Popretro Retrospective Design

Title: Pop-Retro

Key Words: Retro, 1950’s, Heat Transfer, Draping

My fascination with retro styles in apparel, home goods and novelty products inspired this design. The variety of retro products in popular culture is at its peak from retro kitchens to cars to hair. Gifts I have been given started my interest with retro styles, it began with a little magnet a friend gave to me that was hilarious and now I am drawn to all things retro. The idea behind the design was to create a 1950’s inspired garment that embodied the classic housewife with the ironic retro images found on novelty products, like my magnets. The final product shows the juxtaposition of classic styles and images with the liberated ideals of today’s woman.

Researching for images was a large portion of the design process. Approximately 10 hours was spent in finding the images. The images needed to embody the iconic 1950’s housewife with the liberated and sarcastic ideas of today’s woman and be a similar style. Once the images were found, editing was performed to touch up the verbiage to assure it was clear and legible and image backgrounds were sharpened for best possible printing, which took approximately 25 hours. The style of the garment was a very important element, it needed to represent the 1950’s style but assuring it was not over designed to distract or overwhelm from the images. Exploring Vogue, McCall’s and Simplicity patterns from the 1940’s and 1950’s and vintage images from Vogue magazines gave inspiration for the dress design.

The dress was created through draping on a standard body form. Next was truing the draping, create a pattern, make a sample and alter the pattern to assure the final product fit properly. The garment pieces were then cut out and prepared for printing. Images used were printed onto professional quality heat transfer