I Just Want To Dream

Sometimes things can make everything seem like nothing. I'd rather just be little again, surrounded by fantasy and dreams of happy ever after. It's easier dreaming because your greatest desires can become real until you face the sinking feeling of waking up. I'd like to put some flowers in my hair, lay down in the field, close my eyes and dream the time away for a while so I can have everything that made me happy again....

We're All Just The Same In The End

We are all so different. Different colours, different languages, different jobs, different clothes, different houses, different cars, different classes, different religions, different EVERYTHING.

But somehow, through the ability to love and be in love, we all become the same again.

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." - Nat King Cole, Nature Boy

Dearest Deer

Style Over Substance: The Decayed Form.
Things are only new and only grow for a limited period then they decay or deteriorate- everything dies. Once it dies it leaves behind the final remains of a building, an empty shell of a person- their lovely bones. Beauty is within and everyone looks the same. Remove the substance and expose the structure that holds everything together.

Dearest Deer,

You run so free and pretty but one day you will look like this.

Sorry, you are still beautiful.

From Beauty To Beast

Edie Sedgwick is one of the most amazing icons to me. Despite her car-crash lifestyle, I will always love her, she just had that 'je ne sais quois' of a true superstar. She was one of the most enchanting people to have ever lived yet she was so deeply damaged. But her outlook on the world was one so very fascinating, she was just so misunderstood. She was ruined by Warhol and his factory yet she clinged onto it all so tightly because she thought it was all she had ever desired. Anything that was nothing was everything to her and she lost the only thing that meant something...

She was so sweet and charming like in the first video below and she transformed into a tragic wreck, her voice in the second video is so haunting. She sounds like an elderly woman but like many of the greatest people of her time she died so young at just 28.


Edie Sedgwick, from beauty to beast...

 There is a movie about Edie's life called 'Factory Girl' where she is played by Sienna Miller, whose performance is outstanding, she portrays Edie perfectly. It is one of my favourites and definitely worth a watch!

Deliciously Lovely

Of late I have been in love with perfume adverts, and have been meaning to blog about them for aaaages. One of my favourite directors, Sofia Coppola (she did the beautifully shot, ice-cream coloured 'Marie Antoinette' movie starring Kirsten Dunst) directed a Miss Dior Cherie advert quite a while ago now, but I still love it and had to put it up. The colours and Parisian city scenes are so pretty and with the addition of one of my favourite happy tunes, the playful 'Moi Je Joue' by Brigitte Bardot this ad is truly delightful!

And the new one starring Natalie Portman is just as gorgeous with again one of my favourite favourite songs, 'Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus' by Serge Gainsboug and Jane Birkin. Very Parisian chic, so feminine and so very very lovely....ahhhh....

Also, I couldn't very well ignore the wonderful Chanel mini-movie ads, I LOVE them, they are so elegant and enchanting! The Nicole Kidman one is amazing, it's directed by Baz Luhrman, that did 'Moulin Rouge' and the advert has similarities which remind me of the movie. The Keira Knightley ones with the velvety vocals of Joss Stone are divine too but I just can't decide which one of all I love the most so I had to put them all up!

Tribal Intoxication

Of all the projects we have undertaken so far, this was definitely the one I most enjoyed. For the main part of the project we had to select a fashion brand to for which we would design and again select a theme (multi-functional, flat-packed, compulsive craft or old wisdom) and use this to lead us into our research process. I chose to design for 'Twenty8Twelve' and base my work on 'old wisdom' and since we were allowed to interpret our theme in any which way we choose, I decided to look into the Native Americans and their tribal practices. 

 

I found myself reading through pages and pages of fascinating writings on the Native American peyote pilgrimages during which they would go for days of starvation on a special and meaningful journey to collect their blessed peyote; and their ceremonies in which the Shaman leader of the tribe would contact the spiritual world and become closer to God through beautiful intoxication of their sacred peyote plant.

