This talk was a very interesting insight into how a product designer fits into the structure of various organisations. Rachel began the talk with a walk through of her work at the RCA, this focused on her her work with paper - where she ended up designing a paper wedding dress - which was heavily influenced by her interest in green issues within design.
The dress itself uses origami folding techniques to create a stimulating aesthetic, but this is merely a by-product to a process brought about by a desire to minimise distribution costs by decreasing its size. wedding dresses are (generally) one shot items, in theory, you only get married once and yet the dress - an absolute essential in the mind of the bride and many others - is such an expense... and not just to the bride. economically speaking wedding dresses are extremely inefficient due to their 'bulky' nature and yet they cannot be packed or compressed for transport. Sleight's dress however ships flat pack increasing the economic efficiency of the product. And yet this to me doesnt seem the most important aspect of the work - to me it is also a statement against the way we view marriage in modern society. the fact Sleight has used a material with such obvious connatations with disposability means that the dress itself is disposable and suggesting - by extension - that so is marriage.
The dress itself uses origami folding techniques to create a stimulating aesthetic, but this is merely a by-product to a process brought about by a desire to minimise distribution costs by decreasing its size. wedding dresses are (generally) one shot items, in theory, you only get married once and yet the dress - an absolute essential in the mind of the bride and many others - is such an expense... and not just to the bride. economically speaking wedding dresses are extremely inefficient due to their 'bulky' nature and yet they cannot be packed or compressed for transport. Sleight's dress however ships flat pack increasing the economic efficiency of the product. And yet this to me doesnt seem the most important aspect of the work - to me it is also a statement against the way we view marriage in modern society. the fact Sleight has used a material with such obvious connatations with disposability means that the dress itself is disposable and suggesting - by extension - that so is marriage.
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