Creative Design: Professional

A Child's Canvas

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Abstract

The Frankie Dress, an early dress design of American fashion and textile designer, Frankie Welch, was once mused as “the one dress” that had been to more White House dinners than any other. In 1964, Welch introduced her signature dress design following a simple paper-doll-like pattern that became a canvas for Welch’s various textile designs (Callahan, 2022). Therefore, this design research took on a “historically informed analysis as a framework to examine studio design practice” (Parsons, 2015, p. 280-281) for the development of an engineered sublimation print on a child’s sized Frankie Dress.

The concept for this design was to utilize the Frankie Dress as the canvas to experiment with various digitally created prints co-designed with children. The collaboration with children, specifically this design with one child, Mavis, allowed for the inclusion and participation of her wants and needs through her creative thought.

Keywords: Historic inquiry, Sublimation print, Children's wear, Frankie Welch

How to Cite:

McAndrews, L. E., (2022) “A Child's Canvas”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 79(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.15847