During the commune part of the project, my group are going to the countryside to stay at one of our group members houses, in Guildford. The idea behind this decision is to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city for a few days, where we can reset our minds and initiate our projects in an alternative way to how we would go about it in a city environment, Through going into the country, we aren't allowing common city London references to inspire us, instead, we plan to seek inspiration in wild life and a more natural environment, which in turn should cause our project direction to be shifted from what we would usually be drawn to. Over the 3 days of commune, we will each be dedicated a day to explore our own project and conduct tests and samples that will intern influence our development of ideas and aid the progression our our individual projects. In addition, we have also written a manifesto which we will abide by religiously as a group, allowing discipline and structure to be obtained within our group, resulting in a more productive and constructive 3 day period, where we can make the most of using one another to our advantage and progressing as fashion communicators on a whole. I feel that this has potential to be a super exciting and engaging process, where we can push ourselves in new surroundings and be inspired by the unique habitat around us. I truly feel that this 3 day period will force I project into an avenue that we haven't yet explored, and to me, that's really intriguing.

During the 3 days of commune, me, Jasmine and Harry made a big effort to get to know one another on a deeper level, which in turn resulted in a much more dynamic and constructive experience. Through setting a very structured manifesto from the start, it allowed us to divide our time effectively and make the most of each day. Through processes such as long morning walks in the Surrey hills, group food shops and cooking with one another, it enabled us to bond over simple activities, where we could spend time understanding each other and conversing about each of our projects. During these times of of the day, other than taking photos, we would not be on our phones, and just tried to live in the moment as much as possible, taking in all of our surroundings, and seeking inspiration and reference from unusual, sometimes mundane places, in order to direct our projects in new, unseen directions. Personally, I found commune to be an extremely positive and constructive experience. It honed my team work skills, enabled me to get a better understanding of how I can use others skills to enhance my own processes and outcomes, and why it is so important to collaborate within my practice as a fashion communicator. During simple process like cooking the meals at dinner time, we would designate each person a few rolls, utilising our varying skills effectively, resulting in a much more fluid and successful experience. In my opinion, this is a very transferable skill that I can carry across with me to my practice and future work. Figuring out one another strengths and using this to your advantage is a vital part of any collaborative process, and this is something that I feel I understand much more as a result of speeding 3 days with the others. More so, through leaving the hustle and bustle of the city and venturing into a countryside surrounding meant that we could clear our heads and not rely on the common inspirations of city living. It felt very refreshing to undertake a creative process that didnt revolve around London and all that the city involves. To be creative in this type of country side environment was really engaging, as I felt it allowed me to open my eyes to new ways of referencing, and prevented me from relying on the overused and over saturated inspiration the city can have on your creative process.for example, grey buildings, brick walls, graffiti tube stations, are all things that I feel are played out with fashion imagery, and so to find beauty and potential in natural surroundings felt exciting. During our long walks, I found myself fascinated with this woodland setting, and felt that I was constantly intrigued by the smaller details that you might not notice if you aren't looking analytically. For example, in the photos in the storyboards further down, I snapped a range of closeups of things such as buried tree roots, foot prints in muddy puddles and moss on tree bark. I found so many beautiful textures and subtle features of nature that really caught my eye and inspired me. Through these minor discoveries, it has pushed me to want to use this environment for my shoot even more. There is something mystical, eerie and powerful about woodlands and forestry, and I plan to explore this further with my project. In conclusion, commune enabled me and my peers to get better grasps on our projects, it pushed us to find strengths in one another and honed our skills as collaborative communicators, helping one another where it was necessary. As a result, the 3 day commune was a success and it has initiated the foundations of our final projects sufficiently.

During this week after commune, we had a bit of time to reflect upon what we had discovered, and how our project proposals had developed over the period of the previous week. This was a super constructive time as I was able to look back at some of my commune test outcomes and decide how I wanted to direct my project from here. I reflected upon what I have achieved and the success of the tests shoots I did, and how this would intern inspire the development of my ideas and experimentations in the project to come. Through doing this, I was able to Gert a better sense of my own concept and could strengthen the narrative and context I had previously began to construct as I now had a greater understanding of what style photos I was looking to create, a bit more of an idea for styling choices and location also. 

