Long time, no see...

Yes it's been forever, but I'm determined to do this again!
Since my last post, I took a gap year, found that I really wanted to make costumes, signed up for a FD in Fashion and Costume and bob's your uncle!
I'm now in my second year and it's pretty tough, but I'm learning lots. It's almost worth being in debt for the rest of my life ;)

In the first year we focused mainly on commercial and worked alongside George designers to design a collection for SS13. I even won a work placement which I was really surprised about (my sketchbook was god awful!).

Mattisse inspired life drawing

We worked on life drawing which I really enjoyed, although I didn't expect so. I had some really tough weeks when I couldn't draw but really got into it on other occasions

I was excited for our next project because we got to choose fashion or costume, but the brief for the costume pathway wasn't exactly screaming out at me. so i decided to play around with the fashion brief and made it a bit more costumey. We had to design for high fashion/haute couture and choose from a number of trends. I picked 1920s/Egyptian. Don't ask me how or why I chose that combination, but in my head i thought it'd work. It kinda did, I did some designs i was really happy with, but look back it's not exactly haute couture :P 

In our second year, we also got to work with some photography students who wanted to photograph our white projects. This is one of the studio shots and I LOVE it :)



I started my print project for year 2 in the summer. I was basing my project on Pride and Prejudice so I visited museums, I went to Bath, I watched Colin Firth diving in to that lake more times than I'm willing to admit...

Regency puff sleeve. Veryveryvery puffy

I was determined to get a good start on the research and start drawing, but I got a bit bogged down by it.  And designing was hard. There weren't a lot of silhouette variations in mens or womens wear from the period. I got a bit bored to be honest. 100 designs is a lot, especially when all the dresses look the same...

Shibori on some of my prints

My final Lizzy Bennett dress for the Netherfield Ball

I worked from authentic patterns and adapted them for my garment. Did a bit of winging it but we don't talk about that!

At the minute, I'm starting work on my Negotiated study. I'm designing for a Pantomime version of Cinderella based on 18th century fashion. Basically combining my all favorite things. Panto, fairy tales and Georgians :)

I'll keep you updated!