Dr Martens turns 50

The legendary British footwear label Dr Martens celebrates it's 50th year with an unmissable fashion and music project. on the 1st of April they launched a small collection of limited classic boots and shoes, available in black and red. As well as launch the limited edtion boots they have gathered different acts to help celebrate the aniversiary. Noisettes, The Duke Spiritand the Black Rebel Motocycle Club have have styled the retro boots with a 2010 twist.

Fashion Week in APRIL!!!

Can't wait till September to get your next fashion fix, well your in luck! After reading my monthly issue of ASOS Magazine, I've discovered that fashion week isn't as far away as we thought. The Alternative Fashion Week is runing between 19-23 April in London's Spitalfields Market. Over 70 new designer gradates will feature in the show, previous graduates to showcase include Garth Pugh and Jasper Garvida. You can catch the sublime to sensational at 1:15pm daily. As well as the show, inspriation can be found in the fashion market where you can get one-off pieces or take in the street style, which last year caught the eye of Vogue.com.
but wait you haven't heard the best news yet!.....IT'S FREE!!!

Fashion as a Forum

Along side producing a collection I have to write a Fashion based essay. For assement we we're given a genral question which we then had to inturpretate. To make things easier we were advesied to write about an area of fashion we found interesting. After struggling to find a subject I could write about I decided to base my essay on High Street VS Internet. I thought it would be easy, but when I first tried to gather information from the library, I relised that the Internet is still a new technology, and therist still haven't writen about it yet. It was also hard to find information online as well. Struggling to gather the my research made me change my essay slighly. In the end I wrote about the future of shoping, this included how we currenlty shop and how upcoming technology could change the way we shop in the future.

When I was at school I wrote a lot of long essays and I was very confident when it came to gathering information and managing my time to write them. Unfortunately that was years ago and I hadn't written an essay since my GCSE's. The thought of sitting down and gathering research wasn't appealing and I didn't find the set lessons helpful at all. I thought most of them were irrelevant. Due to these factors I didn't manage my time well and put the essay off till the last minute; which I now regret. It's not that I didn't pass the essay, but I know I could have done much better then I did. This has now moitvated me to read more thorey based books and I'm determinded to be better prepared when it comes to writing the Disatation next year.

The link below will show the essay I produced.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVDZ6sGu0H3CZGdoMjc1cTZfMTdmMjdkdmdkZg&hl=en_GB

Learning Lunch with Maria Grachvogel

As I mentioned on a previous post, I was invited to attend a learning lunch held by Lectra and Maria Grachvogel.


Before going I didnt know what to expect, I knew there would be demonstrations on how to use the Lecra programes, and Maria was going to talk about how she uses them with in her company, but I had no idea I would leave feeling inspired about my own work and my future with in the fashion industry.


The learning lunch started with a brief talk from Ruth Howcroft, a representative from Lectra; she's also the link between my university and Lectra, she has come to see us a couple of times in the studio.


Once Ruth introduced the talk and gave a brief overall of the learning lunch, she handed the talk over to Maria Grachvogel, where we viewed a live interview. Grachvogel disgusted how she built up her business, starting small and not entering fashion week until her business had been going for a couple of years and all the kinks had been worked out.


I really enjoyed the talk because it was so casual and relaxed. I felt so free to openly ask a question without felling silly or insurcure and it was nice to talk to a designer one on one. Grachvogel was easy to talk to and came off as a nice, genuin person who was very happy to share her experiance of the industry.



Before Leaving I managed to get a picture of me and my class mates with Maria Grachvogel. Thanks to her own dress, you couldn't tell she was heavily pregant, and she was still able to wear killer heels!!!

Mrs Prime Minister at LFW

London-based designer Osman Yousefzada had a very special guest at his London Fashion Week show, Mrs Prime Minister, Sarah Brown, was seated in the front row at Somerset House.

Sarah watched as the British couturier reveiled his new A/W collection. There were high collars, textural contrasts, and even floor-skimming maxi dresses, while one standout evening dress featured jewelled segments on the pockets. Mrs Brown, who chose a navy blue ensemble made up of a blouse by Wallis, jacket by M&S Autograph and trousers by Brit Lintner, was firmly focused on the designs.

Mark Fast DoesVoluptuous!

I wish I could congratulate Mark Fast for using a range of different sized models for his A/W show at London Fashion Week ,but Canadian designer, who claims to be the saviour of larger ladies, didn't do it well.

He didn't do Miss Renn no favours by making her wear an ill-fitted red Lycra frock which was stretched over every inch of her voluptuous body.

I think before he tries to use healthier looking women to showcase his work, he needs to improve his size gradings first!

Maria Grachvogel A/W Collection

This week I was lucky enough to attend Maria Grachvogel's show at London Fashion week. Due to the Competition I'm currently doing, which involves both Lectra and Grachvogel, I and three others on my course were invited to attend the show to help us with our projects.

Although I have seen her clothes up close before, I found it really interesting to see them being worn, you can really appreciate the Grachvogels skills when you can see first hand how the clothes fit the body in all the right places and this is enhanced even more by the way she uses her prints.

