Mnemosyne Scent: Final Fashion Piece

The scents that I picked were red wine and cigar.

For my design, I really wanted to incorporate the idea of planes. Hence, I settled with planes with curved/ twisted and bent axes.

I wanted my design to have a heavy bottom and a top that is light and almost flying, to show the attribute of a cigar fume. Additionally, I want the design to have lots of flow-y curves that are intertwined (curve/twisted axis) and very layered to suggest the puff. Together with that, I want the curves to be created with sharp folds within (bent axis within the curve axis) to suggest the multi layered red wine.

Designer inspiration:

Yiqing Yin S/S 2011

Lan YU Haute Couture F/W 2014

Materials:

For material, I decided on organza as it has a stiff finish like the red wine scent and also is translucent, which reminds me a lot of cigar fumes. In addition, when light hit the organza from different angles, it shows different tones of grey and black, it is as if it is multi-depth, just like red wine.

As I want the design to pop from the body and seem like as it is just a cloud passing by in front of the body, I decided to pick a more dense and flat material, which is felt.

The Making:

To create the sharp folds on the organza, I folded two paper molds and place the organza in between. I will then use an iron to steam the papers, which contained the fabric. As organza is made from polyester, it will settle into the shape of the molds when under moisture and heat.

After that, I remove the pieces and attached them temporary onto the mannequin with pins to create the form.

That was when I realize that even after I steamed the organza, the folds does not hold. Hence, I went on to coat the folds with stiffener and hair spray. After that, I hand-stitched the organza onto the felt and add the straps.

And, I’m finally done.

Final Piece:

Close up on the curves and folds.

Organza also behaves differently under flash, which adds on to the mystery and the depth of the material.

Magazine shoot:

Fashion Show:

Model: Rachel Ng

Together with my dress, it is paired with my group mate Yi Lei’s glove. And as it is a collaborate effort, my dress carries most of the Dominant and the Sub Dominate features while Yi Lei’ glove carries most of the Sub Ordinate feature of this fashion collection.

This is her link to her explanation of her glove.

https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/ychong029/final-fashion-piece/

And the walk! We were all very excited!!

Overall, it was really fun, wish this project was longer to be honest HAHAHA.

Mnemosyne Scent: A2 Art Card models and Plastic Bottle model

A2 Art Card models:

MODEL ONE

MODEL TWO

MODEL THREE

A2 Artboard Cut-out model:

Red: D void

Blue: SD void

Yellow: SO void

Plastic Bottle model:

The scent I was trying to show was the flow-y scent of cigar fumes.

Dominant – Red

Sub Dominate – Blue

Sub Ordinate – Yellow

The translucent Evian bottle really allowed some overlapped areas to have a darker colour, which was really interesting. I also sanded some parts of the bottle to make it foggy and more translucent.

Mnemosyne Research and Analysis on Scents

Mnemosyne provides a simple interface for programming with persistent memory. Mnemosyne addresses two challenges: how to create and manage such memory, and how to ensure consistency in the presence of failures.

MNEMOSYNE RESEARCH

Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess of memory and was one of the Titans. She was the daughter of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). She gave birth to the 9 Muses after Zeus went to Pieria and stayed with her nine consecutive nights.

MNEMONIC DEVICES

Rhymes

A rhyme is a saying that has similar terminal sounds at the end of each line. Rhymes are easier to remember because they are acoustically encoding into our minds.

Chunking & Organization

Chunking is simply a way of breaking down larger pieces of information into smaller, more easily-managed information.

Objective organization is placing information into well-recognized, logical categories. Subjective organization is categorizing seemingly unrelated items in a way that helps you recall the items later. This can also be useful because it breaks down the amount of information to learn.

Imagery

Visual imagery is a great way to help memorize items for some people. By recalling specific imagery, it can help us recall information we associated with that imagery.

Imagery usually works best with smaller pieces of information.

OLFACTORY

The olfactory system, or sense of smell, is the part of the sensory system used for smelling (olfaction).

THE SCENTS

For the bad scents, I picked the scent of red wine.

The memory behind this scent was a couple months ago, my friend and I were playing a drinking game until we went a little too far. Between 6 people, we drank about close to 10 bottles of red wine. I was really drunk and a lot of throwing-up happened.

From that day onward, whenever I smell the richness of the red wine, the way the scent is woody and sour, makes me sick, nauseous and want to throw up.

Photo: Red wine

If my scent was a person, it will live in:

I image it to look like:

For the good scent, I chose the scent of cigars.

Ever since young, my grand father has smoked a lot of cigars because he has a cigar company. He always smokes one during a business conference which constantly makes me link this scent to wealth, class and success. The cigars he made smells really good as the tobacco used is natural and is not mixed with chemicals, which differentiates his cigars from others and also from normal cigarettes.

Hence, this thick, earthy and mature scent really makes my mind at ease.

Photo: Cigars

If my scent was a person, it will live in:

I image it to look like:

BRAINSTORM/ MINDMAP

RECYCLED PLASTIC ART

Additional research links: https://research.cs.wisc.edu/sonar/projects/mnemosyne/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemosyne