How Do Designers Speak With Fashion Design Language?

Many designers in the work process will have some confusion, do not know how to carry out fashion design creation. Sometimes I get lost. In fact, many practitioners will encounter the problem of "expression" in fashion design language.

Fashion design language is a kind of symbol, which can be divided into "overt" and "recessive". The dominant symbols are more intuitive and visible, such as the shape, color, pattern and material of clothing. The hidden symbols are abstract and implicit, including creative inspiration, clothing brand ideas, values, spiritual realm, etc. It is the starting point of fashion design for designers to transform "what they see" into meaningful forms of beauty that people can accept. In the process of language expression of fashion design, designers need to be full of imagination, start from "watching", and "extract" relevant materials and "transform" them into design elements "Fusion" in the United States, to achieve the unity of aesthetic and practical functions of clothing design art.

1、 Watch

"Viewing" is an inborn way of human behavior. It is the basis of visual art and the original intention and starting point of visual culture research. French sculptor Rodin once said that "beauty is everywhere. For us, it is not the lack of beauty, but the lack of eyes to discover.". Designers need to examine the design materials from the perspective of consumers. The "watching" includes not only the appreciation of clothing, but also the understanding of the feelings, consciousness, behavior and experience of the wearer, as well as the examination of the living conditions of ethnic groups.

2、 Extraction

The biggest difference between contemporary art and traditional art lies in the elimination of excessive decoration and the embodiment of a more simple and essential side of things. Clive Bell once said, "artistic creation needs to extract meaningful lines and forms from a large number of meaningless things.". Designers need professional training, have a certain aesthetic taste, but also need to achieve through the appropriate creative ideas. Through extraction, designers get concrete or abstract creation materials.

The disorder and piling up of elements in design works are mainly due to the fact that the creators fall into perceptual thinking when extracting and transforming design materials, "there are too many words to say". From the perspective of design management, such works not only consume materials and man hours, but also may not produce good artistic aesthetic effect or commercial value. Most of the really good design works are the ingenious ideas and appropriate choices after the designers' repeated consideration. The traditional Shatin dans "take water as land and boat as their home". They are accompanied by water all the year round, and their clothes are stained with water all the time. The clothes they wear are often half wet and half dry, and many of them suffer from severe rheumatism. Therefore, the author extracts the "hydrophilic" characteristics of Danmin's clothing, such as large cardigan (female), tailed shirt, tubular bamboo hat, saltwater song, fishing net, bamboo basket and other typical design materials.

3、 Transformation

"Transformation" means "change" and "change", which refers to the qualitative change of things. Transformation is an important link in the use of fashion design language. When "turn" and "transform", it will moisten things in the invisible, like flowing clouds and flowing water, "Zhuan" but "Buhua" will have the "suspicion" of taking out of context and mechanically copying. Levi Strauss thinks that art is a symbol system of social and cultural communication, and the ontological nature of art lies in its communication. The design and appreciation of art works need to go through the complex process of "coding" and "decoding". In order to achieve good visual and communication effect, it is necessary to excavate the contemporaneity and communication of design language, which involves the problem of "transformation". At this time, the creative inspiration and design materials of fashion design are no longer confined to the traditional clothing itself, but extended to a variety of (non) material design language.

In the creation of "ink Danyun" series clothing, the transformation of design language is the problem that the author tries to solve. The author transforms the design materials into materials, patterns, colors, shapes, crafts and other elements directly related to clothing, or turns vulgarity into delicacy, or backwardness into advanced, or simplicity into gorgeous, or turns the author's inner sorrow into sad or cheerful rhythm and rhythm... Of course, all these should be based on the designer's creative thinking The beauty of form is used as the expression technique. The author extracts the hydrophilic characteristics of the clothing of the dans in Shatin, and transforms it into the aesthetic image of ink and wash dyeing. The color mainly adopts the blue gradual tone composed of dark blue, light blue and blue gray, and the gradual tone composed of black and white gray. The main modeling of the clothing is type A and type H, and light fabrics such as silk and organza are mainly selected. The clothing style has absorbed the characteristics of the cardigan, and retains the stand collar elements of the tailed shirt and the cardigan shirt in the design details, most of which are dresses and gowns with smooth lines. The clothing patterns are mainly black and white and blue water and ink landscape, and the digital printing technology restores its rich and gradual colors. The ink and wash pattern is dyed on silk fabric. From deep to light, it is like time flowing silently. The combination of reality and reality, and the mutual generation of meaning and beauty render the ever-changing artistic beauty and embody the beauty of traditional ink and wash.

