Tamara Toby
Meet International GFF Talent, Tamara Toby, a fashion graduate from IED Barcelona. Delving into the world and aesthetics of brothels and prostitution that she observed growing up in Israel, a contrast to the devout religious environment, her collection is inspired by seven words: Passion, Pain, Fear, Feminine, Violence, Control and Romance. Read on to discover more about Tamara’s final year collection and her plans for the future.
Contact Tamara Toby:
Email: tamaratoby10@gmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tamaratoby1/
Tell us about you, where are you from, what lead you to fashion and choosing that course?
My name is Tamara, born and raised in Israel. I grew up in the City of Haifa, between Mount Carmel and the Mediterranean Sea. Haifa is one of the few cities in Israel where Jews and Arabs live together, which exposed me to both cultures very early while hearing prayers from mosques and synagogues. As an unorthodox person, I used to look at how religious people dress, all the layers of the garment, the hats and the prayer shawl. As a girl, I was extremely amazed by the power of these religious garments and the fact that a garment can tell so much about who you are without even knowing you. Israel is a young country.
My grandparents, from my mother’s side, survived the Holocaust, migrated to Israel and started a new life from scratch. Their home had something European, a scent they brought from far away, some foreign elegance to the Israeli society, minimalism and stories about the Holocaust, survival and escape. My grandparents from my father’s side were already born in Israel so I have always been “swang” between the two worlds of the desert’s heat and Europe’s coldness. I learned reading and writing in Hebrew at a very late age so most of my life I was in an inner world of colours and shapes.
I've always been fascinated with this thing called fashion, a huge world of aesthetics. A world that defines your lifestyle, a world much bigger than clothes... In Israel, everyone must serve in the army after high school and so did I. This kept me away from my inner world and, in fact, I liked it. After the army, I travelled around the world, from India to the Philippines and then I realised that fashion is actually a wordless language and that is the language I want to speak. Describe the inspiration and concept behind your work.
Talk us through your final project and your research process. How did that come about?
The world of prostitution has always intrigued me. The women, the lifestyle, the dark side of it, the Brothels, how they live in a rough, direct and brutal world. How it is expressed in the Bible and how it continues to exist today, anywhere in the world in all cultures. During the 1990s in Israel, there was a big immigration wave from the former Soviet Union and the trafficking in women increased, and so did the sex industry in Israel. I chose to be an observer in this world, in a painful world full of mystery, control, power, passion, violence and romance. During the work process, I felt that I wanted to focus on the women, to put them at the centre and try to understand the story behind them. I was trying to figure out who they were.
Did they choose it or were they chosen by it?! Where do they work? What is their routine? What kind of women are they? Strong?! Weak?! Are they similar to me or am I to them? Perhaps we share the same fears?! For that, I wanted to understand the physical space and where it started so I went back in time and collected pictures of brothels from different periods and from different places. I wanted to implement a new perspective that contains all types of women and cultures. I used visual elements that appeared in all the pictures such as ceilings, lamps, floors, linens, sheets, bed covers and rugs and translated them into fabric manipulations. In order to create the volume and the silhouette, I used the brothels as inspiration in combination with elements from nature and the feminine body structure. I collected old linens and bedspreads and painted them and used them as new raw materials.
Tell us about your design process. How do you work? How do you take your research and develop your own designs?
My design process is a mix of research and material. Usually, the materials are selected from research and the research is built from a historical period, an event that intrigues me, a culture that is either close or far from me and a combination of architectural structures, nature, body shape etc. The research begins with something very small, from a painting, a statue, a story that captivated me, a character, a historical or religious outfit or a colour that caught my eye. I focus on how I can translate this into my visual language and what I feel within it.
A key part of the process is fabric development, which is actually my direct translation of the concept by the materials. In fact, things are slowly weaving in, layer by layer and I almost never make Mood Boards that include the whole concept, but I collect references and images to each of the layers that ultimately constitute a kind of "bank of information" within which I have a colour palette, textures, various materials, keywords and emotions, the atmosphere I want to create, who I imagine wearing it and the inspiration for volume and silhouettes. From a list of words that describe the concept, I begin to illustrate quick sketches for each word. The words become groups of designs like "families" and these sketchy families are mixed together into a new design.
Tell us about your Collection Development. How do you toile, how do you like to pattern cut, do you like to drape?
Developing my collection is a mix of draping and pattern cutting. My initial instinct is to drape as there is something very powerful and real in draping, just playing with clothes on the mannequin. I start with an initial, fast drape without thinking too much and without any technical element. Draping is the fastest way for me to see the volume on a mannequin, and to see if what I imagined in my head works well in reality. Through this I try to figure out how much fabric I need, its fall, what kind of fabric will give me the best effect: light, heavy, transparent or sealed. Sometimes I drape with a pattern paper and a tape on the mannequin and then move on to pattern cutting.
During this process, I ask myself if it is better to separate it into more than one garment, does it need an inner construction that will hold it like a corset if it is a heavy garment or that all the weight can sit on the shoulders. I also buy cheap second-hand clothes like jackets, shirts, knitwear, old wedding dresses, etc. I unstitch the clothes and reassemble them on the mannequin. This method helped me learn different types of finishes, how the patterns are built, their parts, and how to re-sew them.
