Archive Page 2
January Sales
I’ve pretty much avoided the sales so far. I absolutely hate sale shopping. Its just too stressful, and I just can’t be bothered to sift through rails and rails of rubbish in the hope of finding one gem, in my size, at a decent price.
Now saying that, I’ve bought a couple of things. A beautiful top from Karen Millen, a store that is beautifully peaceful even in sale time. I don’t have the energy to get it out and photograph it, which is terrible blogging I know. It was way out of my price range, but it was just one of those items where you try it on, and there is just no question, you have to have it. I wore it on New Year and managed not to ruin it, and am still absolutely in love with it.
I also bought a pair of black flat boots from Office, which can be seen in the previous post. Remarkable practical for me. I had eyed them up earlier in the season, but wasn’t convinced enough about them. Then when I saw them in the sale I just decided to go for them, and I’m really glad I did. But those are the only things I’ve bought.
Actually that’s not strictly true. They are the only fashion items I’ve bought. No, this January sale has been seriously DVD focussed. I’ve bought 9. Oops. I can’t resist. Now I’ve only spent £40 on them, so they’ve been absolute bargains. But it is terrible. Especially when I already have a lot of DVD’s that I’ve never watched! And I really need to do work not watch DVD’s.
Oh well. Sometimes theses things just have to be done.
Top (l-r): Sleepy Hollow, Green Street, Edward Scissorhands, The Devil Wears Prada, Reservoir Dogs
Bottom (l-r): Layer Cake, Donnie Darko, O, Flight Of The Concords: Complete Series One
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Filed under: Diary, Shopping | 1 Comment
An Outfit Fit To Present
I had to present my jacket that I made before Christmas to Amoosi yesterday. Which all went very well. I’m down to the final 6 people. And we’ll find out if I’ve won a prize or if they want me to work with them or something as soon as they’ve agreed all that kind of thing with uni. So thats quite exciting.
As I was going to be speaking to industry people rather than just teachers I thought I’d make a bit of an effort with my clothes rather than wearing the same pair of jeans for the fifth day in a row. Plus I wanted to wear my new leggings. So I put on a dress to make a bit of effort. I quite liked the outfit, casual but not scruffy, so I thought I’d share it with you…
Apologies for the picture being a bit blurry. In fact it was not the focus that was the problem. I looked at the lens after taking these and there was so much dirt on it, it was near opaque! New Years was a rather hectic evening, I think my camera bore the brunt of it!
Shoes, sale purchase from Office; leggings, American Apparel; dress, Zara; cardigan, bought by my mother in France; belt, Ebay.
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Filed under: Diary, Fashion, Work | 3 Comments
Apologies
I apologise if every blog I write is then posted about 5 or 6 times, with few if any adjustments. For some reason the WordPress editor isn’t saving my formatting so every time I publish it is just appears as a large block of text rather than in paragraphs. I’ve no idea why. But it’s getting very annoying!x
Filed under: General | 3 Comments
Skins
I was a big fan of the first series of Skins (if you aren’t from the UK and have no idea what I’m talking about then you can find out more about it here, and recommend that you do). It follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, looking at all sorts of trouble they get into and various things that happen around them. I have to say that while it is obviously exaggerated to make a good story, its a pretty good portrayal of a lot of teenagers lives in the UK today. Issues they deal with. Things they get up to. That and it’s thoroughly enjoyable.
It caught everyone’s attention last year with some very cool adverts, which were basically all the characters running wild at the kind of house party every teenager dreams about experiencing, while The Gossip’s Standing In The Way of Control plays over the top (incidentally making the song a huge hit). And now they are doing it again. I heard mention of the new advert for the second series on Radio 1 today and I had to check it out on youtube. Oh my good God. It is amazing.
Again its a house party type sequence. But it’s so dark, it’s left me desperate to see the new series (so it works!), mainly because I want to know if it is going to be as dark as the advert suggests. One of things that made Skins Series 1 so great was its balance of emotion and humour, so I do hope that they manage to hold on to that.
Visually this new one is much more decadent, set in a falling apart house, wearing fantastic clothes, with dark lighting, and with lots of dark makeup being dragged down faces by tears, it looks wonderful.
So here it is, I warn you now so no one gets upset, though not shocking or explicit in my view, there are ’scenes of a sexual nature’, this is the uncut version, and as youtube put a warning on it, I thought I should too… enjoy…
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Filed under: TV | 2 Comments
Happy New Year
Well the time between Christmas and New Year just disappeared. I didn’t get round to writing a few blogs about 2007. I didn’t see several people I said I would. I didn’t make my coat. I certainly didn’t get started on my work for my new project. And yet I don’t think I was that busy, it just went way too fast!