Lingnan is hot, humid and rainy all year round. Dans often use net, gauze or cotton cloth around bamboo hats to protect them from the sun, rain and mosquito bites. This kind of life wisdom for thousands of years has brought inspiration for the author to create the beauty of Lingnan water town. The author uses black hollow bamboo hat to replace the black net yarn in the hat decoration, and uses tassels to replace the black net yarn in the hat decoration The artistic conception is transformed into clothing elements. The fishing net became the stockings and gloves on the model's body, and the story of "shark crying beads" was transformed into the black and white pearl bracelet worn by the model. Dans use bamboo baskets to catch shrimp all year round, while the author uses wire baskets instead of "fish baskets" to hold flowers.

4、 Integration

In ancient Chinese dictionary, "fusion" means "melting" and "melting", and "harmony" means "conforming", "suitable" and "matching", and "fusion" means that several different things coordinate with each other and finally integrate into one. In fashion design, creators should pay attention to the expression of "beauty", because no matter how time and space change, how historical and cultural changes, human pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty is eternal and common. At the same time, only beautiful things can smoothly enter the present and integrate into life. With the rapid development of global fashion trend, extensive cultural exchanges between the East and the west, and convenient dissemination of fashion information, the boundary between multi cultures has been constantly broken through, and integration has become an irresistible historical trend. Fusion is not only the basis for the continuation of tradition and the realization of inheritance, but also the starting point of promoting innovation and development. It is also an important means to realize the expression of fashion design language. The integration of design language into "beauty" can be divided into four levels: "emotional beauty", "shape beauty", "rhyme Beauty" and "environment beauty".

1. Emotional beauty

The artistic emotion is the thought or emotion produced by the author to the creation object or the creation process in the artistic design process. With the deepening of the research on the culture of the dans in Shatin, the author deeply sympathizes with the dans who have been bullied for a long time in the bottom of the society in history, moved by their frank, optimistic and sincere character, and infected by their life style of living in the present and enjoying themselves in time. These sincere gratitude inspired the creation. On the contrary, the designers are not sincere in understanding or not fully involved in the creation, which leads to more superficial or unsatisfied works. The designer's "no words" to say and no "feelings" to express can be reflected on the clothing works, which are disordered, complicated and stacked words or images that deviate from the visual aesthetic.

2. Beautiful shape

"Form beauty" mainly refers to the formal beauty of clothing. The "beauty of form" of clothing is mainly realized by modeling, materials, structure, technology, pattern design and location layout. The pattern and material of clothing should be fashionable and novel, the structure should be relaxed, the modeling should be appropriate, and the pattern pattern should be reasonable. Form beauty is a form element with appropriate proportion, harmonious rhythm and rhythm, rich in aesthetic feeling, which is helpful to the expression of dress style and realize the harmony and unity of aesthetic and practicality of clothing art. The modeling design of the series of clothing originated from the traditional Danmin clothing, but the style is simple and the modeling outline is simple, which reflects the fashion design to keep pace with the times.

3. Charm

Hegel thinks that "the value of art lies in its implication, and it shows the vitality, emotion, style or spirit of the soul with the help of external images". "Yiyun" refers to implicit meaning and sentiment. The "beauty of meaning" in clothing refers to the beauty of meaning. Designers need to refine the meaning and spirit of design language, and pay attention to the combination of design language and clothing culture connotation to reflect the beautiful meaning and interest. It is particularly important to create the overall atmosphere and implication in the clothing display - the dim light makes people calm in the imagination, the music affects the audience's thoughts, the salt water song contains the beauty of "fishing boat singing late", and the singer's strong and desolate singing rapidly leads the audience into the imagination of Lingnan water town.

