

For the necklace and the hearings, I collected some used paint tubes. I thought it would have been easy to find them when you are in an art school,  but actually since everybody is now working  with digital it was harder than I thought since I wanted to refers more to "crafty art".

This costume made research about Art in fashion. No need to say that Haute Couture creates pieces of art in so far that it creates unique pieces, really detailed and thorough work which often relies on traditional craft and technic and are the product of a real aesthetic quest becoming a kind of wearable art. But i was more interested to find reference of art into fashion where the catwalk becomes a kind of live exhibition.

Yves Saint Laurent 1965

I guess Mondrian inspired a lot of fashion designers because of its bright colours and its geometrical lines which can easily apply to outfit.

Castelbajac 2008

The Rodnik Band, inspiration from "Fontaine" Marcel Duchamp 

Man Ray inspiration, JCD Castelbajac Fall 2011

Castelbajac

Rodarte S/S 2012 Van Gogh Inspiration

Pablo Picasso “Portrait of Jacqueline” (1957) /Jil Sander SS12

Net Net Net

I think net is one of my favourite material, I use it for everything, 

A lot of people despise it, and are quite sceptical when I want to create something with net, for them it's quite a cheap material which remind them Avril Lavigne, Emo movement or Carnival in kindergarden. 

Viktor&Rolf spring 2010

Actually, I find it quite aerial, it's remind me bride princess dress and ballet dancer's tutu. Tulle is always a really good way to create volume effect and it's not an expensive material that you can find everywhere. 

So when I saw a box full of tiny bits in the costume department of CSM, I wanted to experiment with them and work on the texture. So I created the shape of colourful net flower that I stitch on black net with white pearl.  

By Constance Doyle

By Constance Doyle

By Constance Doyle 

From my point of view, net look good on picture, I use it a lot for costume and experiment, for this shoot in my roof in Paris (when I used to live there 2 years ago) I use this red skirt which is basically simple piece of net put together, without any pattern and I think it had a good dynamic and that it's really photogenic. 

By Constance Doyle