De Montfort University (DMU) fashion design lecturer Jo Cope has been selected for an exciting new project which will see her innovative works on display at Silverstone’s most prestigious motorsport events.
Formula Fashion is a new project where five talented designers from across the UK will showcase their innovative and high quality fashion pieces inspired by Northampton’s rich motorsport heritage and leather industry.
The exhibition was launched at the Air Asia Moto GP this month and is now gearing up for its most important event of the Silverstone Circuit’s calendar - the 2011 Formula One Santander British Grand Prix. The creative fashions will then be on display at the Silverstone Classic event from 22 to 24 July before touring venues in Northamptonshire and the East Midlands in January 2012.
The work creates new connections with Northamptonshire’s long standing and world-renowned leather design industry, which has flourished since the Middle Ages, as well as its world beating motorsport heritage. The new products displayed demonstrate how different sectors can come together and spark new products and ideas. The designers have explored themes such as speed, danger, the shape of the race track, high performance, engineering, and racing personalities.
Jo Cope’s designs have been inspired by the sport’s continuing obsession with the speed and performance of racing cars through aerodynamics. Using Ducati yellow coated leathers, carbon fibres and rubber, she has created a ‘transmorphic’ garment that resembles the aesthetics of a racing car and adapts into two body positions.
Her piece relies on the accuracy of measurements of a series of component parts to enable it to perfectly come together into one solid visual form, mimicking the detailed construction of an F1 vehicle.
Commenting on her work, Jo said: “I considered that the most interesting body position to work with would be one that mimicked the driver’s body in the car in an almost horizontal position. I was also interested in communicating the cross-over between the garment as a piece of art and that of something that resembled a more familiar piece of fashion. The garment has been designed to visually transform from a laying aerodynamic form to a standing position where the leather cutting and shapes of each garment fall in a new way around the body.”
Formula Fashion is part of Igniting Ambition, a Cultural Olympiad programme in the East Midlands, which invests in projects and people that take the London 2012 Games as their inspiration to create once-in-a-lifetime cultural opportunities for audiences and communities.
Igniting Ambition is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to create a cultural and sporting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games, the European Regional Development Fund and the East Midlands Development Agency, with the support of Arts Council England and many others.
