Research on the Application of Creative Fabric Design in Street

Culture Clothing Design

Ning Zhang and Eakachat Joneurairatana

Silpakorn University, 22 Borommarachachonnani Rd. Talingchan, Bangkok 10170 Thailand

Keywords: Street culture, garment fabric design, creative application

Abstract: With the deepening of globalization, China has become more and more active on the international stage,

the communication between Chinese culture and world culture has become more and more frequent,

and the life of Chinese people has also undergone great changes. From the perspective of clothing field,

under the influence of foreign street culture such as hip hop, hippie, yuppie and punk, Chinese street

culture has been greatly developed and influenced the clothing industry. Street culture gradually

influences the clothing design needs and ideas of China consumers, and has become a part of modern

pop culture. In this context, this paper, on the basis of the current situation of street culture clothing

design, combined with the creative application of fabrics in clothing design, discusses and analyzes the

creative application of fabrics in street culture clothing design, thus providing referential suggestions

for enriching the contents of fashion clothing design in China.

1 INTRODUCTION

No matter what kind of clothing design, its main

content includes three key elements: fabric design,

modelling design and color design. The relationship

between these three elements is not independent.

They are closely related and influence each other.

Therefore, the same research on fabric innovation in

street culture clothing design is very important.

In the clothing design process and the innovative

design of fabrics, the existing fabric production cannot

meet the demand of clothing designer fashion design.

Therefore designers must combine their innovation

with a full understanding of the characteristics and

applications of fabrics, so that the needs of consumer

demands in clothing design can be met. This paper, on

the basis of the current situation of street culture

clothing design, combined with the creative

application of fabrics in clothing design, discusses and

analyzes the creative application of fabrics in street

culture clothing design, examining fabrics originality,

structure, color and materials. Further, this paper

studies the problems and application strategies of

creative innovation about fabrics in street culture

clothing design. Research contents include street

culture clothing fabric of creativity and style design,

fabric creativity and stylization design, fabric

creativity and fashion design.

2 MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Street culture clothing design is a pop culture

phenomenon, a modern social civilization product

and this fashion trend is largely the specific

environment under the consumer personalized needs

of comprehensive refraction. Nowadays, foreign

clothing brands have mushroomed and developed

rapidly. But, the development of China's garment

industry is slow, and there are still many problems in

the market competition of the garment industry. Most

of the products tend to be homogeneous, color, style

and fabrics are not different, making slow

development in the clothing industry and creating a

bottleneck period.

Some scholars(Chen FeiFeng and Zheng GaoJie,

2017) argue that, Chinese clothing culture has a long

history of development. How to integrate traditional

national culture and contemporary fashion innovation

culture into products is a matter of concern and

reflection for contemporary fashion designers. They

think that redesign and reprocessing of clothing

fabrics is a unique design method to enhance the

unique aesthetic effect of clothing.

The three major elements of clothing design are

color, style and fabric. Having a good modelling

design conception and good colour application, the

designer still needs to choose corresponding clothing

512

Zhang, N. and Joneurairatana, E.

Research on the Application of Creative Fabric Design in Street Culture Clothing Design.

DOI: 10.5220/0009446905120516

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities (ICONARTIES 2019), pages 512-516

ISBN: 978-989-758-450-3

fabric material to make the designer’s conception to

be perfectly displayed (Wu HongJie, 2017). With its

metaphorical meaning, if the science and technology

of clothing fabric is not understood, the selection of

fabric material will be wrong, and this would go

against the designer's original intent.

Therefore, how to give full play to the role of

fabric material from the aesthetic and scientific

aspects, the correct selection and application of fabric

is the most important part of clothing design. Neil

Barrett, a former design director at Prada men's wear

when it launched in 1995, has a track record of

employing high-tech fabrics in his tailoring. He was

among the first to use polyester stretch for Prada's

minimalist-chic suits, now a common men's wear

staple.

