Social and Communication Skills – Keira Cook

To start I found an image from a collection of postcards by Jessica Harris introducing me to images of Africans in the Diaspora. Harris is a deltiologist (someone who collects postcards) and has been doing so for over 25 years. She now only collects postcards of West of African people working with food, images of festivities and images of women, revealing aspects of material culture. “they show us the faces of those gone before, captured for eternity in the dignity of their work, the calm of their repose, and the  joy of their festive occasions” – Jessica Harris

Following on from this I began looking at the clothes the women were wearing in the different postcards, the style of the clothing, the texture and the quality that was appropriate for that particular time period. Harris’ collection shows images of people from the 1860’s to the 20^thcentury. Due to my interest in fashion, textiles and period clothing I wanted to find a garment with strong connections to my original source. Looking at the shape, fabrics and strong silhouettes of the clothing being worn in the postcards I began looking at designers who find inspiration from the same elements and appearances of West African women from various eras.

Collections.vam.ac.uk. (2017). West African | Etches, Matilda | V&A Search the Collections. [online] Available at: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O83594/west-african-evening-dress-etches-matilda/  [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017].

Designer Matilda Etches created this stunning full length evening dress in 1948 made from claret and brown batik printed cotton, inspired by the traditional wrapped garments of West African women now on display as part of the V&A couture collection. “The crisp cotton fabric, printed in Manchester, was intended for export to Africa. The fabric design imitates Indonesian batik, and the borders feature the letter ‘V’…its morse code signal. V-for-Victory was a popular subject for export cotton prints after the end of the Second World War” – V&A museum. The V&A Museum in which this garment is displayed gives an educated summary and information on the garment, furthering my knowledge on the dress, what it was made from and the original inspiration behind why this piece was made.

This has taught me how to create stronger links and relationships between separate sources and has shown how educational and informative research is necessary when looking to create something with a strong context. This task has shown me how to create a good foundation for a project with no limitations in terms of sources and inspiration and has shown the importance of references and giving credit to those who assisted in guiding your project along. Building a good platform to start from will help structure and obtain the flow of a project or task and will ensue that the majority of things I have wanted to discover have been found and analysed accordingly, however I do wish to further my knowledge on the history of the objects I have looked at in the future in order to further understand the meaning behind why they were made and what impact this had on the creator or how this may affect their future work.