Reflective Textiles: Garment Design, Space, and the Digital

How can engagement, visualization tools, and handworkmanship promote thinking beyond traditional modes of garment design? Traditional garment creation has a deep history of craft, quality workmanship, and culture. As the collective skills of weaving, sewing, and draping are being challenged through societal influences of consumerism and the roles of clothing, this research seeks to blend traditional garment design processes with emerging visualization tools to order to support manual making skills. Through seeing the final silhouette true to the 3-dimensional shape, a custom textile was created with both manual and digital applications on a digital jacquard loom. By bringing in other designers’ perspectives, design philosophies, and digital visualization tools, a series of artifacts were created to support a proposed theatrical production, Future Human.