Today, with his own label, Barrett manipulates

textiles to create sculptural silhouettes with a

masculine aesthetic. He took to “emptying” the fabric

to preserve the construction but reduce weight,

essentially conjuring garments as comfortable as

travel clothing, and whipping up new surfaces. For

2017 fall, he introduced his version of an ecologically

friendly “fur,” digitally printing a photograph of a

black and a brown bear and multiplying it on various

pieces — a duffle coat, a sweatshirt, a bomber. “I tried

real fur, but it looked too retro, and eco fur was so

pantomime,” Barrett said, “explore further fabric

innovation. Every seaso

n I'm like: What's next?”

Figure 1: Neil Barrett Fall 2016 Ready-to-Wear Collection.

Italy. Designer: Neil Barrett.

Fashion designers' innovations in fabrics are

becoming more common. The designer nominated for

2017 LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize,

(Tillmann lauterbach, 2017) laments a lack of

innovation in textiles over the last three or four years,

but said he has sensed a big shift in attitude and

progress in the eco department. “Today it's important

to create a story. It's not just about the look, but about

how the garment was made, who will innovate the

fabric? who made it and was it good for the planet.”

Using synthetic fiber made from recycled PET

bottles may almost appear basic, considering that

Lauterbach has long been creating arty sweaters

knitted from second-hand denim threads and turning

down fabrics that do not meet his production criteria.

Although it's difficult to place a figure on how much

money and time fashion labels invest in fabrics

development, most designers queried acknowledged

that it was “substantial.” Berluti's artistic director

(Alessandro Sartori, 2016)said the company invests

“a lot” in fabric research and development in an

attempt to create “a new generation of garments,”

employing a number of technical quirks on luxurious

fabrics, melding elegance with functionality.

What really changes are the fabrics. They are one

of the building blocks of clothing. With them, you can

express yourself. That's why designers develop their

own colors, fabrics and patterns, and this represents

an unusual culture for a clothing brand. The most

experimental designers (Damir Doma,2017) believe

fabrics create value. Eighty percent of his fabrics are

designed exclusively for his collections. “Today

everyone wants to be and do luxury, and it turns into

such a cheap word — it doesn't mean anything

anymore. What is important is the idea of longevity,

and you can create that through substance. Our

substance is our fabric, it's what makes the piece; it's

a great tool,” he said.

The possibilities of working with materials are

endless. Stone washing, boiling wool or rubber

finishes are just the basics. Known for going against

the flow, Damir Doma launched his men's collection

proposing softly tailored, relaxed silhouettes at a time

when Hedi Slimane's slim fit at Dior Homme set the

tone. His goal is to up the exclusivity factor of his

textiles to 100 percent, but he said, “It only makes

sense if the value of the fabrics is visible, otherwise

people don't get it.” After all, In fashion we try to

make people look attractive, uplift them, make them

look better than they usually do. Our main goal is

beauty. Innovation in fabrics can help you achieve it.

3 ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT

SITUATION OF STREET

CULTURE CLOTHING DESIGN

Street culture clothing design is a pop culture

phenomenon, a modern social civilization product

and this fashion trend is largely the specific

environment under the consumer personalized needs

Research on the Application of Creative Fabric Design in Street Culture Clothing Design

513

of comprehensive refraction. In the 1980s, the

implementation of the reform and opening-up policy

promoted the communication development of foreign

culture in China and integrated the cultural

characteristics with Chinese characteristics in the

communication process.

