Final Garment created for: From Clay to Couture - A Playful Approach to Making

From Clay to Couture investigates how ceramic form, texture, and material behaviour can inform contemporary fashion design through interdisciplinary collaboration. The research responds to an emerging imperative within fashion and textiles to reconsider materiality, processes, and cross-disciplinary practice in light of shifting paradigms in design education. The central research question explores how ceramic surfaces and sculptural qualities can influence pattern cutting, print design, and garment construction, and how collaborative making can extend creative methodologies across disciplines.
The project adopts a practice-based methodology combining collaborative ideation, material exploration and iterative prototyping. Working between a ceramicist, a pattern cutter and a print designer, the team engaged in cycles of experimentation: testing ceramic forms through 3D printing; analysing how ceramic silhouettes influence print; exploring how these elements reshape pattern-cutting decisions; and developing printed surfaces that respond to ceramic forms. Pattern development, garment construction and critical reflection were integrated throughout, enabling the team to refine methods while continually interrogating the relationship between ceramics and fashion.