JumperCity at Piccadilly Gardens

JumperCity was a one day installation piece that appeared in Manchester's city centre yesterday. Created by Jane Leach and Valpuri Vihriala (who you may remember as the creator of the fashion collection I photographed last year) and part of the RIBA Love Architecture Festival currently taking place across the country, the artwork involved one of the Piccadilly Gardens many bus shelters being covered by 150 items of knitwear.
While I was taking photographs, a number of people came up to find out more about the installation, exploring inside the shelter and interact with it - It was possible to actually "wear" some of the exterior jumpers - and they all appeared to be delight by what they found judging by the sticker board.

You can read more about the project by reading Jane and Valpuri's blog posts. There's also more photographs of the work in this flickr set.

Purlpuri Summer-Autumn Mini Collection 2011 - Disco Jumpsuit

Now this is an unusual piece of knitwear. Sandra again pulled off a wealth of poses but as it’s such an unusual item it was a bit of challenge to photograph. These two photographs are also very different from the rest colourwise with the aim of presenting the jumpsuit as ready to wear on a night out.

Purlpuri Summer-Autumn Mini Collection 2011 - Emma Dress

I like the colour the scarf added to the photographs, though it does draw away slightly from the dress itself. I also especially like the matching red of the lipstick, heart and shoes – good job Sophija and Valpuri who did all the styling together.

Purlpuri Summer-Autumn Mini Collection 2011 - Retro Cats Top

Isn’t that little fella a cutie? And aren’t Leonore’s legs long? For anyone wondering on the lighting in the pictures, they've all been tweaked slightly (and sometimes heavily) to give them a warmer tone and then altered indiviually to reflect the daylight at different times of day.

Purlpuri Summer-Autumn Mini Collection 2011 - Black Bolero

The last item to be photographed and the most fun to document. Sandra struck many a pose with the extra pictures below amongst my favourites from the day. Unfortunately they didn’t show off the top as well as the photographs selected and in the end, that they most important part.

Purlpuri Summer-Autumn Mini Collection 2011 - The Phones Top

Presented today is the Phones Top - the first item to be photographed. I’m actually quite fond of the little motif.
The theme selected for the shoot was Urban Summer, which lead to the garden area of Nexus Arts Café being chosen as the our location – a perfect combination of brickwork and plant life with easy access to facilities. The only issue with it was lack of sunshine that makes it down to ground level due to the high walls all around. But since I still have studio lights, I didn’t expect it to be a problem.

Here’s another angle on the top (if you haven’t guessed already, there was a great deal of standing on chairs / lying on the floor on my part).

Purlpuri Summer-Autumn Mini Collection 2011 - The HedgeHodge Top

Just days before the camera breakdown I completed a photoshoot for Valpuri of Purlpuri Handknits of her 2011 Summer-Autumn mini collection of knitwear. I’ve not done that many of these before and no fashion shoots but it sounded like a fun challenge. You can find the full collection here but I thought it might be interesting to feature an item a day here along with a few additional unused images and notes on the shoot.

So here's today's item - The HedegeHodge Top, named after the cute little design running around the bottom half.

And here's the additional images. I'm curious on people's thoughts on the first as there was bit of debate chosing between it and the top photograph.