The dissertation is devoted to the development of a typology of representative practices of costume design as conceptual and narrative strategies for the elicitation of a design product in artistic and designing culture. Complex research, systematization, characterization of the principles of action and interaction of existing formats of representative practices are conditioned by the need for a thorough study of the designing and communication processes inherent in design, in general, and the concepts of its development in the present. The development of the topic specified synthesizes interdisciplinary approaches to research as a form of scientific knowledge, which is a theoretical basis for solving actual problems of design activities to create a costume as an aesthetically valuable and socially important multifunctional design product.
The formation of a new methodology of narrative strategies for the elicitation of a design product was facilitated by the consideration of a fashionable costume as an external form of identity narrative. It is shown that the application of the methodology of narrative strategies for the elicitation of a design product can initiate a new stage of the development of costume design as a sphere of artistic and designing creativity.
It is established that the origin of presentations and representations of fashionable clothes went in two different directions: a direct demonstration of clothing on a costume wearer or on an item imitating it as a three-dimensional elicitation format; and the fixation by the artistic means of a person, a costume-wearer, as a generalized image of a contemporary who embodies the public’s perception of aesthetic tastes in clothing and ideals of beauty. As an important channel of fashion communication, they broadcast, advertised and regulated key image-style characteristics of costume, its purpose, and disseminated information about the values of fashion. Traditional and modern costume representation practices are described. Their typology is made, in particular: print representative practices that include fashion illustration, fashion photography, artistic fashion photo illustration; performative practices that are divided into a dynamic format of representations – a catwalk, and a static format of representations – shop windows and exhibitions in museums; virtual representation practices, which include hybrid formats, authors’ sites, specialized sites, and virtual fashion museums. All types and formats of representations are characterized by a narrative process. The narrativity of representations is conditioned by the artistic image of the costume, the image of its wearer, the story of the elicitation, the style of the exposition, the aesthetics of the spectacle. It maintains a close connection with the general trends of fashion, contemporary art, art design, transformations in the field of visual, which is manifested, first of all, at the artistic and technological level of realization.
The principles of narrative strategies by which representations preserve and interpret the basic design product narrative are established: “a costume” as such, “a costume on a person”, “a person in a costume.” A typology of representative costume design practices is developed as a reflection of the conceptual narrative strategy of design product presentation. The interaction of its levels – types of practices of representations, sub-levels – individual formats of representations, characterizes the parameters inherent only to them, caused by: genre-stylistic means – organization of visual environment; artistic and imaginative means that enhance emotional expressiveness; by means of visual harmonization that implements the conceptual content of narrative strategies. Within the model, the costume design is positioned as a figuratively-symbolic representative of socio-cultural changes in the form of visual narrative
