Costume Textile Designer.
A Costume Textile Designer is part surface designer, artisan, and visual communicator. By creating specialty textiles for a costume designer's specific vision, a textile designer translates the unspoken language of a character's personality, culture, era, and geography through the garments they wear. Each project has different needs and requires specific attention. Through extensive research, they create patterns, textures, and colour, using applications and technologies old and new, to achieve original fabrics. This ranges from futuristic worlds to civilizations long passed.
the alchemist project.
In the simplest context, the book The Alchemist is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago and his adventures from Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Diving deeper, it’s a story about mysticism, wisdom, spiritual self-discovery, and following your true life path. It is considered a modern classic and has been translated into 67 languages around the world.
The Alchemist and its characters were chosen to serve as a framework for designing textiles for one garment per character. This project has been shaped by patterns, materials, and processes. Each character has been broken down as if part of a script. Personalities have been noted and their journey within the story tracked. This book has not been made into a movie as of yet, allowing Caitley creative freedom to pull from her own experiences of growing up in Egypt.
Processes: Below are a mixture of analog and technological production processes.
Hand-rendered, digitally designed pattern, laser etched or cut into leather.
Digital print design and layout woven into Jacquard fabric.
Fabric weave digitally designed (in WeavePoint), hand woven with cotton yarns on a Dobby Loom.
Hand-rendered pattern artwork laid out and digitally printed onto silk.
