Memory, Time and Emotion: A Concept for a Fashion Collection

Abstract

This thesis explores the we all share their importance: We processes of memory formation, transformation and de-formation through time from a neuro-psychological, philosophical and design point of view. The findings reveal the influence of memory in relation to time and emotion not only on everyday life, identity and heritage but also on emotional product attachment.

Memorizing is a process of sensory and emotional stimulation, recording and recalling. autobiographic memories are complex structures of emotionally loaded fragments that are constantly in the process of rearranging, fading and transforming. although memories are highly individual, they are nevertheless formed, reproduced, discussed and remembered together with the other human beings, and indulge in nostalgia and struggle with memory loss. Memory has the ability to move us, gives us stability in our flux environment and connects us with it. The entire human identity builds around the preservation of individual and collective memory, in narratives, archives, photo collections, backup hard-drives and artefacts.

This theoretical background contributes to the practise- driven research that concludes in a practical womenswear fashion collection. The collection is analysed along the concepts of memory, time and emotion due to its practical aspects of colour, material, silhouette and cut. The materials used — particularly animal materials such as wool, silk, mohair, and leather — carry traditional and historical associations. Textural surfaces directly affect the emotional experience of wearing the clothes through sensory stimulation. The colours of the collection range from navy blue to turquoise, burgundy, and bright orange and stand for the expressive emotional dimension of memory, as they are emotive and stimulating, especially in combination and in contrast with each other. The blue and orange tones of the collection merge in a digital print, like memories merge and diffuse through and with time. The watercolour-themed print plays with pseudo- organic shapes in order to provoke associations through faint resemblance to familiar objects. The silhouettes of the collection are fairly sculptural, suggesting stability and continuity, while combining soft and origami-like drapes as an allegory of complexity and movement, as well as ‘missing pieces’ of dress referring to lost memories. Together with other details of cut, such as transformable and dysfunctional components as well as sharp collars and tailored elements, the collection combines familiarity and alienation, repetition and development, tradition and futurism.

The completed collection was analyzed on two different levels, the conceptual and the empirical: it simultaneously functions as an artistic artefact created through the designer’s own interpretations as well as a future experienced and worn design product due to its intrinsic function of clothing. These two perspectives are discussed in the scope of past and future, sympathetic and empathic design, and individuality and conformity.