Interesting new blog by new designer Charlotte Taylor.

I am in love with this film.

I can’t wait to read the memoirs that the film is based on.

I will also be purchasing the soundtrack.

I love French music.

]]> http://fashionstudent.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/82/feed/ 0 fashionstudent An Education Poster An Education An Education An Education An Education An Education An Education An Education An Education An Education An Education Lyn Barber's Memoir http://fashionstudent.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/78/ http://fashionstudent.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/78/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:59:01 +0000 fashionstudent http://fashionstudent.wordpress.com/?p=78 ]]>

The top 10 fashion faces to watch… or not.

Most of these are young girls with famous parents. Not particularly interesting.

However I was very excited to see Carey Mulligan on there. Go and see An Education. Its an amazing film.

See the otherwise uninspiring list here.

After all the talk of the… interesting collection she presented for Ungaro, another interesting story has come to light about Lindsey Lohan.

Read about it here.

You just have to wonder sometimes.

I worked for Betty Jackson on my placement year last year, and got invited back to work at her London Fashion Week show on Sunday.  As you can imagine its always exciting to work at fashion week.  Hanging around backstage, drinking coffee and eyeing up the clothes (oh and helping set up of course), spotting who’s coming in to watch the show, showing them to their seats, guarding the front row, and of course watching the show its self.

I always find it amusing watching the photographers going up and down the front row taking the celebrities photos.  They look like the least likely people to know who all there fashion people are, and yet they know every name!

I loved the show this season.  Watching the models do the walk through we realised that this season’s show was very long.  I reckon it must have been double the length of the last couple of seasons.  And what this meant was that the collection had time to develop throughout the show.  It started with very girly florals, in a variety of pastel colourways.  It felt very feminine, sometimes a little like nighties but very cute and fresh.  Personally I loved the ruffled pieces that were tied at the waist as a little bustle, or as a top.

It then moved on to some much more stereotypical Betty Jackson cuts.  Classic dresses with small ruffle details and fantastically cut trousers in great neutral colours.  These are the type of Betty Jackson clothes I love, they are so simple and elegant, but not in a too grown up way.  I could wear them, my mother could wear them.  Granted in rather a different way…

But Betty mixed these simple pieces up with silver lame, bright purple, and a fantastic mustard yellow for a rather edgier look.

We then went back to a quite girly look.  With lots of pastels and a fantastic marble print.  Classic shapes in a pastel peach colour, accessorised with big ruffled neckpieces finished the show.

One aspect of the show that I will definately be buying into wear the socks!  The sheer, potentially granny-esque pop socks, in fluro colours looked fantastic, especially contrasted with the pastel clothes and shoes.

My one reservation was the kitten heels.  Show heels should be big, bigger, biggest, and I just didn’t quite understand the choice heels for those shoes.  As a criticism though… its a pretty minor one.

all images from iMAXTREE via elleuk.com

…when they called it The Big Fashion Issue!

This weeks Style Magazine is on a massive scale!  Look at how tiny it makes The Observer Fashion supplement, which normally dwarfs all of the Sunday magazines!

It's enormous!!

I have been reading The Cherry Blossom Girl recently and I am really enjoying it so I have added it to my Blogroll.

She writes in French but provides English translations of most posts.  Mainly she is worth checking out for her fabulous styling and photography, which she does herself.

FS

x

Well, the end of the Met Collaboration anyway.

On Monday we did our final presentations to the Metropolitan Police about our redesigning of their uniform.

In the ’smart, new, fully equipped presentation suite’, (a classroom with a fresh lick of paint, some new furniture and some pretty good IT equipment that no one knows how to use), a room I didn’t know existed until that morning, we were faced with several officers in formal uniform, of varying rank, some people who were just described to us as ‘investors’ (in who I’m not sure), and several people from the Metropolitan Police Uniform Department.   As you can imagine it was pretty daunting.

And as you can probably guess from the lack of enthusiasm I have shown when writing about the project, I wasn’t particularly prepared.

