designed November,1985,comprising: first silk screen print for ’Sun & Moon’ purple colourway on nylon, 156 by 93cm; together with five further printed nylon fabric samples in yellow, 92 by 92cm ivory, 180 by 94cm, 180 by 96cm and 135 by 95cm, and orange 92 by 92 cm; and six double sided plastic coated press clippings, one full page from British Vogue, February 1986, another showing Hilde Smith wearing a tent dress, bell bottoms in the ’’Occult and raccoon’ (Sun & Moon) print fabric she designed for BodyMap.’; and a Hilde Smith racoon print flyer for the Spring 1986 show, (qty)The Hilde Smith ArchiveHilde Smith recalls the design process for this collection:
’The word pixel is a portmanteau of pix (from pictures, shortened to pics) and el (for element) similar formations with ’el’. The word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures in reference to still pictures by photojournalists. The word ’pixel was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where it describes the picture elements of scanned images from space probes to the Moon and Mars. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E.McFarland, who in turn said that he did not know from where it originated. McFarland said simply it was in use at the same time - circa 1963. I think of mosaics as early pixels. I was working in a world without a world.wide.web and our Apple Mac home computer could not handle images in those early years. It was essentially a clever word processor. I definitely had no means of ’bitmapping’ or ’pixelating’ images.
My obsession with corrupting my hand-drawn images or linocuts using a random method led me to a technical chat with a TV cameraman at a photoshoot. Besides designing - I became a BodyMap catwalk, photo and exhibition sales model. We got chatting about my desire to corrupt my drawings further. However, the cameraman his mates, and I gave our ideas a go. He filmed my hand-drawn images using his TV camera connected to an editing screen. We repeatedly changed the camera lens focus and contrast until we had a random bitmap image which I photographed from the screen one at a time. All these wonderful pixels in exchange for a curry - it was worth it. I had ’PIXELS’. I drew on the images after photocopying them in India Ink using a dip pen and a Sharpie and then cut and pasted them into the design repeats. The prints for this collection were named ’Stars’, ’Sun & Moon’ and ’Cometa’. The ’Glitter Star’ prints used in this collection were printed on wet-look black lycra in glitter pigment for swimwear that left little to the imagination. The male catwalk models loved the effect! We printed black and glitter and copper pigments on colour-dyed cloth. We decided to produce three one colour prints rather than one three colour print. The prints were proofed and produced in Bermondsey railway arches by David Jamison and Ivo Prints in Butlers Wharf.
Boy George was one of the show models.