Also in the 1990s, foreign hip-hop culture began

to be popular in China with its practical

characteristics, reflected in the field of clothing

design, mainly street culture clothing popular among

young people.In the 21st century, street culture

clothing brands have gradually developed in China,

although the establishment of street clothing brands

in mainland China was later than that in Hong Kong,

Macao and Taiwan. Due to the limitations of the time

background at that time, many problems were

exposed in the development process of street clothing

brands, such as the lack of investment capital,

ambiguous market positioning and the problems of

clothing design. Among them, the most prominent

problem was that the development of street clothing

couldn't keep up with the pace of the development of

the times. For a long time, due to the lack of in-depth

understanding of foreign street culture and China

street culture, the design of China street clothing has

often appeared as a simple combination of popular

elements in the design process, or even plagiarized

behavior, without breakthrough progress. Thus it can

be seen that the most prominent problem of domestic

street culture clothing design is the lack of innovative

design concept, which cannot truly integrate with

Chinese culture. Therefore, street culture clothing

cannot form a greater influence.

4 ANALYSIS OF CREATIVE

APPLICATION OF CLOTHING

FABRICS

4.1 Originality of Fabric Structure of

Clothing

For the innovative application design of clothing

fabric, it can be called the re-innovation of fabric

structure, which is mainly about the reconstruction of

the internal and external structure of clothing. In

general, the structural innovation means of clothing

fabric mainly include pattern folding, layering, inlays,

etc. Through the combination of various ways, the

fabric design presents different visual effects.

For example, pattern pleating is a common

method of fabric creative design, which is mainly to

create a visual effect of pleating by extrusion, and to

create different effects by different extrusion

methods. Layering is a creative combination of

different fabrics, so that different fabric structures and

layers can be combined in different ways. This

creative combination can be layered in different ways

to present different styles.

Mosaic is a kind of clothing fabric application

technique. This kind of design is a craft inherited

from ancient costume design, which has become a

way of innovative decoration expression.

4.2 Creative Colors of Garment

Fabrics

The creative application of fabric color is mainly

shown in the way of shaping different colors. In the

creative application process of China garment fabrics,

the main techniques are batik, smudge (like

Chinese ink prints) and hand painting, etc., followed

by embroidery and decals.

In the process of clothing design, color is the most

direct expression of individuality. Therefore,

designers must carry out creative processing and

reasonable color layout to enhance the visual effect of

clothing design.

For example, embroidery refers to the process of

clothing design, in which the designer designs

creative patterns and uses silk threads of different

colors for decoration.

Hand painting is also a kind of creative design

method frequently used by designers in the process of

clothing design, mainly through color dyes such as

propylene to present the designer's creativity

manually.

4.3 Creative Materials of Clothing

Fabrics

The originality of fabric material refers to the

innovation and improvement of the initial link of

fabric so as to present the feeling of fabric

mechanism. In the process of clothing design, the

fabric of different materials is mixed and woven, so

that the clothing works present diversified visual

effects and highlight the brand personality.

In the creative design process of China clothing

design materials, the commonly used methods are

knitting, blending, embossing, sewing and hollow

out.

ICONARTIES 2019 - 1st International Conference on Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities

514

Figure 1: 2016 Asia Quilt & Knit Festival works. Shanghai.

Photographer: ZHANG Ning

For example, hollow out refers to the process of

hollowing and carving with the help of special

machines and equipment, so as to achieve the effect

of a hollow out. Each hollow pattern is connected to

form a variety of creative patterns.

There is also knitting where the designer will use

hemp rope, ribbon, wool and other raw materials to

weave cross knot, a kind of knitting method, among

them most have the Chinese characteristic Chinese

knot.

5 PROBLEMS AND

APPLICATION STRATEGIES

OF CREATIVE DESIGN OF

CLOTHING FABRICS IN

STREET CULTURE

CLOTHING DESIGN

5.1 Creativity and Style Design of

Street Culture Clothing Fabrics

In many cases, in the design process of street culture

clothing, designers will consciously highlight the

expression of fabrics in the process of using fabrics,

but often designers mistake and weaken the weight of

the style of street culture clothing.

In the design process of street culture clothing

fabric, a lot of designers on the basis of classical

design, combine with the popular clothing aesthetic

vision, because there are no bigger differences in the

clothing style so people will tend to aesthetic on the

use of the fabric. Although some works are popular

with consumers, there's no real street culture clothing

design and integration of fabric innovative design.

