Window Displays

While I was babysitting this week uptown and walking the dog I stumbled across the beautiful window displays of Madison Ave. Most displays consist of beautiful extravagant lighting and chandeliers. These bright lights lured me to the window where I would stop and stare at the beautiful jewelry, clothes and shoes in the window.

These chic window displays inspire me to hope to have a beautiful window display someday in a store that has my name on it. I think along with a lot of students here at Parsons this is the dream but seeing these displays makes this goal a huge priority for me. I would love to design a beautiful window display one day or be able to walk by my store and stare at the display and know I had something to do with it. It must be such a great sense of satisfaction to these designers who can look at their stores and think, "i did it."

Shiny Things

For my accessory design class I had to buy the materials for the bag that I am making. Although my design is black and has gold studs, I found myself ooing and ahing at the shiny embellishments that were glittering behind the counter.

Seeing these kinds of embellishments make me want to become an accessory designer or focus on accessories. I do love clothing design though so I can always think of ideas how to add these embellishments to dresses.

I felt very inspired by the different shapes and colors of the crystals. Whether they were gold or silver, black or even pink I found them all to be beautiful and thought of ideas on how to develop them into my clothing or accessories. The organic shapes also caught my eye. The crystals could be transformed into many different shapes and even look as if it is knotted string such as the one seen on the top of the second picture.

Time to relax...

The heated room where this takes place is incredibly relaxing with dimmed lights, mirrors with flowered frosted glass and a huge mural of woods on the far wall. This room is sort of like a little oasis from the noise of the city. As I am sitting in the room I can almost imaging the leaves rustling and hearing birds calling above. Nature is one of my biggest inspirations with organic shapes and natural colors. The area, for me, is the perfect recipie for inspiration. Many break throughs in my work have came to me here.

Not only is this class relaxing but I find it incredibly inspiring. Inspiring in the sense that it is a place to simply clear my head and think about things other than school. Then also on the other hand it can be a place where I focus on nothing but a project that i’ve been having trouble with and most likely I will come out of the class feeling completely rejuvinated and knowing exactly what to do with the project. Even though as school gets easier it is hard to set aside an hour to go to the gym, I usually try and force myself to go on even the busiest of Tuesday’s because it will help me to relax and maybe give me a whole new outlook on my work.

Crunch!

There is nothing that I look forward to more in the week then my hot pilates class on Tuesday nights. After just getting through two days full of 9 hours of class back to back this class is like the light at the end of the tunnel. Walking up to the building of crunch I feel so excited for the class i’ve been looking foward to all day. Hot pilates is a form of mat based pilates which is done in a heated room. The heat combined with the breathing exercises and strengthining work outs is just the bit of relaxation I need to end two very busy days of school.

Shiny Embellishments

I’ve always thought about adding trimmings such as chain, shiny clasps and studs to my designs but at home in the little suburb outside of Philly we are not blessed with the trimming stores of sixth avenue and Joanne fabrics just doesn’t cut it for an aspiring fashion designers material needs.

The shiny gold and silvers inspired me to embellish my designs even further now that I have access to all of these resources. I am going a little stud crazy but it is making up for so much lost time when I was not able to simple buy a pack at the trim store.

"hardware happy"

I’ve always been interested in jewelry and accessory design and the materials available to me now can help me to persue this hobby further. Because of my experience at the store I am very excited for the final product of my accessory design bag and am inspired to create the perfect bag. The huge wall of different shiny chain made me inspired to create something fabulous with this shiny metal emellishment.

Philly Inspirations

While traveling back to Philadelphia with my boyfriend from our home in the suburbs I was struck by the view of the city lights as we were approaching the city on the train. These beautiful views make me feel a special attachment to Philadelphia over New York.