Lace's and Chiffon's

In the drawing part of Visual Communication we were learning how to render chiffon and lace in class this past week. I was very relieved to learn this because most of the fabrics in my 1950's inspired collection for Integrated Studio are chiffon's, organza, and lace.

We were also working on composing 2 figures interestingly on the page and for my homework I tried looking specifically at different poses that feel like my inspiration of the 1950's by viewing pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.

1950's seductive housewife

While my designs are in their early stages, the project is to create a narrative in a 10-12 piece collection. I started my research/inspiration looking at 1950's housewives and the social media around the time. This lead me to create a very elaborate narrative about a WWII widow who has to deliver her baby after finding out her husband was killed in the war. She suffers from postpartum depression in the early years of her child's life and when her child is old enough to be home by herself, the mother fills the void of missing her dead husband through sexuality and promiscuity with the other men in her town.

While I was in a taxi cab one night this Guess commercial came on and I immediately thought to myself "this is the girl!" This is the woman I picture when thinking about who I am designing for in my project. On the outside she seems cute and sexy but she has an evil and selfish side.

Inspiration Video-for Integrated

Integrated Studio

For this project during week 5-10 I designed a nautical collection. This idea came initially from research of the classic white work shirt. This then progressed into wrinkle and non-wrinkle shirts and then ways that shirts purposefully create wrinkles. Finally I took this idea of creating wrinkles into cinching fabric at the waist or bust line with a rope or bow which lead me to the sailor/nautical idea of sailors knots.

The shirt that I sewed has a sailor collar and a drawstring under the center of the collar to tie all the way around the body in the form of a "wrap" shirt. There is a subtle silver metallic horizontal stripe in the shirt's fabric.

How the other half lives

I tutor and nanny for a family who live on the upper east side. Their penthouse apartment on Park ave is decorated like a Better Homes and Gardens magazine and is probably close to the size of my suburbian home. Whenever I am in their apartment I cannot help but look around at all the beautiful art, decorating details and monstrocity of the place. Specifically, my favorite room in the apartment is the dining room. The details of the room are filled with extravagant textiles and patterns. The color palette is blue, brown and gold. Brown being the enormous table in the center of the room, gold on the beautiful vine and leaf-like chandelier above the table and blue in the textiles of the chairs and floor length curtains. When I step into this room I feel as if I am a character in a movie or have been taken back in time to the Victorian age. Either way, to the kids this room is nothing but the space where they can spread out and do their homework or be tutored.

Plaids, Plaids, Patterns

After learning nothing but patterns and plaids for the past 2 weeks in Visual Communication I have been taking more appreciation for jackets and clothes that I see with patterns knowing the detail it takes the designer to design such a garment. Specifically in my drawing class while we've been working on rendering plaids and patterns, while its a time consuming technique, it has been fun to learn and see my improvements.

Through these past 2 weeks I've been looking out for plaid jackets for inspiration and I started seeing how many different patterned jackets I found. There are all types of prints and plaids used for patterns, no one print is the same.

In the past fall 2011 fashion shows specifically Valentino used a lot of prints on his jackets. I could only imagine how beautiful these illustrations looked when designed because after learning plaids and prints I feel a lot of appreciation towards the skill it takes to create. Needless to say, feeling surrounded by plaids makes me feel inspired by the beauty of the print which I never noticed before.

Under Water

In the background of the second image you can see the back drop of the show and how the space was completely transformed into this modern underwater feeling. The clothes reminded me of the beauty in the fountain and the textures in the garments reminded me of the patterns and ripples the drops of water create.

As I have posted before, the fountain in my neighborhood has inspired me in a very beautiful way. This week as I was passing by the fountain I walked up close to it and looked at the ripples and water droplets falling and the patterns in which this creates. The movement in the water and the sound it makes is so peaceful and as I began to think about how it could relate to clothes and patterns I remembered the Chanel spring 2012 show which was an under water theme.