Under this background, the street culture clothing

designers, first of all, should analyze clothing fabric

and material characteristics to find unique aesthetic

characteristics, and extract by means of special fabric

details of local aesthetic feeling. By this way, the

actual and the integration of street culture clothing

design, forms a harmonious state of simplification.

Secondly, when designing the style of street

fashion clothing fabric, we should try our best to

develop the design of clothing style with three-

dimensional elements, so as to highlight the

individuality of clothing fabric, and demonstrate the

innovative design of clothing with progress, thus

making the design connotation of street culture

clothing fabric more prominent.

Finally, in the process of creative design of street

culture fabrics, the fabric design can be applied to the

partial design of street culture clothing styles, so as to

play the role of putting the finishing touch, and

highlight the combination of street culture clothing

design fabric creativity and clothing style design.

5.2 Creativity and Style Design of

Street Culture Clothing Fabrics

Clothing style is the highlight of individuality, and

also the aesthetic value of fashion design, which is the

main characteristic(feature) of its artistic expression.

Thus can be seen the importance of style design in the

design process of street culture clothing fabrics.

This is precisely what Chinese street culture

clothing designers lack, many designers pursue

excessive foreign street fashion aesthetic, and ignore

the national cultural characteristic style integration

development, so that the China street culture clothing

design does not conform with Chinese aesthetic

standards, or even seen as an alternative culture.

Therefore, in the process of creative and style

design of street culture clothing fabrics, first of all,

street culture clothing design should cope with the use

of the fabric characteristics and properties and fully

grasp and consider the collocation between them,

while the most modern aesthetic value standard

should show the effect of fabric, so that the street

culture clothing through the innovative use of fabric

texture, grain, etc, is able to highlight the personalized

characteristic(features).

Secondly, designers of street culture clothing

fabrics should fully combine their own design

concepts with appropriate fabrics for application

design, so as to truly design street culture clothing

fabrics that conform to their own design concepts.

Finally, as the fabric has changed a lot with the

development of science and technology, new methods

Research on the Application of Creative Fabric Design in Street Culture Clothing Design

515

should be actively used in the design of street culture

clothing style to integrate with clothing design, thus

forming its own style characteristic.

5.3 Creativity and Fashion Design of

Street Culture Clothing Fabrics

In the process of street culture clothing fabric

creativity and fashion design, how to make designers

skillfully use appropriate fabrics and apply them to

the design of street culture clothing, and maintain the

coordination between parts and the whole is the

biggest difficulty, which is also the deficiency of

Chinese street culture clothing designers.

Therefore, in the process of street culture clothing

fabric creation and fashion design, first of all, street

culture fashion designers should pay attention to

highlighting the aesthetic value of the times from the

overall perspective of fashion design, and further

strengthen the partial structure and modeling of street

culture clothing, such as creative design on the hem

and cuff of clothing.

Secondly, it is necessary to fully understand the

corresponding fabric materials in the street culture

clothing design, and to design the street culture

clothing works by overall mastering the aesthetic

thinking direction of the clothing design.

Finally, the street culture clothing design makes

innovative and creative design through reasonable

use of manual printing and dyeing, space modeling

and other methods, and integrates simple fabrics with

street culture clothing, showing a highly coordinated

aesthetic feeling.

6 CONCLUSION

Since the reform and opening up, China's economy

has achieved a breakthrough development. At the

same time, the spiritual civilization demand of the

Chinese people is also growing, and the popularity of

street culture is also one of the manifestations. In the

design of street culture clothes, most existing fabrics

cannot meet the creative design requirements of

fashion designers. Therefore, fashion designers make

innovative design of clothing fabrics and create street

culture clothing products more in line with the needs

of China consumers by integrating modern, ethnic

and diversified fashion design concepts.

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Zhao Dani, J., 2017,30(03):161. Discussion on the creative

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