INES SIMOES
Is the coordinator of PATTERN-OLOGY, a research group established in 2017, supported by CIAUD and FCT, which aims to bring together diverse perspectives on pattern design as an area of knowledge, a branch of learning and a practice.
Holding a BA in Painting (Fine Arts School, University of Lisbon, 1985), an AAS Degree in Patternmaking (Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, 1990), a Masters in Design (Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon, 2005) and a PhD in Design (Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Lisbon, 2012), her professional activity comprises the fields of fine arts, fashion design, costume design and pattern design.
Holding a Lisbon School of Architecture professorship (since 1992), her main teaching subjects are 2D and 3D Pattern Design (BA in Fashion Design), Designing by Draping (MA in Fashion Design) and Project (PhD in Design). She regularly supervises Masters dissertations and PhD theses on topics related to her research interests.
Research interests: The Representation Of The Body In Pattern Design; The Role Of Structural Seams In Body/Dress Interactions; New Patterns For Teaching/Learning Fashion Design.
She is the author of several papers and chapters published in conference proceedings, academic journals and books.
research profile
All my life I wanted to wear garments that feel comfortable throughout body movement. Not that I was ever a tomboy…
In the 1960s and 70s, in Portugal, our wardrobes were basically custom-made; even so, I complained about the fit of woven clothing around the joints, and so, every time I was given the option, I wore knits as they moved together with me.
In the 1980s I added fashion design into my interest in painting; depending on seamstresses to translate my ideas into actual clothes I complained about their inability to do so; providentially I was given the opportunity to learn the practice of pattern design in New York City.
In the early 2000s I began researching into the representation of the body in pattern design in general and into the possibility of woven clothing patterns to cater for the movement of the body in particular. That's why in my Master’s dissertation* I focused on Madeleine Vionnet’s œuvre and the Levi’s engineered jeans, as the French designer and the American label epitomize an alternative way of looking at the body.
Soon after I was given the chance to continue researching into this subject from the perspective of the maker, not the viewer. So in my PhD thesis** I concentrated my attention on the depiction of the mobile body, i.e., the two-dimensional representation of the multi-dimensional body, a body that is deformable, not rigid, a body that is by no means immobile as it is always in motion.
Notwithstanding having come up with a set of basic patterns and a mannequin – displaying the principle ‘form follows action,’ in line with Louis Sullivan’s 1896 dictum ‘form follows function’–, the fact that the deep-rooted paradigm of representation in pattern design divides the body into front, back and sides as well as into top and bottom, has driven me to analyse the established positioning of structural seams in an attempt to understand their relevance – or irrelevance – in terms of body/dress balance.
* <http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/5427>
** < http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2013.793742>
view on patterns and pattern design
I became enamored of pattern design when I learned the practice at FIT. There, I realized that patterns are definitely not just technical drawings, i.e., templates with more or less odd shapes used for cutting the material(s) with which the garments dressed by the body are made, as patterns are typically viewed. Perhaps because of my former training and unending interest in painting, I realized that patterns are actually representations of the body, a fact that becomes obvious once we see that the history of pattern design shows, time and time again, its restless vow to understand the entity without whom it would not exist.
This more thrilling and truthful way to look at patterns unfolds before us as we look at all the materializations of the dressed body that arose through time: from abstract, nonfigurative representations (think of the peploi and chitons worn in ancient Greece or the dresses created by Madeleine Vionnet in the first half of the twentieth century) to analogic, figurative ones (think of the tailored suits worn by men for the past two centuries or the Levi’s engineered jeans launched in 1999).
This more thrilling and truthful way to look at patterns unfolds a series of events that denote not merely a progression of skill improvements (think of all pattern design’s endeavors to convert the body’s convex and concave surface into various 2D shapes taking the same measurements of the body sections they stand for) but as the accomplishment of an enhanced awareness (think of all pattern design’s endeavors to move from making patterns for a specific customer into designing patterns for an anonymous consumer, or the endeavors to cater for the body throughout movement).
Pattern design started out, in ancient times, as an activity performed in the domestic sphere and became, in medieval times, a craft only known to professionals; then, from an intuitive trade kept secret (transmitted from generation to generation of tailors only) developed into a systematized process devised by nineteenth-century tailors (transmitted to professionals and amateurs alike). Allowing pattern design to become a more easily learned craft, accessible to anyone, was definitely a positive thing (think of the inclusion of pattern design as a university study program in the twentieth century) but the downside was that it prompted the act of creation to become separated from the act of construction, relegating pattern design to a merely technical (and rather mechanical) skill sustaining a cultural practice, a kind of skill that (in my view) falls within the typical way to look at patterns mentioned above.
Fortunately, in the new millennium, pattern design is recovering its status as an enlightened creative practice, as well as a proper area of knowledge (both passionately defended by nineteenth-century tailors). Fortunately, a young generation is committed to bridging the gap between the active, creative role of a designer and the passive, mechanical role of a pattern designer that was determined by mass production. And in so doing, a young generation is bridging the gap between research and practice by producing and disseminating alternative and truly innovative ways to look at the body and its representation.