Throughout this week, we were asked to explore the kings cross area for potential locations to present a piece of work from our projects so far. The idea behind this was to start to think about purpose, audience, location and scale from very early on in our projects. Through doing this, we are able to cater for and alter our projects as we go to fit for our idea fo the audience, and how we would like the work to be seen by public in a real life situation. I feel that this is a really important part of the process as a communicator, as the message and emotion that you are trying to convey through your work is the most important part of it, and exploring ways of getting your audience to react and feel a certain way about something is vital to a successful communication of work. I found this process of scouting the area fo kings cross to be a constructive process because it instantly made me begin to consider the scale, format, surroundings and type of person that I would want to see my communicative piece of work. If these subjects were left until the end of the project to think about, the impact and effect of he communication would lack massively, as it would not have been catering for all of these things throughout, meaning that it would have much less impact than an outcome that has carefully considered each area and been continually developed to cater for this along the way. At this point, although I wasn't entirely sure of what my final outcome would look like, I had an idea that I wanted it to be a series of posters, potentially with an accompanying short film. Knowing just this was enough for me to start considering the scale and audience. In the kings cross area, I found huge plant pots around the google head quarters area, that were placed up against concrete walls. I felt that this could be a perfect location for me to present my styling outcomes or even final images. The plant pits housed all sorts of greenery, standing tall against the concrete back drop. I had the idea that I could print or project my outcomes directly onto the brick wall behind the growth, so that it looks like the work is sitting within the plant pot and greenery when viewed from head on. This would give the illusion the person in the photo is stating within the greenery, which directly relates to my project title and context of 'Beyond the pines'. Beyond the pines is based around this idea fo ebbing out of touch with nature and how important it is to send a certain amount of time away from city living and in a natural, raw habitat like the mountains or woodland./countryside. Using this small area of contained greenery (the plant pots) as the set for me to present my photographic outcomes within would be a great way to bring my project full circle and relate the location to the narrative fit my work, even in a city space.

After commune, I began to reconsider my project proposal slightly, in order to cater for my other interests throughout foundation so far. I decided that I wanted to incorporate a a design and making process into the project, allowing me to further explore my interest for fashion design, but then still finalising the project with an FCP focused outcome, utilising the garment I end up creating. I plan to keep the rest of the project the same, meaning I will still use a woodland 'pine' setting to shoot my garment, and I want to achieve a series of posters as the final outcome for the project, potentially with a short accompanying 30 second film. After realising I wanted to include this design element into the 'beyond the pines' project, I decided that I made most sense to use this idea of being within the pines and the sports/ activities that we associate with that. For example, mountaineering such as skiing, rock climbing and hiking all take place in an environment where pine trees are most common, that being in the mountains and hills. Therefore, I concluded that the references for my design work would come from looking into mountaineering, and the gear and equipment they utilise to complete such tasks, and using this as shape, silhouette and material reference for a design process, that will eventually result in me physically creating a mountaineering inspired garment. In addition to this, mountaineering sports such as skiing and hiking are sports that are quite close to my heart, as I have been brought up doing them from a young age. This allows me to have a much deeper connection to my project, as it will revolve around sports that I am fond of, and have a special place in my heart. The fact that Im knowledgable in these fields will also help me to direct and understand the equipment and materials on a deeper level, as I have experienced lots of it, and so when it comes to designing, I will have a better understanding of what will physically work and what won't. Carrying on with this, another reason I have chosen to base my design process upon these activities and the gear they utilise is because ever since I have been in London during foundation, I feel like I have not had the time to enjoy my hobbies so much, as the majority of the time I am working on different projects that I don't get the ability to go out explore nature as much as I did before. For me, this is quite a personal thing, and I feel that it is so important that we interact with nature and get away from social media, shopping and city lifestyle from time to time to appreciate a more simplistic and peaceful world. I find it quite sad how I don't get to spend as much time riding bikes in the hills, skiing in the mountains and hiking. These are things that really make me happy and it is hard sometimes to accept that I doth have the ability to do it as much as I used to. Therefore, this design and project is very much based on my own experiences with mountain based sports and being in that beautiful environment, and how in general, people do not seeped enough time interacting with the natural world, and take such things for granted. The title of project 'beyond the pines' has a slightly different meaning ever since I introduced this design element to it, where I will be referencing mountaineering sports for design inspiration. Beyond the pines will refer to the fact that when you are talking part in such mountain sports as climbing and skiing, often you are within and beyond the pine trees, but quite often the heights you may reach are beyond that of which pine trees can even grow. This is a very direct reference to the word beyond the pines. In addition, the name is a reference to the fact that people taking part in these sports are in lots of cases pushing what is physically possible in order to be the best that they can be; going above and 'beyond' to achieve their goals. From this point, the research references will change slightly, to cater for my exploration into mountaineering gear, looking back at old photos, from camp sites to climbing gear. These are all things I will consider when enduring the design process. 