I hope you all had a great New Year. My celebrations were manic. I threw a dinner party, where everyone had to bring a dish, with the rule that it had to be home made. It went really well, and as expected descended into chaos after midnight, with some of us deciding to go on a jaunt round my hometown and get up to mischief, while the others played Guitar Hero on the wii for hours and hours. I think the last people went to bed at about 8am. A great night.
Well, I am very proud of some of the things I did this year. Getting a first for a project was obviously a highlight, and being chosen to present my jacket to Amoosi next week (eek) is obviously very exciting. I think during this last project I lost my motivation a little and I need to refocus for this next project, especially as it is something I’m not particularly inspired by, as if I don’t regiment myself a little more then I will probably slip behind, which would be bad.
Now I also want to try and motivate myself to blog more regularly, but the problem with that is that I’m not allowed to talk about my next project in any detail, as I have signed a contract to keep it private. So I shall have to make an effort to comment on things that are going on, or processes generally. That’s if I manage to step up my blogging.
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Filed under: Diary | 3 Comments
2007…crikey, where did it go?
Well, 2007 is nearly over, though I’m not sure how. Its been quite a year.At this moment I’m packing to go home from uni for a couple of weeks (as I’m sure you can tell, I’m making lots of progress with the packing!). But I don’t think its even as long as two weeks long to be honest. My Christmas holidays are flashing past and I have so much to do! But I’m seriously looking forward to seeing all my friends and family and puppy and being in a house where the heating works and eating loads and being looked after and generally being somewhere else for a bit. I’m making a coat at the moment. Supposedly I’ve been making it for a good week or so, but progress is incredibly slow, and I’m freezing to death every time I leave the house at the moment because I don’t have a coat. I will get it made. Though it may be summer by then. I shall post some pictures as it emerges.And I hope to post a blog or two over the next week or so looking back at 2007 a bit. Reviewing college stuff, mentioning exciting things I’ve done and naming a few things I’ve loved this year, music, fashion, books, things like that. Just a bit of an overview really.So now I shall go actually pack, as my mother has volunteered to come pick me up even though today is the busiest day for traffic in the year (she chose today, I said yesterday was fine!) so I should be at least nearly ready when she gets here!x
Filed under: Diary | 1 Comment
Unsure…
Ok, so I’m a little unsure if I’m really supposed to put pictures of my jacket up, hence the delay, as I am one of the people chosen to present my work to amoosi in January, with a view to them buying it.Its very cool to be chosen, obviously, but I want to redo some of my design sheets by then, because I’m not too happy with them.And as amoosi haven’t made me sign anything to say that the project was confidential, nor have we been told not to show people the work, I shall put some pictures up here. I don’t see that there would be anything wrong with that, they would have said not to otherwise.Very basic pictures taken on the mannequin, but you get the idea…
So there you are. The tonal differences are because its made up of 3 different garments (which you may or may not know depending on what else you’ve read on this blog), but I think they work pretty well together.
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Filed under: Ethics, Fashion, Work | 5 Comments
Relief
I have been feeling very guilty recently as the visitor figures for this blog have been growing and growing but I’ve been posting less and less! (I blame the fact I gave my mum the address!)
But sadly I have barely had time to eat, sleep or think with the amount of work I have had to do, let alone blog. But yesterday I handed in my project for Amoosi, and I can now relax, a little.
This was the eco-fashion project, where we were given materials from Oxfam and had to turn them into a very well made, high fashion garment. Not easy considering the materials were garments that were so bad they had travelled around several charity shops without being sold.
But I did it. I made a very fitted, tailored (though now I’ve done my tailoring course and seen how real tailoring is done I resent using that word as a description) jacket, with very complicated curved panelling around the bust and a draped hem at the back. Basically I made life very difficult for myself. It was made out of corduroy and took 4 garments to be able to made this 1 jacket, which shows how complicated the pattern was.
A week before hand in we had our toile critique, which was cutting it fine really, as that only left us a week to make our final garment as well as completing everything else, and my teachers told me that because the fit wasn’t right i should start from scratch and re patterncut it and toile it before making my final thing. Great. That made things worse. I had already let myself get behind on the project, though i still can’t quite work out where it all went wrong because it feels like I’ve been working consistently all term. And then on top of that I had to write off the last 2 weeks work and start again.
So I blame that for the all nighter I had to pull on Sunday night to get the work done for Monday’s hand in. I’ve never had to stay up all night to get something done in my entire life. But I got it done.
