The Traveling Hoodie

Charne and i wanted to go on a small road trip, down the south coast, passing Umzumbe and other small towns, taking photos and gathering items to help us with our travelling hoodie project. We planned to stay a night at Bazley caravan park, and try out some surfing the next day... 
we had high hopes and before we knew it, the hoodie was due....


So our next idea was to take things that reminded us of Durban city, and the things we saw on our way to tech (through Warwick Junction). We found many interesting things.... the food, the fabrics, there graphic design, the taxis, the pigeons... 


We decided we were going to create a hoodie that depicted these things that make us think of Durban, but put it on the hoodie in a way that is not obvious, but it looks like a pattern/design, rather then a jacket with realistic objects placed on....


We decided use the zip as our main vertical line, and place a cropped image onto this 'line' and reflect this image along the line... from a short distance, the hoodie looks like it has a bright pattern design, like focal point. The pockets have the same reflective idea, but it is a road and a railway line, from a distance, they look like a lined pattern, reflected along the vertical zip.


On the arms, we wanted one with henna designs, and the other with a shweshwe inspired design. On the back, we decided to keep it plain, as we felt the hoodie did not need to be entirely covered. So we kept it very simple and placed a spear on the bottom of the hoodie. 


Charne and i wanted to either screen print, or embroid the design on the jacket, but the quotes were both R500 plus... We knew we wanted a brightly coloured hoodie (as Durban is full of colour), so we decided to use fabric paint. It was fairly easy using the paint. We painted in an unrealistic style, inspired by the street salon images. We wanted the images painted, then outlined, as they are on these street salon portraits.


We had a good time painting the images onto the hoodie, as we each had a side, and because it was reflected, there was equal amounts of work being done by Charne and i. It is also interesting that we have two different styles of painting, but only if you look closely at the two jacket panels, would one be able to see that. It adds a personal touch, and we were not phased that the reflections were not exact. Infact we are very pleased.