Talk us through your final collection and each outfit. Why were these the final designs?
All the garments of the collection were inspired by seven words: Passion, Pain, Fear, Feminine, Violence, Control and Romance. Each word became an inspiration board and each board became a garment or more and these garments are my final collection. In addition, the designs evolved from one another. Some designs are a zoom-in of a certain part of another sample and vice versa.
Look 1: The first garment is inspired by a brothel’s chandelier and integrated with black thread embroidery. The embroidery consists of initials, ages and the cause of death of the women who worked in the prostitution industry in Israel and I felt it was the best way to immortalise their mysterious story.
Look 2: A tailor-made oversized suit inspired by the brothel’s clients, with thread embroidery and beads and dyed naturally with onion peels. The flowers were taken from an old bedspread. In addition, I had a massive bead embroidery that corresponded with the female body, a sort of amorphous spine.
Look 3: Deconstruction of the men suit of look 2. The masculine suit has become a feminine element that emphasises the waist on the one hand and on the other hand, has a large volume.
Look 4: This dress is a zoom-in of one part of the first look and turning it into a model on its own. Compared to the first look that is opaque and you can't see the shape of the body, in this model I decided to use a transparent fabric to expose the entire body under the dress.
Look 5: This model is also a development of the men suit. I chose to take the top of the trousers and to zoom it in and give a further interpretation of the male element in such a feminine world.
Look 6: This garment is sewn with raw finishes and connected by stripes around the body just like packing an item or a package to send.
Look 7: This garment was completely knitted with a manual machine and full of holes, with no consistent pattern. The volume is inspired by a messy brothel’s bed.
Look 8: A combination of all the garments together which symbolises the connection between myself and the inspiration I chose. I chose to embroider on the garment the questions I asked myself during the research and sharing sincerely the process I went through.
What materials have you used within the collection and how did you source them? Why was this the right material for your collection?
The fabrics that I chose for my collection are natural fabrics such as 100% cotton, silk and wool. In addition, I chose to use existing raw materials such as linen, bedspread, curtains and tablecloths which I found in charity shops and flea markets. I chose to do so in order to give new life to existing raw materials and to give an aspect of the visual space of the brothel and to create a "second-hand" atmosphere.bI chose these materials because they gave me the freedom to create volumes, to change them by cutting and re-assembling, unstitching, threads manipulation, colouring them and turning them into something personal and telling through them the story behind the collection.
Tell us about your illustration technics. Explain your final line up and what art materials and technics you use to showcase it.
I decided to call my collection “Blue Kiss” which signifies to me the contrast that exists in the world of prostitution. Something dark, painful and melancholic vs. endless femininity and romance. I also chose to illustrate the women in blue skin that correspond to "blue blood". The technique I worked within the line-up and illustrations was done in layers; I painted each part separately and merged all the layers in Photoshop. The first layers were drawn by pencil, and they were scanned and painted in Photoshop. In addition, I used vector lines as well as watercolours, ink, and coloured pencils. In some of the illustrations, I have taken pictures of the garment itself as one of the layers to create a combined digital and manual atmosphere. I also focused on who are these women that wear the garments, what kind of attitudes they have and tried to give each one an inner world by posing, expressions, jewellery etc.
What part of your final project have you enjoyed most and why? ie, the research and concept or maybe the manufacturing of the collection.
This is my first time designing and producing a full eight-model collection which includes accessories. It is a long and almost endless process in comparison to the other projects I did during my studies. The process is a process of lots of choices and decisions to be made, which are “shrunk” eventually into a collection. I feel that the part I enjoyed the most during the process of creating my first collection is this moment that the research I did magically turned into a story that people can wear and everything connects to each other, a moment when imagination becomes a reality.
What’s an aspect of the fashion industry that you’re passionate about fixing or having a positive impact on? That's a good question. As a student who has just completed three years of fashion in a framework that allows you to be the most liberal and creative in the world, just dive in and focus only in your world each and every project and that usually ends with one or two designs. For me, the big part of the studies is to learn essential tools such as research, get to know various materials, technical elements, deadlines and of course to get to know yourself as a creator and designer and develop a kind of personal language, which takes time.
I feel there is a very big gap between studying and what happens in life after... The first time I was exposed to a fashion house from the inside was a Summer internship that I did between second and third year at McQueen where for the first time I saw a wider picture of how things were going. At McQueen, I was an intern in the embroidery department which combines crafts with digital works. Fashion studies are very personal and individual and as a student I play all the roles within my imaginary "fashion house", which means, I am the designer, the seamstress, the one responsible for inspiration and research, developing the print or embroidery and doing the styling at the end of the work.
At McQueen, I was exposed on the first time to teamwork - where each one has a specific role within this huge thing. So, to answer this question, I feel that I still do not know enough about the fashion industry in order to know or feel how I can fix or improve but what I do know is that I have a great passion to fit in, be part of a fashion house and part of a design process that is not mine and maybe will become that in the future, learn new types of work, work with new people in a new place and in a new country.
What is your plan once you finish your BA?
Where do you wish to be in the future? The “One Million Dollar” question... My dream is to work in a well-known fashion house such as McQueen, Margiela, Simone Rocha or the new Riannah’s brand, Fenty. I want to learn from them, develop, be a part of the design process and most importantly, just be me.