At this point in the project, I feel I am getting a really good grasp on the context, narrative and references that accompany my process. I have achieved this through lots of research, seen on my research page, and also through physical experimentation with equipment on the body through draping processes but also through shape creation in my sketchbook before hand. I began to extract shapes form ym collages and from photos of equipment that I had taken to started to arrange them in unique ways through collaging. This was very much an experimental process where I wanted to start generating some inspiration and ideas for silhouette and shape in my sketchbook, before actually exploring shape on the human form. I decided not to rush the design process and to explore all areas fo it so I can get a better understanding of how I can create shape, before considering the body. This was a very constructive process and I feel like I now have a better understanding go how I can explore forms and structures through the layering and orientation of shapes. The following stage from this was to then take these shapes and use them as inspiration for creating silhouettes that fit the bodies form, in both conventional and unconventional ways, experimenting with all possible options. This consisted of me cutting and sticking images in various combinations on the body to see how I could use them to create drama and effect, while still relating to the reference images and ideas I had explored before hand. The reason I experimented with this before going on to actual physical draping was because I felt it was necessary for me to get a better feel for how I would use existing equipment,ent and materials to create shapes on the body that I could then in turn reference in my designs and line up. If I was to go straight into draping, there would be little for me to refer to and this could result in a rushed and uninformed draping process, which would not have related to my brief and project concept as closely, making it feel quite impersonal and un-relatable to my previous work. I actually opted to print out images of the objects I would be draping with to that I could get a feel for ways of manipulating them in order to provoke emotion and feeling when they are draped on the human form. I wanted to explore how I could make the viewer feel something or relate to the shapes on the body, realising the reference point for the work and how I've portrayed this through my choice of layering and silhouette.in addition to this, I also decided to print out images of the things I would use to drape because this would then allow for people to understand how I came to make the decisions I did through the draping images, and there would be a clear relation between the non physical and physical draping outcomes, making for a much more intuitive and fluid design process to be achieved. These processes have really aided my progression in realising potential design ideas for my garment outcome and have also allowed me to see where I may have been being too ambitious in other ideas. I realised that some of the shapes I was creating previously were too abstract for my to physically construct out of vintage hiking equipment, and so ti made me re think some of my initial ideas and refine my design process to a point where it would be more achievable and realistic, based on my skill set as a maker.

After speaking with Tim about the direction of my project, I began to realise that I was slightly mislead with what I am currently doing. We discussed that my draping process felt a bit more like styling than draping non the body due to the wide use of colours, prints and materials. Through this conversation I began to realise that I need to strip thing back and start working with neutral materials, that don't take away from form and structure, and clearly convey the shapes I'm trying to create on the human form. I now feel that my draping process somewhat relied on the equipment and gear I was using, rather than just the shapes I was creating on the body inspired by my previous research. For this reason, I feel that now, in these next stages, it is very important that I develop my ideas further, stripping the colour out of materials I'm working with so It feels more like a blank canvas of structures and forms, rather than intricate prints and colours. Due to the new circumstances, and not being able to access fabrics, and materials I require due to the Corona virus lockdown, I will have to resort to using household items to continue this process. In a sense, this may be a really constructive thing for my project as it will help me to work within limitations and not relying on expensive materials to complete a project. I have decided that a white bed sheet will work as a neutral material to drape with. I plan to create similar shapes as before, but using rope, bungee cords and white sheeting to produce these drapes. I will still use the bulky equipment I used before as bases for these shapes, but they will be covered In white material, meaning the structures are a lot more defined and clear. The idea of tying the shapes and fastening them with rope and bungees is inspired by artist Christo. This is something I will more throughly explore, as some of my previous tests proved to be really successful and some of my most engaging outcomes. For example where I had wrapped a ski boot in a plastic bag and bungeed around the silhouette, creating an abstract like sculpture. I feel this particular piece was successful beciuadse it was a intriguing silhouette to wrap and cinch, but also, I used a neutral coloured bag, meaning the shape was easily definable, which is something I need to develop and explore more thoroughly now.