4. Beautiful scenery

"Situation" is produced and developed by characters or plots After being designed by the creator, it can cause the fluctuation of people's mood and show the purport of spirit. The "situation" in artistic creation refers to the reconstruction and combination of various elements in a specific time and space, and finally merges into one in time and space Body. Modern fashion design has comprehensive characteristics. There are certain correlations between clothes and human body, time, space and viewers. So, fashion The beauty of design situation is not a single dress, but a comprehensive and integrated cultural space.

"Emotional beauty", "form beauty", "rhyme Beauty" and "state beauty" are gradually advancing. Emotion is the origin, meaning is the first, form is attached to rhyme, and emotion, shape and meaning rhyme finally turn into environment. However, the four are not parallel in design, sometimes even in contradiction or opposition. Designers can choose one or two of them as the main performance content. In the "ink Danyun", the author pays more attention to the expression of "implication beauty" and "environment beauty", combines the freehand brushwork of clothing art with the beauty of stage situation, and integrates multiple factors into one, reflecting the fusion of fashion design.

5. Indispensable imagination

Einstein believed that "imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited and imagination is infinite". In the design and creation, the author imagines the dans' clothing culture, Lingnan culture and ink and wash elements to express the beauty of freedom and situation of dans sailing in the sky and earth. First of all, the author decorated a lot of tassel elements in clothing and hat decoration. When the model is walking, the tassels on the hat ornaments sway with the wind, swaying in various shapes. There is a "dialogue" between the clothes and the human body, either moving or static, or slow or urgent, forming the space-time flow between lines, surfaces and bodies. Tassels, clothing and human body curves reflect each other to express the elegant beauty of fashion art and interpret the rainy natural environment characteristics of Lingnan region in a harmonious way. Secondly, the author also pays attention to the imagination of design elements. Landscape not only exists in clothing in two-dimensional plane form, but also in three-dimensional form. When the model walks, the "two-dimensional landscape" and "three-dimensional landscape" interact, realizing the author's imagination of real and illusory coexistence of multi-dimensional landscape. The multi-dimensional landscape and the swaying tassels reflect the flowing poetic flavor, which is the imagination of the creator about the breeze blowing and the blue waves rippling on the rivers, lakes and sea surface. (Fig. 1-3)

epilogue

The synchronization of global fashion, the fierce competition among clothing brands, and the increasingly broad international vision of consumers are the driving forces for the continuous innovation and development of fashion design. Therefore, designers need to constantly expand the fashion design language from the height of culture, the depth of history and the breadth of materials. At the same time, as a comprehensive plastic art, fashion design puts forward higher requirements for the professional ability and comprehensive quality of the designer. He or she not only needs to master the relevant professional knowledge and skills, maintain the sensitivity and adaptability to cultural changes, but also needs to skillfully use a variety of design languages to interpret modernity. "Fusion" is the essence of Chinese traditional Confucian thought and culture, and also an important starting point of constructing the aesthetic thought of Oriental Art. Designers not only need to have integrated thinking concept, but also have the ability to integrate various resources and flexibly use various elements. Fashion design also needs to integrate traditional and modern, Oriental and western, past and present, art and Commerce and other elements on the basis of extensive involvement in the quintessence of Chinese culture at all times and in modern times, so as to embody the uniqueness and contemporariness of Chinese fashion culture through design language. Traditional clothing culture in the integration to achieve continuity and innovation, in the integration to promote the exchange of eastern and Western civilization, at the same time, will also lead the development of the future world fashion trend in the continuous integration.

Note: the content of this paper is reprinted in "the use of fashion design language from the perspective of artistic anthropology from the creation of ink and wash Danyun", fashion designer, No. 9, 2020, pp. 122-128, author: Guo Xiaoxiao.