For their graduation project, Israa Eid, Zainab El-Gammal, Zeyad Nabil and Nada Afifi combined contemporary ideas with motifs from Egypt’s cinematic and literary heritage after visiting an exhibition earlier this year of works by the artist and academic Sally Elzeiny.
The exhibition, called “The Scene”, featured paintings based on 1950s and ’60s literature, especially books that were turned into well-known movies. Elzeiny’s paintings drew on works by great writers such as Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, Abdel Quddous, and others.
Graduation projects are students’ last step before they get their bachelor’s degrees after five years of study, including a preparatory year, at Egypt’s Faculties of Fine and Applied Arts. At Benha University’s Faculty of Applied Arts, fashion technology and design is one of 14 departments.
In the first four academic years, students study the different types of clothing, like children’s, women’s, and men’s clothing, in addition to topics like designing patterns and shaping the mannequin.
They also study the properties of fabrics, caring for them, factory machines, production materials, design software, presentation and packaging methods, environment-friendly design, as well as various branches such as color science and psychology, and fashion and art history. In a course on clothing accessories, they study bag and shoe designs, the leather industry, and recycling.
The past academic year was dedicated to studying the design and implementation of special occasion clothing.
Inspired by Art that Reflects Heritage
In their graduation projects, students had to create designs inspired by works by contemporary artists that reflect Egyptian heritage, just as the paintings in Elzeiny’s exhibition did.
Israa Eid told Al-Fanar Media that she and the other students who collaborated with her were inspired by paintings that highlighted the fashions of mid-20th century Egyptian films.
Leave a Reply