The 3 Jumpers Project

RESEARCH BACKGROUND The Endless Garment exhibition, part of the 2010 Melbourne Fashion Festival, presented both industry production techniques and completed designer outcomes, in clothing and other media. The aim of the exhibition was to examine the virtuosity and future possibilities of machine knitting, and more broadly to explore the changing practices of contemporary fashion design. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION The 3 Jumpers Project was created specifically for the exhibition, to generate designs using WholeGarment ® technology. Ricarda Bigolin worked with designer Nikki Gabriel and knit technician Dean Jones, and the project was in part a design dialogue between designers and technician. In highly commercialised fashion the presence of the 'hand' is minimal, whereas artisanal approaches to design are generally defined by their hands-on approach. This project charted a course between the two extremes, by exploring the highly digital and mechanised spaces of design and manufacturing that fashion is now entering and by considering how these emergent practices might offer new ways to design and produce fashion. In generating 3 Jumpers, the project took three quite different yet generic fashion narratives, those of the knitwear designer, the non-knitwear designer, and the knit technician, and examined how they might work together using the new technology. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE The exhibition brought together diverse design and production practices across the fashion industry, both local and global. The 3 Jumpers Project appeared alongside the work of important contemporary international designers such as Sandra Backlund, Walter van Beirendonck, Mark Fast and Issey Miyake. The exhibition ran for 34 days and drew attendances of 6,000 people.