The Widows from Waste: The Visual Inspiration in the Designing Progress

The Inspiration always sparks from many different sources. It’s wonderful to dive into the different colors, images, and sounds to build up the atmosphere. Setting the mood right creates a small world that supports the designing progress. Letting the mind and the drawing hand wander many paths, peak behind all sorts of corners, and bring back to the paper whatever it is they find on the way can help to awaken numerous ideas. The good and the bad alike! But even the bad ideas can lead to something interesting later on.

Note: These pictures featured in the moodboard are not owned by me! Only cut or printed them out for this!

The history of mourning attire in Western countries was a significant source of inspiration for The Widows from Waste collection. Especially inspiring were the mourning clothes of the Victorian era, which were worn for lengthy time periods and followed rather interesting etiquette requirements. The modest and dignified ensembles were not made cheaply or in haste. A good deal of money and time was invested in them. The mourning attires were made of good quality fabrics and embellished with details. These beautiful clothes can still be admired even on first-hand basis by visiting museums in person or virtually. Even today the widows wear respectable clothes in the shades of black for the mourning, but hardly ever for such periods of time as in the past! And maybe for that and other practical reasons, not that much money is invested in the mourning attires. Sometimes any black, modest clothes will do.

Another wonderful source of visual inspiration came from the past as well. The beautiful black and white photographs throughout the last century and especially of the 40’s and 50’s femme fatales of the film industry lend their undying elegance to the designing space.

When thinking about mourning and widowhood, the flowers are always somewhere in the background. The withering flowers brought their own symbolism also to the creative cradle of The Widows. The flowers kept surfacing in the picture searches and from my personal photograph collections. The withered flowers themselves started to gather around the studio and my apartment. They crept their way also to the making-of photographs of The Widows from Waste. Even as I write this, they can be seen on this website’s front page! The beauty and the sorrow of the flowers have woven themselves deep into the fabric of inspiration supporting the designing work of this collection.

The materials of The Widows from Waste come from the used clothes. This means that almost every piece cut for the garments in the collection comes from different origins. These fabrics have been made all around the world over unknown periods of time. These clothes have forgotten their past, except for the fact that they were once owned and worn. While working with such a great variety of materials, they add their own quirks to the designs. A shirt with beautiful lace might spark one idea, a strange tear in a jacket another. There should always be room for a change of plans! After all, the fabrics are often forgiving in nature and they let the sewing hands dismember and reassemble them over and over again.

For me, designing is a way to tell a story. This leads to the designs being most affected by the narrative they embody. For each Widow, there is a tale and that tale can be read in the clothes themselves.

At the studio, most of the patterns are now completed, the prototypes of the trickier parts tested and it’s time to start concentrating on the sewing of the actual ensembles with full determination! As always, the WIP pictures and other extras can be found on TORN’s Instagram weekly.

Sincerely

Iina