MATERIAL BY DESIGN

The collage process is simple in principal but technically requires understanding of placement of print on the body in a garment for thorough technical set up with the photographer to capture image at 1:1 scale with minimum distortion.

During the workshop photographer Bronwyn Kidd and I focused on technical requirements for delivering a high quality bespoke piece of clothing using this custom print. While I guide the client towards their desired outcome and experiencing the thrill of the ‘happy accident’ which is transformative for them.

The 2019 workshop was intended to give rise to one print and one garment, but Pandora’s portfolio of prints has to date produced three truly bespoke garments and one modified MBP garment transformed into a fourth bespoke garment . Thus far exceeding expectations for longevity of client engagement in the process — years after the actual event.

Pandora’s initiation of the Keith Haring Commission was an exceptional development in collaboration expanding beyond the choices of cloth, colour, and form to collaborating in the innovation of production processes. While remaining respectful of artist intellectual property by placing herself and the urban setting too.

In a world struggling with mass-manufacturing, the challenges of a search for meaning in material culture combined with search for solution to some of the most pressing issues of our time - this sort of ‘three heads collaborating together’ thinking is an exciting pathway out of the the fashion industrial complex that mass-manufacturing has created.

In fragile, post-pandemic hybrid realities, photographer Bronwyn Kidd was briefed digitally and virtually by Susan Dimasi now based in regional Victoria. Bronwyn and Pandora did the shoot, sending shots back to me during the day - this is testament to collaborative design process where the team were not in the same room at the same time but achieved a highly bespoke outcome.

For a woman to be comfortable and able to function in her clothes is considered a baseline human right in the MBP world. For her to also like the look of herself in her comfortable and functional clothing – a feminist birthright. So here is where I really focus on supporting my client’s needs with — clothes designed and crafted to fluctuate with a woman’s ever-changing body. Clothes that can be modified and look even better than they did in the first iteration. After her body changes, forever.

For the client, this means she doesn’t have to be or remain a very specific body size to enjoy wearing pieces she’s invested in. She doesn’t have to ‘diet’ to get into a piece for an important presentation or special occasion - the piece will move with her. She doesn’t have to worry about ‘her body not being right’. Or ever blame herself, for something not fitting. The wearer can be visible on her own terms. The role of the piece is to support and elevate her, no matter how she is feeling or what life is throwing at her that day.

MBP’s ‘cut’ is guided by a fusion of tailoring and drapery. Tailoring in minimal cutting of cloth for zero or least amount of waste but maximum positive impact for the wearer. Maximum positive impact for the wear means items of clothing they dub their ‘go-to’s’. Pieces they cannot stop themselves from wearing because they love them so much. This moves directly counter to the culture of disposable fast fashion. The wearer/commissioner also becomes an ambassador for cultural change.

The normative fashion process leaves people out of all the decisions about cut, colour, pattern, cloth, construction details, function form and fit. Most women feel like they buy a trade-off, for example, I like the colour but not the style. Their choice is limited to buy yet another compromise, or walk away empty handed.

MBP’s collaborative process puts all of those choices back in a woman’s hands and empowers her to use them with expert guidance toward her outcome she desires and opens her up to possibilities beyond what she imagined.

Across these two projects you see something really exciting, first the client steps into the process of collaging a custom print and it has a far reaching ripple effect beyond the first engagement.

Then she instigates being the driver of process! By requesting we take the collage process off the table and into her personal history, stories and art embedded in the city of Melbourne.

This has given rise to a new experiential process now to be offered to other clients that will be piloted in Italy in September 2024.

MBP creates these experiences to engage clients in a process that delivers them beautiful custom and bespoke outcome that they will love and wear to death. Pandora commissions her pieces in the same enlightened spirit of wanting that.

She also commissions in the informed mindset of patronising a local artisan with two decades of innovating and teaching the artisanal systems that define MBP — instead of buying a luxury import.

Pandora continues to live in the inner north in a warehouse conversion and her early career in printmaking and the arts lives on through her bespoke garments in her new philanthropic roles.

MBP was recognised in the 2006 PDA Winner, Fashion and Winner Overall for a project called Punch Out that was an innovation in zero waste cutting - a fundamental principle still being practised and shared with clients today.

For two decades MBP has been at the forefront of up-cycling garments, know in house as a Make Over and promoting the culture of re-use before making ”new” amongst her old and new clients.

This is an ‘old-school’ example of circular design. What I mean by that is beautiful materials used in excellent design that people:

1. Cherish and hang on to
2. Find ways to reuse and repurpose in their life.
3. Typically will determine who the second owner is for their prized possessions.

The photographic images of Pandora’s Vixen sarongs incorporated into the first iterations of and the subsequent MBP pieces, from both projects (long vest iteration 1 and then the further adaption of the long vest concept in the Keith Haring Commission) have been made from silk and leather.

Both are core materials on the MBP palette because they are:
1. Enduring - they will last for a long time.
2. Biodegradable.

Good materials + good design + personal connection is a combined with craft that is too good, too cherished, too meaningful to throw away and will always be re-gifted meaningfully to people who will convert the piece as much or more as the original owner.

On a conceptual level there is a circularity of design connection between practices captured in this message from Georgina Chapman, Vixen Founder

“in fact l recently created some scarves for a client in colours to work back with some of your beautiful dresses.”