Amy Owens and Lois Rutherford

Work-in-progress by Year 3 Fashion Communication, School of Textiles & Design, Heriot-Watt University Scottish Borders

After visiting both the Heriot-Watt and National Museum of Scotland archives and researching Bernat Klein, we concluded that the narrative of our research book will take the form of its own mini archive.

At the beginning of this project, we didn’t know who Bernat Klein was. Therefore, the idea behind this book is to introduce people to Klein’s work with texture, colour and aesthetic in a simple and accessible way. Our A6 book will gather visual information and images from the archive visits, which we find most aesthetically pleasing and relevant to covering Klein’s career. The book will be mainly visual, minimal text will link to the images in the book to explain imagery and its link to Klein’s work. For example, one page will show Klein’s blue spaced-dyed mohair and velvet ribbon, along side a small passage explaining that it was used for a coat worn by Princess Margaret in 1964. The final photoshoot will show a contemporary aesthetic of male models dressed in the typically female silhouette which Klein is best known for. While researching, we learned that Klein’s vibrant colours of his menswear collection didn’t take off so well or gain much recognition in Scotland in the 1960s. Therefore we want to recognise society’s radical change in attitude when it comes to clothing and gender, and we want our images to celebrate contemporary gender neutral clothing. Each image will have its own colour theme, mirroring what Klein has included in his work, therefore achieving six original images showcasing six different colours.