Was really pleased with how my final jacket came out (especially as I made it in 2 days). The style worked really well and it was beautifully made. The rest of my work wasn’t as good as I would have liked it to be. I just didn’t have enough time. But I ticked all the boxes so I should at least get an ok mark even if its not as high as I would like it to be.
When I get it back I will post some pictures of the jacket for you to see.
For now I am going to go back to sleep, still trying to catch up for the 41hours that I was awake for over Sunday and Monday!
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Filed under: Ethics, Fashion, Work | 4 Comments
Fashion Ethics
Ethical fashion is becoming a hotter and hotter topic. Its something that LCF are really picking up on especially on my course. I guess the idea is that by teaching us how to make fashion ethical and sustainable then in the future when we are the fashion industry, it will be second nature to make ethical and sustainable things.
I have been reading ‘Green Is The New Black’ by Tamsin Blanchard, partly for my uni project and partly out of curiosity. And if you’re interested in fashion then it’s a gripping read. But it also makes you feel terribly guilty.
‘Green Is The New Black’ goes through all the different ethical problems facing the fashion industry, waste textiles, pesticide use, chemical pollution from making synthetics, trade, sweat shop labour, fast fashion and air travel, and many more I’ve forgotten I expect. None are gone into in too much depth, which is good, because most people won’t want to wade through pages and pages of deep depressing reading. But enough facts and figures are given about each to make you, as a reader, think.
The thing I love about this book is that its not preachy. Its written in a very laid-back, colloquial way (I love that word) a bit like she’s having a chat with you about it. There are also many contributions from designers like Anya Hindmarch and Stella McCartney, plus a foreword by Lily Cole.
The great thing about it is it gives you options. It tells you the problems surrounding a certain area of fashion, and says, these are the companies that are doing something about it, or why don’t you try doing this. It also appreciates that most people don’t have the money to turn completely green, like we’re all being encouraged to do, it just offers some tips. there is also a fantastic address book at the end with brands, websites, magazines that are all worth a browse.
For me it made me think. Hard. I haven’t been into Primark since, and don’t think I’ll be going back to be honest. Its stopped me buying a few things that before I would have had to have had. Instead I’ve bought a couple of slightly more expensive than I would usually buy items, that are classics and I know will last me a lot longer than some of the usual crap I buy on impulse. And instead of throwing out that pencil skirt that the idiot hairdresser spilt bleach down, I’ve bought a zip to stitch down the front to cover the mark and give it a new lease of life.
I didn’t intend for this to be a book review. I was going to discuss things a bit more generally. But sometimes that’s the way things go. It’s a great book, I would recommend it if you’re interested in fashion (and what the hell are you doing here if you aren’t), be warned though, you will start to feel guilty. And you will re address a few things. You may even walk on past Primark next time!
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Filed under: Book, Ethics, Fashion | 2 Comments
The Second Year Begins
When they said that the second year was going to be worse, they weren’t kidding.
The project is intense, and with the brief being set by an actual company, the pressure’s kind of on! I’ve had a huge problem getting back into the mode of working so hard. The summer was crazy long, and I did a couple of things, but mostly, I was bone idle! So getting back into the frame of mind where I have to work every second of the day has been a struggle.
Uni lectures have been annoying. Normally we’re just based in Shoreditch or Oxford Street, but this year we’re in Shepherds Bush quite a lot. Which is just plain annoying. Living in East London, its not a fun trek. Because public transport can be so temperamental we have to leave an hour and twenty minutes, at least, to get there. And sometimes even then we don’t.
On top of the project there’s a lot more going on this year. Electives, a whole separate project, which can be on any subject that the uni teaches. This term I’m doing fashion graphics, which is really good. But as I’m sure many of you know, photoshop not only takes forever to do something, but it’s hugely addictive once you get going so you end up just ‘playing’ on it for ages. We need to be writing our CV. Doing a portfolio. Looking for a work placement for next year. Plus I expect myself to do all of these things better than anyone else.
Needless to say I had a near nervous breakdown a week or so ago.
But I’ve calmed down a little now. Have lists coming out of my ears. Spend more time making lists than doing them, but at least I feel on top of it!
And I’ve taken on some work experience too. Just to make things easier! Working as a pattern cutter. But thats very very early days, so I may divulge more details at a later date. (though with my frequent blogging I will probably be talking about it in past tense by then!)
On the plus side The Boy has got his first post-grad full time job just down the road from my house. Which is great to see him every day (though perhaps doesn’t help me get lots of work done). And this weekend I have my ma’s dog staying with me while she’s away. He’s a lovely little Shi Tzu. Only a pup really.
So yes thats a quick update from me.
Filed under: Diary, Work | 2 Comments
