To begin the Fashion & Textile Workshop, we were tasked with creating a mood board which illustrates the inspiration behind our colour scheme containing four colours (and black and white). As I will be attending this workshop during the two weeks surrounding Halloween, I decided to take inspiration from the season- and in particular, horror movies which are synonymous with the holiday.

I was really interesting by how the film creators used the psychology behind colour to manipulate emotions from the audience. I looked to classic films within the horror genre including The Shining, Carrie, The Ring and newer pictures like Us and and Neon Demon and found that their creators had all utilised a similar vibrant and alluring colour scheme. I chose a canary yellow, parakeet green, candy red and indigo blue- which all compliment and contrast heavily against one another according to colour wheel theory. These colours are repeatedly used in Horror film as we as the audience, instantly associate for example a lurid and bright red with danger and blood heightening the suspense of films like The Shining; while the deep, cool indigo is typically used in the background of horror scenes to allude to ominous shadows (see, The Ring costume design).

They also are used in juxtaposition with one another in horror. This can been seen in for example, Carrie (1976) as the dark blue set design which the eponymous character stands on, contrasts easily with her crimson, blood-drenched prom dress- allowing the director to draw attention to the horrific state of the girl. I also found how these choices especially relevant and interesting to this workshop as the choices made by the film’s costume designer Rosanna Norton in terms of the colours used in the textile and special effects were detrimental to capturing the gruesome tone scene- and emphasise the importance of fashion and textile design in presenting different concepts.

I also looked to the fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who was fascinated by dark gothic fiction and utilised these glaring tones to add an edge to his designs (see “Clown” dress in the centre of mood board collage).

Overall, I was really pleased with the bright tones which I have picked to work from during this unit as the tones will successfully stand out against one another as I wish to create vibrant designs.