Day Of Dance: Team TikTok Developing Designs

Working closely with my groups was really important to me as I wanted to make sure that the dancers were fully on board with the design concept and designs. I also wanted them to feel comfortable with what they were going to be wearing and that they were going to be able to move freely and without constriction in their costumes. This was a new experience for me again as I have theoretically designed for dance but haven’t designed for a piece where I would actually be sourcing and making the costumes. So I made extra care that the dancers would be wearing items of clothing with some form of stretch and was in many of their rehearsals to see what kind of movements they were doing so I knew how much movement would be necessary in the costumes.

With designing for this group there were 2 main ways we could go either the darker more edgy side of Kpop styling of the softer more cute side of Kpop; however after seeing their choreography and hearing the song they were dancing too we decided to go with the more edgy side of Kpop. This allowed me to look into hip hop and street dance as an influence which I found to be really helpful.

My next challenge was coming up with designs that demonstrated their unity as a group but still separated them as individuals. I researched into several Kpop groups such as BTS, Got7, Twice and 4minute for reference of this form of styling. I found I was able to noticed common themes such as a recurring item of pattern throughout each group that they all would wear. This gave me the idea to design 3 skirts all in the same fabric and similar style but each with a slightly different design feature. I found designing like this to be a a new challenge that I haven’t really done before so I had to focus and find what common thread I wanted and design around that element.

I found the communication process with my group to be a new experience and something that I had to push myself to do. I had to be confident in both my ideas and myself in order to communicate my ideas and designs effectively so the dancers knew exactly what they were going to be wearing and performing in. From this experience I learnt that not undermining yourself is really important as is pushing your ideas and your thoughts as a designer, I will take this experience and apply it to any future projects I have.