Mcquillan Rissa Nen Roberts 2013
Mcquillan Rissa Nen Roberts 2013
Mcquillan Rissa Nen Roberts 2013
1 2013
ABSTRACT
The Cutting Circle is an international research initiative by fashion designers/patternmakers
and educators Timo Rissanen, Julian Roberts and Holly McQuillan. By exploring alternative
methods of making clothes and patterns, we have employed 'risky' design practice, research
and teaching to develop zero waste fashion and subtraction cutting. The project manifested
as an intensive two-week practice-based research event, where via a series of collaborative
collisions, experiments and design intersections, we asked the following three questions.
What costs/benefits can we identify to aid the development of a sustainable fashion industry
through risk taking at the intersection of our design practices? What new knowledge arises
in risky collaborative design practice? And how can this new knowledge be best
communicated to foster an environment of risk-taking within the traditionally risk adverse
fashion industry? This paper primarily discusses our responses to the first two questions and
related issues raised. It covers how experimenting with each others design practice and
practicing in each others creative space as we both designed and made, enable the free
transfer of ideas and cross-pollination, thus expanding our ability to identify links, gaps and
opportunities. The Cutting Circle project has developed experimental practices with
emphasis on the fusion of aesthetics, patternmaking, craft and socially invigorating design.
Keywords: Fashion, Design, Patternmaking, Open Design, Collaboration, Experimentation
1.
Introduction
2.
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3.
1150mm x 2570mm
Fig. 6. The Cutting Circle Collaboration Shirt Fig. 6.1 VOID Collaboration Shirt Pattern
Pattern
Timo Rissanen: Towards the end of the two weeks,
I redesigned a shirt I had made for an exhibition
two years earlier. My intention was to resolve one
particular issue with the original shirt: in order for
it to be zero waste, two shirts needed to be cut, as
the marker of one interlocked into the marker of
another to create one rectangular marker (Figure
7). Redesigning the shirt was fast as
considerations such as garment shape and fit were
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4.1
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REFERENCES
[1] Abel, B. van, Klaassen, R., Evers, L. &
Troxler, P. (eds) 2011, Open Design Now:
Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive, BIS
Publishers, Amsterdam.
[2] Almond, K., 2010, 'Insufficient allure: the
luxurious art and cost of creative pattern
cutting', International Journal of Fashion
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