Our task was to redesign the classic white shirt by interpreting elements from a chosen type of workwear through the design logic of a chosen art movement. I chose the uniforms of the British military during World War I for my workwear and Purism as my art movement. We were only permitted to use white woven fabrics and our design conclusions included samples of redesigned shirt details and 8 shirt designs. This portfolio documents the research and design process.

I was particularly interested in the soldiers' webbing equipment. Accessories were easily assembled and disassembled onto the base harness, and the entire unit could be detached quickly with the belt buckle.

The purism movement occurred from 1918 to 1925. The most prominent two artists were Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (better known as Le Corbusier) and the movement consisted of a large number of still life paintings. It is a post-cubism movement that reacted against cubism's increased object fragmentation by focusing on simplification of the object into basic, classical forms.

I found that purism artists were able to maintain visual concord by using mostly orthogonal lines within an irregular grid. The edges of objects often extend to those beside it, creating a sense of unity despite the quantity of objects in the still lifes.

I placed the different combinations of uniform equipment onto a grid. I will use these basic drawings as the foundation for my design development.

I found that the use of the grid in purism paintings made it such that a shift along the grid lines results in new shapes and object combinations. My project will explore the operations of "combination" and "shifting" through the use of the grid and the basic uniform drawings.

I start to consider the definition of lines in my 2D drawings. Translated into a garment, they could be seams or separate layers of fabric. Through combination, they can be erased.

Reexamining the back of the Combined Collar, I consider inverting the top and bottom layers of fabric to create a yoke. I also consider the operation of inversion on previously drawn shirt designs, creating two versions of shirts drawn with the same lines.

I return to the customizable quality of the webbing equipment and explore my samples of separate shirt details as assemblable into a whole shirt as well. 

I consider how the harness is worn and assembled. I apply the same directionality of the harness straps for the closure of my shirt.

I return to the idea of an assembled shirt to explore the different fronts that may be created. Using combinations of the same samples, alternate versions can be created depending on how the samples are layered.