Even though I wasn't in the front row and I had to stand, I still thought I had one of the best views in the show, it was an amazing spot to view the clothes and to take my own pictures.

I've noticed when ever I view fashion shows online or in Vogue, you never get to see a back view, which is a shame because some of the key features are on the back of a garment. This is definitely the case in Grachvogels designs and I managed to capture front and back views of all her garments shown.

I've uploaded my favourite pieces from the show and a recording I made at the end of the show to give a feel of the collection as a whole.

I love the detail on the bust and the waterfall at the back of this dress.

You can see in these pictures how the prints work with the shape of the body.

This is my favourite piece out of the whole collection, it fits the body perfectly, the print is eye catching and flows with the body, I also love the open back with the boarding waterfall effect.

As well as attending her show, me and my class friends are also invited to a Learning Lunch this week. At the lunch Maria Grachvogel herself will be demonstrating how she uses the Lectra Programs throughout her design and construction processes. Hopefully I can learn some new methods and apply them to my project. Once I've attended the lunch I will blog thoughts and new techniques.

Life Drawing- My first Sesson

As my Professional Project is linked to Maria Grachvogel, and her garments show her understanding of the female form, i thought I'd start doing life drawing classes to help improve my understanding of the body, and hopefully improve my design processes as well.

I haven't attended life drawing classes for 2 years, so i was really nervous in my first session. but once i got started i was able to get into the rhythm of it. my drawing skills aren't as good as they used to be, but I'm sure after a few sessions my drawings should improve.

These two images show the longers posses, the one on the left was 45 minutes long, the second one was 20 minutes, the image on the right was 30 minutes long.

These two images show quick 1 and 2 minutes poses.

I really enjoyed my first session but i don't think the model was very good. due in the longer poses he would often move which would completely change my view. I'm hoping next time there is a female model as my project is based on a women's wear collection.

What is A Brand?

As part of a PPRD lesson we each had to look into brands and be able to explain what a Brand is and how they are defined. These are just some of my notes from this lesson.

The definition of a Brand-
A Brand is a name used to identify a specific product, service or business. A legally protected Brand name is called a Proprietary Name.
A Brand can be reconsized in many different way depending how the producer wanted you to see the Brand.
A Brand can be summed up in a word, image, pharse, colour or person, and they can be used to show different things about a label.

Below is a list of Brand elements

• Image
• Brand Experiance
• Brand Expectations
• Creating an Impression
• Qulities and Characteristics
• Specail or Unique
• Value element for adveristing
• Brands can show what a lable can offer
• Target Audience
• Manipulating
• Promises
• Essence
• Slogans
• Personality
• Value
• Apperance
• Heritage
• Emotional benefits

A part of my course is about finding my brand as a person, this will make me more appealing to the Fashion Industry and I'll be able to sell myself alot easier if I produced one. So far I have only been able to brand myself in words and values.

• self motivative
• current and preivous
• quality
• reinvention
• personal
• belonging
• confident
• ethical

Professional Project- Learning Agreement

As part of my brief I have to produce a learning agreement. This states what my project is, how I'm going to do it and why.

After doing a Learning Agreement for my Jacket project I found this one much easier to write, will little stress. Now its written up I feel very confident about what I need to do and the time I have set myself to do it.

The links below show my Learning Agreement and my Critical Path.

Learning Agreement-http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVDZ6sGu0H3CZGdoMjc1cTZfMTlmY2Q3eDlmcw&hl=en_GB

Critical Path- http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVDZ6sGu0H3CZGdoMjc1cTZfMThncGI5OGdoZg&hl=en_GB

Professional Project

As I've stated preivously, I only have two design briefs in my 2nd year and this is the BIG one! For the professional brife I have to create a collection. The thought of this terrifies me, I've studied Fashion Design for 7 years and I've never produced a collection before.
I really want to do well in this project as its the first design project I've been really excited about since I've started my course, and it should be easy for me to get stuck in!

The Professional Project is a chance for me to combine the creative and practical skills that I have learnt so far on the course and apply them to a Professional brief of my choice.
The brief requires me to develop and produce practical work that is expected at a high professional standard. The evidence of this will be shown through indepth research, development through design, pattern cutting and toiles and hopefully a high quality collection.

The professional brief I decided to use for my collection is the Maria Grachvogel Competition. This brief requires me to produce a dress for Grachvogel’s spring/summer collection 2011 embed Lectra into my design process; design, boards, pattern cutting. At a first glace I was only interested in this brief because I enjoy using Lectra so much, but once I looked at Granchvogel’s work I fell in love with her clean cut designs. I have a similar style so it’ll be easy to incorporate something I produced into her work.

Granchvogel has a deep understanding of a womens form and shape, and there is a huge amount of integrity in her work. The cut of Maria Granchvogel clothes is incredibly skilful and unique; with seams engineered to sculpt the silhouette. I’m hoping to achieve the same silhouette with the use of my seams and the cut of the fabric. In order to accomplish I’ve decided to incorporate life drawing into my research process; this should help me develop a better understanding of the female form.