Crumbling / Distressed

The area of this work is distressed denim in women’s wear. Denim wear has been distressed by machines to imitate the individual patina that becomes from wearing e.g. a pair of unwashed jeans until the color strips from creases. This work uses challenges the faked used look, using a decorative motive in distressed denim. Lace has been used as a decoration of dress since medieval times. By using lace as the pattern for the distressing of denim one will decorate the denim in a destructive way that questions the perfection and delicate way that lace is usually used. Lace consists of threads and holes that builds an ornamental pattern, worn down denim often results in holes and threads at the most vulnerable areas of the garment. Denim is a warp faced cotton twill weave with blue indigo yarn in warp and natural white yarn in weft. By using a laser cutter to engrave a pattern on the warp faced side of the denim, one can set the settings on the laser cutter so that only the blue warp threads will be met by the laser beam. After wash the engraved warp threads will dissolve and depending on the scale and the design of the pattern the unengraved parts can dissolve as well. Therefor one needs to fix the unengraved parts of the pattern before wash if one wants the pattern to remain. There is several ways to fix the pattern before wash; this work includes fixing with laser cut fusing and with seams. Some of the garments aren’t engraved in this work but cut in the laser cutter. The two cutting techniques used is first a regular cut out technique and second a slicing technique. The shapes of the garments derives from typical denim and lace garments such as jeans, denim jackets, denim shirts, lace gown, wedding dresses and underwear such as negligees, corsets, bras and panties. Initially, experiments were done to understand the visual and technical effect of clashing materials and garments. The result is a collection, combining ideas from two different origins in fashion, denim from mineworkers and lace from nobles. The outfits manages how one can control distressed denim and shows a variation from lace, to garments where the traces of lace have completely or partially dissolved. The primary motive is to investigate surface possibilities in distressed denim through a specific pattern. The result is difficult to control and experiments in full scale are necessary to evaluate distressed experiments. The secondary motive is global. Can lasercutting and engravings be an alternative to sandblasting ? It is not dealt with in this investigation. However this investigation shows a selection of alternative expressions for distressed denim. This work challenges the idea of distressed denim as the only way to make a fake, torned effect. It points at new possibilities, using decorative motifs by lasercuts and engravings in combination with other treatments in search for alternative expressions in denimwear