QUT Fashion Graduates 2015: Cielle Marchal 'What Follows'

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

Model: Lilly at Vivien's

Deeply embedded in Cielle’s collection ‘What Follows’ is her family. Weaved throughout the pieces are her father’s artworks and her mother’s macrame. And, I imagine, her family’s sense of environmental and social justice. It comes together in a series that’s rich in technique and style. Here’s what she had to say about it:

SE: Why did you call your collection ‘What Follows’?

CM: Where it stems from was this idea of a post apocalyptic world where people were getting creative communities and creating things that were made from objects which they found from the past world including pieces of metal, bits of rope, bits of old leather, just scraps of pieces and they were creating these objects that remind them of the world that was. It all subconsciously came from this pen and ink drawing that’s always been in my house of these two little robots holding hands in this mangrove mechanical jungle in the year 2020 - where he [her dad] painted it in 2000. So ‘What Follows’ is, what follows after this world.

SE: What does that actually translate to looking like?

CM: So the collection is very dark, it’s definitely not as dark as I intended it to be. But it kind of suits the theme I think. It also has a lot of wire, macrame and knotted outer pieces, which go over the clothes and there’s a couple of prints that I’ve used from my father’s artwork which are paintings. One’s a portrait painting of his girlfriend in the 80s and the other’s just a really abstract blue, black and white painting which geometrical patterns, which I manipulated in photoshop and created this print... And the accessories tie in with the shoes, which I painted faces on them, which is spray-painted with white leather paint. And the rest have got wire wrapped around them and knitting wool.

SE: How does your father feel about you being so influenced by his work?

CM: I think he is pretty stoked. I’ve always wanted to a collaboration with him. I’ve kind of had a vague idea that I would do that in my final collection, but maybe more within the accessories. But it just turns out that it happened to be on the clothes.

SE: So you had an idea when you started out that you would do something like this?

CM: Well it was a very different idea. The collection was completely different at the beginning of the semester to what it is now. It was very wearable - it was lots of shirts and pants with random placements of the print within those. Now it’s turned more etherial because I was also influenced by movies like Mad Max and Satyricon.... Most of the outfits are very full-length and pleated from shoulder to ankle and a lot of golds and metallics and lush fabrics.

SE: Any idea what you want to do once you graduate?

CM: In the long term I definitely want to get into the ethical and sustainable side of fashion. So hopefully work for someone who has those values engrained in their business core. And then in the more long term, have my own label which incorporates all those elements in the making of the garment.