Metal Militia is a piece of work I did in my second year at University …
The brief was to design and make a ‘creative coat’. I chose to combine military styles with styles and themes popular in heavy metal music culture. These actually link together quite closely, with similarities like crosses, stars, medals and badges, camouflage and colours like black, gold and red used by the military and adopted by metal fans.
My muse for this project was Angela Gossow; singer for the heavy metal band ‘Arch Enemy’. She is young and probably the most recognisable and admired female in the metal industry. I designed and created this coat with the vision that she could wear it on tour on stage and for photo shoots.
This is my final illustration board, showing the coat, as worn by Angela on stage at a gig. I have also included working drawings for the coat with detailed sections and the fabrics and trims I used.
For a styling project I did, also in my second year at university; we styled photo shoots for selected coats in groups. My coat was given to another group and this is how they chose to style it.
This project tested my pattern cutting skills; I worked all the construction lines, apart from the bust darts, into the design features. I am also very proud of the fact my coat was deemed good enough to represent my University on our stand at the Clothes Show in December 2007.