'Etheric Veil' (Peyote trips are best described through visual representation

'Acid Trip' (similar to Peyote trip) a beautiful visual representation

The Native American ceremonies had me truly mesmerised, it all proved to be so very interesting and therefore I focused particularly on these practices and devised my trend, 'Tribal Intoxication' with which I would go on to create a trend board (to inspire the design process), a product board (my collection of 6 accessories) and my final piece (a prototype of one of the pieces from my collection).

An example of some sketchbook work

Sketchbook work, creating a print using the peyote button shapes

More sketchbook work, an account of from the first westerner to ingest peyote

Images of the peyote plant itself, the object central to my work

My A3 trend board

My A3 product presentation board with my final collection of 6 accessories

 And so from this collection of six, here are some pictures below of the product I chose to make (the peyote bag pictured on the end right of the presentation board above). The bag has 2 detachable straps, (a ring strap and long feather strap) crystal bird details and a metal clasp fastening.

Creative Design Realisation

This project required us to translate our 2D designs into 3D toiles. We had to design a properly tailored dress, draw up and make our own patterns and then use these to sew together a basic toile of the dress in calico.
 

I found this project to be extremely beneficial in teaching me essential skills which will be undoubtedly useful throughout my future work. I was able to explore the processes required for proper garment construction and it really interesting to learn the correct way to create pieces from initial sketches right through to the final outcome. I realised that there is alot more to consider when designing than perhaps I initially thought. Previously, I believed that designing was the more straightforward part of the process and that garment construction was more time consuming and complicated. However, this project demonstrated to me quite the opposite. I discovered that it is very easy to sketch out attractive designs but when it comes to the practicality of making them, some things are not always possible because there are a number of things which must be considered. It became apparent that construction and pattern-making must be a running thread involved throughout the design procedure.
 
Once I had decided on my final design, it was really fascinating to find out how to manipulate block patterns to create ones specific to your own designs. The importance of total accuracy became clear very quickly and despite being a lengthy process I found that it is worth spending time over to ensure the garment will fit correctly in the final piece.  I would say that despite the fact I did spend most of my time designing and pattern-making, if I had the chance to go back and re-do this project I would take even more time over these processes. I think I was conscious of the fact that I had a whole dress to sew together, which seemed a bit overwhelming at the time, and so I didn’t take as much time as I could have when it came to creating the master draft. This meant that I had to re-do parts of it a couple of times, but I am glad that my tutors assisted me in realising these potential problems whilst I was still drafting, rather than once I had already begun construction, because I found that putting the garment together is possibly the easiest part of the whole process, provided that care and attention was taken over drafting and pattern-making.
  
Overall, I think the project went fairly well and I did learn alot about design realisation. However, I did feel that creativity can seem quite restricted when trying to design something that you can make using traditional pattern-cutting techniques when you only know the basics. So far I have found that working on the stand allows me to have more creative freedom, but I would love to learn more about pattern-cutting nonetheless. I would also like to explore moulage further in depth as this could combine the freedom of working on the stand with creating properly constructed patterns and I intend on building upon the skills I have learned during this project through experimentation within private study.

Here are some photos of my calico dress with ruffled collar, puffball skirt and cute bow.

Noble & Webster

So continuing my 'Creative Approaches To Fashion' project, we had to select an artist and key words from a list to use as a starting point for research. I chose Tim Noble & Sue Webster and based my research around their work on 'Polymorphous Perverse'- a terrifyingly freakish display of maimed dolls and phallic objects surrounded by nails, bolts, industrial objects, junk and dirt. This was all based upon Freud's curious theories about children including the Oedipus/Electra complexes.

The words I chose to work with were 'Trap & Overlap' which were incidentally rather well suited to this particular Noble & Webster piece.

I looked at trapping objects and insects and this lead me to focus particularly on cobwebs which I used as inspiration for my final piece (pictured below) that had to be created from no more than 3 old garments.