Stephanie
Spencer

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"A Cheap Bunch" A kind gesture in a cost of living crisis, my piece for the 2024 millinery award is a bold and playful homage to the budget friendly supermarket bouquet. A Cheap Bunch, as always, comprises of Chrysanthemums, Carnations and red Roses and is encased in a barely there swathe of clear cellophane and bound with curled ribbon. Art inspired by supermarket goods is a path well travelled. Conceptually, the piece embodies many trademarks of Pop Art and so it was important for me that this piece, stylistically, evoked sensibilities of this movement. It needed to be a kitsch piece with vibrant, block colours and bold shapes! In order to achieve this look, I devised a new technique to create silk flowers. Each petal was sewn as a casing and shaped with fine wire to ensure, as it was going to be asymmetrical, it still retained a lightness and easy-of- wear. Once assembly of the bunch as completed, the piece was then finished with a necessary sweep of stylised jinsin cellophane and ribbon. In true Pop Art style, after countless hours and so metres of silk, ironically, it turns out, this was not a cheap bunch.