But I had to go first, and had prepared a very basic powerpoint presentation and some notes for each slide, which I totally abandoned and decided to wing it.  I do tend to work better that way.  I know my work, and can talk about it quite easily.  Notes just scare me even more.

After finishing mine I sat through everyone else’s.  There were 5 presenting from my course, all having done the woman’s uniform, and then 2 groups from the Menswear degree.  The Menswear presentations looked a lot more impressive than ours, as there were about 4 in each group they had done the entire uniform, whereas we had only made 1 garment each.  Which was a little unfair.

When all the presentations were over lots of journalists and reporters were there to document the event.  Which was totally bizarre.  Like I said previously, the Met have used this PR very much to their advantage, however this time they got it a little wrong.  After the good couple of hours we spent doing filming and photos and interviews and things, the election for London Mayor won, and there was pretty much no coverage on TV or in the news papers.  Not the best week to have organised it.

But anyhow.  After a stupid amount of waiting, we returned, and stood in a huddle at the back of the room.  The Met decided to give a Womenswear Winner and Runner-Up, and then a Menswear Winner, (no runner-up as there were only 2 groups).  A girl called Jude Cunningham won the womenswear prize, for trousers with an adjustable height waistband and movable pockets.  Much deserved because she really problem solved the issues discussed with the police.  And another girl called Alice Burkitt and her group won the menswear prize for their fluorescent cape.  Which I must admit was very cool, and very amusing.  Though I must admit I can’t see police officers liking it (which is proved here, and if the commentators on that sight think that ‘fashion students’ enjoyed designing their uniform, well they have it rather wrong), it was clever.

So after that they needed a Womenswear Runner-Up, and that was me.  For a stylish jacket and a good presentation.  Which is cool.  They wanted designs that solved problems for the winners, and basically all I did was make a pretty jacket, but they liked the design, so that was nice.

Anyway what all this means is that that project really is over.  Which is a relief.  And I can now focus on my current project, which I am determined to make light of and enjoy.  And am so far succeeding at doing.

But more about that another time.

While flicking through my RSS feeds yesterday I came across an interesting article from The Business of Fashion about the top 10 internet fashion magazines.

Now I must admit I’m a little rubbish at discovering these kind of things, and hadn’t heard of a disgraceful number of them.  I read Fashion156 rather frequently, and a couple of others I have glanced at at some point in the past, but the new one that has caught my eye is Ponystep.

Its East London based, started by Richard Mortimer a mere matter of days ago.  I like its simple layout and aesthetic, and its contributed to by a large number of interesting London folk.  Definately worth a look in my opinion.

I am at this moment lying on my sofa eating chocolate for breakfast.  Not an entirely healthy start to the day but it is a weekend of celebration.  So I am allowed.

On Friday I had two interviews for 6 month work placements as a pattern cutter.  One was a very positive experience, I discovered that my old pattern cutting teacher works there, which was a very exciting prospect as I know I will learn a lot.  The other was with a brand that I absolutely love.  But the spark just wasn’t there.  If the placement had been shorter or it had been part time, then my decision would have been very different, but I couldn’t face working there for 6 whole months.  I was quite upset about this, as obviously I’d rather got my hopes up about them.  But at the same time it was good.  Because it made my decision for me.

This is why I am eating chocolate for breakfast.  I’ve been celebrating all weekend.  Friday night was the leaving party for the designer I’ve been working for, Julia Clancey, as she’s moving to LA.  We went from there to another bar, and there were a lot of toasts to the fact I have my year sorted.  Yesterday I went to meet my father for a celebratory glass of champagne, but we had both rather over indulged the night before so we had a celebratory salad instead.  And I bought a guitar.  As you do.  Sadly today I need to do lots of work, but I will alternate this with guitar playing, and perhaps treat myself to something good for dinner!

So my entire placement year is planned.  I will be spending 6 months at Betty Jackson working as a pattern cutter, and then 6 months at Mulberry as a technical assistant.  Pretty damn exciting.