Design Concept & Idea Development
The collection is named as “Too Much” which reflecting that consumer or user tend to pursue things or products that are unnecessary or extra and create a mood of demand for too many things or vanity. The collection also would like to make audiences or the society aware about consumerism is corroding the human life in different aspect. It is not to refuse buying things but hope to be a more responsible consumer. Consumer should learn to shop in a more rational way and do the best to take care the environment or planet. In the collection, “symbolism” will be emphasis to show that the media advertise or create a “meaningful” packaging onto a product. Product been packed with story which encourage consumer to make purchase even they don’t need it. Designer will add in different “symbol” such as desire, self-abased into each look. Therefore, the collection will come with several “symbolism” from each look to reflect the situation of consumerism. With this, each look will come with a name that created based on symbolism, which are vanity, desire, demand, culture, greedy, compete, pursue, and influenced. The main elements of this collection will emphasis on heaviness and layering which create bold and heavy feeling on the garment. Heaviness is to show that people are demanding more and more which become over-consumed. A lot of items been neglected after one to two times usage. A huge number of useless items created a mountain of waste. With this, heaviness feeling able to emphasis and reflect the reality that happened in consumer society.
The 8 dark side and weaknesses of humanity that led to distortion of consumerism
Vanity
Vanity is the things or acts that are worthless and excessive pride on appearance or accomplishments (Vanity Definition, n.d.). The symbol to reflect vanity included jewels, gold coins, purse, and figure of death (Vanity, 2022).
Desire
Desire is a strong feeling of wanting to own or have somethings which is also a feeling that created by the capitalism through the spreading of the illustrated content on internet. It can be also defined as the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state.
Demand
Demand is an action of requesting or requiring more than usually expected or thought due. Plus, known as excessive requirement occurs.
Culture
The word of culture reflected that a particular society at a particular time and place. In consumer society with the illustrated market and environment created by capitalism, the concept of “money is god” been promoted as the society culture.
Greedy
Greedy is the inner feeling of wanting or demanding for things that are obviously excessive, but the person did not realize that his or her inner had distorted into excessively desirous.
Compete
Compete is an action that measuring oneself with others. With the rapid growth among the society, competing has become a common behavior to reach others’ achievement, even though it is counted as excessive to oneself and worthless.
Pursue
Pursue can be defined as following and chasing as well as trying to catch up with someone walking in front of oneself. It is an action that most of the people did to take themselves as a follower of capitalism and imagine that it will bring betterment on oneself. Following make oneself lost the rationality on consuming as variety of attraction within the colored society.
Influenced
Social media is a sharp tool on illustrating nice and amazing things to create a sense of desirable living. Influencers born since the sudden rise of social media. The action of triggering to consumer more become advanced with the exists of influencer. People had then get effected or contaminated by the fancy information.
Colourful social world has been a sharp tool to capitalist
Social media become the main way that consumers communicate with each other and talk about stories. From the point of consumer, social media is a way to tell own personal story and create connection with others who are similar with them. It is a field that to find humor in postings and discover localized and globalized humanity. There are many purposes of social media, one of the most important is the creation and maintaining relationships. One of the first purposes of social media was for professionals to network and build digital networks of team s and people to learn and grow from. Nowadays, social media become a place for people and brands to find their digital voice and try to become noticed, liked but most important is shared
According to research, there are 54% of social media users browse through to research products before making a purchasing decision. Consumers look for reviews and recommendations in social media which has the power to influence potential customers from the start until the stage of a purchase. Social media is a huge influence on consumers when they are attempting to build the product awareness. The aim of every business is to influence consumer behavior
With this, designer would like to use variety of sharp and solid colours to represent the fancy world that created on social media and the tons of items offered in the market. Besides, with the combination of heaviness feeling, macrame rope is used to come out the textured and 3-dimensional effect as well as bold shaped. With this, designer uses the macrame rope to produce knitting, knotting which to apply onto the garment.
Other than that, through the researching on consumer society and consumerism, designer pulls out the main key points which is “money spending”, “lot of products”, “pile up like a mountain” and “overlaying”. Those key point fully reflected the current situation on consumer society as people demand for more and neglected the essentially needs and practicality.
Red
Red is the color of energy, passion and action which exudes a strong and powerful masculine energy. It is a color that excite the emotions and motivates people to take actions. With the strong-willed and deep stimulation, it able to triggers people’s positive side. Moreover, red represent person’s desire and its effect on attention getting to alert people. Therefore, it will be able to triggers people to understand more about the awareness of the collection while impressed by the color and influence their emotion (The Color Red, 2021).
Blue
Blue is idealistic, enhancing self-expression and ability to communicate the needs and desire. It inspires higher ideals. A dark blue can provide the feeling of reliability and responsibility as well as calm. It is also the color of truth. But in the negative traits of blue, it included rigid, deceitful, and spiteful, depressed and sad that reflect the situation of current society which people been deeply influenced by mass media and become the follower of consumer society (The Color Blue, 2021).
Purple
Purple is the color of imagination and spirituality that is introspective which allowing people to get into deeper thoughts. Purple able to expand people’s awareness and connect with higher consciousness. Consumer society exist as people demand, producer create through imagination and dreams. With this, purple represent the creative pursuit and inspiration as well as originality through its creative endeavors. In a positive trait, purple is about unusual and creative, just like the current society with a lot of fancy idea and creation. While in a negative trait, it show “corrupt” as the consequences that claimed onto our planet due to the “contribution” from human (The Color Purple, 2021).
Yellow
Yellow is the color of mind and intellect which able to inspire original thought and inquisitiveness. Besides, it also stands for creative from mental aspect and color of new ideas which help people to find new ways of doing things. Positively, yellow means to be confidence, originality, creatively and challenging. While negatively, it can be defined as impatient and being egotistical which reflect our society that consumer keeps demanding on updated items, trend, design that are unnecessary but just to fulfil own desires (The Color Yellow, 2021).
Hot Pink
Hot pink inspires a more passionate, playful, and sensual love which exudes warmth and happiness as well as love of life. In negatively, pink can be defined as lack of will power and self-worth just like the people in consumer society, they tend to become a follower as others (The Color Pink, 2021).
Black & white
Black is defined as mysterious and protective. It also relates to the hidden, the secretive and unknown. Black is defined as the end too, but the end always implies a new beginning. When the light appears, black become white, the color of new beginnings. Too much of black can cause depression and down mood which create negative environment, The combination of black and white, it will create an argumentative atmosphere such as the collection is pulling out the awareness on consumer society that full of argument (The color Black, 2021).
Besides, spending money had become a habit for everyone in the society as people create a value onto every product. It is good to value everything but overconsuming or overdemanding are an action that destroying the planet. People create a lot of demands, necessary or unnecessary, all born in the market, then produce desire among people which encourage consuming. Receipt then becomes a super waste for every shopping. There are 3 million of trees are cut down each year to produce receipts that most consumers will throw away, but most consumers and business don’t realize that these small slips of paper are causing deforestation and costing the planet millions of trees (Diaz, 2021).
With this, designer picked the “receipt” or “billing” as the important element to include into the collection. Designer pulls out the “receipt” to make a small 3-D version with creating layering effect to fulfil the heaviness as the initial collection feeling. Instead of using normal soft fabric, designer decide to apply TPU fabric with different picked colors to create fullness effect. Besides, printing technique also been applied to emphasis the word “consumerism”. Black background and white words create strong contract effect.
