ANESSA STARKER

I'm a fashion designer passionate about the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and fashion theory. I create garments that honor the fundamentals of construction while pushing the boundaries of what fashion can be. My research focuses on sustainability and supermodern fashion, exploring how thoughtful design can address both environmental responsibility and the evolving landscape of modern fashion design. This portfolio showcases the journey behind my thesis project and final year work, revealing the process, experimentation, and creative problem-solving that drive my approach to design.

Read Full Thesis

Re:Re:Re: Supermodern Fashion

This work looks at how the supermodern condition affects the design, consumption, and conceptualizing of fashion in the 21st century. It considers how transportation systems, malls, and social media has affected the way in which we make and consume fashion and how these things has affected sustainability.

At the start of this research, I was very interested in the experience of non-places. I wanted to explore how the isolation and loneliness that happen in them could be expressed through fashion. Initially, I wanted to create ethereal pieces of clothing that explore the transitory nature of non-places.

I wanted to create architectural shapes that convey the urban context of non-places.

Drapery Experiments

In this phase of research, I wanted to explore what supermodern fashion meant. I decided to look more into ephemerality. The idea of using found objects to make new clothing addresses the transitory nature of non-places as well as sustainability. I was interested in using men's shirts because I felt they were part of the urban uniform, as a part of the suit. I personally liked the look of the tailored button-down shirt, and they tend to be quite standardized in construction, so it is easy to combine shirts together or translate them to a pattern.

I used five shirts and draped them on a mannequin to create new silhouettes.

Object Systems

To start creating these objects, I cut up a tailored shirt and draped it on a mannequin, going back to the lessons I learned from the draping experiment. I then sketched out a few possible interpretations of what I was seeing on the mannequin and then made these versions

Creating a series of drawings

To investigate reproduction and banality represented in supermodernity I wanted to create a fashion collection that interprets and re-interprets the same base set of elements over and over again. This sheet is an investigation of the ideas that lead to the final designs

Discovery of thesis themes

This chart examines the different themes in my thesis and maps them out to create the initial thesis.

FINAL SUPERMODERN FASHION

I chose the jeans, T-shirt, and backpack as the markers of the dominant dress. These items all became mass-produced ubiquitous items, so ubiquitous that it is likely that almost every person on earth might own at least one of them.

I selected these items and then repeated them over a series of drawings to see what this type of exaggeration might visually look like.

1/1

Theses are 1/2 scale experiments looking at the collection I designed for supermodernity

FINAL YEAR

In the final year of my Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Design. I looked at various approaches to sustainable fashion. I was inspired by organic lines and 1960s mod clothing to create the silhouettes for this collection. The collection explores sustainability by increasing the wearability of clothing by creating designs that wrap around the body. This allows people to keep wearing the clothes even as their bodies change.

Wrapped up

Zero- Waste

I started exploring sustainability by looking at zero-waste pattern drafting and upcycling clothing.

Experiments in Zero-waste and Up-cycling

Developing the collection

After a series of explorations, I began to look at ways to wrap clothing around the body. In particular, I was inspired by Japanese working pants and the wrap dress. I also explored knit fabric to allow more stretch in clothing.

FINAL COLLECTION

In the final collection of I kept a neutral colour palette and focused on items that would have general appeal and be wearable for everyday.

Flight

Flight was a mini-collection exploring the dual ideas of constraint and freedom. I was inspired by images of butterfly wings and World War 1 pilots' uniforms to create these designs. I wanted to focus on tailoring techniques to create clothing in interesting shapes.

Some Samples in this collection