What I Did While I Wasn't Blogging

In my post titled, "Can You Keep Up with Fashion?" I concluded that I, in fact, could not. So during all the months of my absence, I was quite busy trying to learn what it takes to become a fashion designer. Fashion Design 1, taught by the Fashion Design and Merchandising Department Head at Drexel University, Roberta Gruber, was a great way to experiment and delineate the processes and techniques most appropriate to carry out a designer's vision. The theme was "Connections and Extensions" which refers to the way all of the designers used shared inspiration, which varied by project, to connect to fashion design and extend one idea into many for a collection.

Challenge 1 started with a trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's permanent Brancusi exhibit, which displays his "primitive modern" sculptures. We were asked to take the feeling of his sculptures, which included the way his works were displayed, and create a garment with a "crisp" feeling that emphasized the neck and shoulder area.

I came up with a twisted detail that ran along the bust and down to the back of the garment, exposing the beauty of the shoulder blades, and highlighting the shoulders with a feeling of openness.

Challenge 2 began with a trip to the produce section of Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market. We were to think about "Biomimicry" and told that many design solutions can be found within the natural world. My produce of choice was the beautiful cranberry bean, which lent itself to the mandatory use of complementary and analogous colors. My creation was further inspired by a display of hand-embroidered quilts from Bengal on show at the PMA's Perlemen Building.
To be honest, my original drapes were much more beautiful in muslin. When I transferred the muslin drape to a pattern, the folds and pleats became darts, which shaped and molded the fabrics in a much different way. To finish, I spent hours hand-embroidering the piece in colors reminiscent of the cranberry bean, trying to mimic the way the angles fell when the beans were stacked upon each other.

The third challenge was brought to us by an AMAZING exhibit of the decorative arts of Marcel Wanders, a designer looking to the future and the past at the same time, who, in everything he makes, transports his viewer to a different time and space. We were to think about illusion in the sense of "visual stretch," which I attempted by using the knit textured black in the center of the garment. The curved princess-style cut of the dress is super slimming and definitely elongates the torso. This, the simplest of my challenge solutions, was very well received at critique, and loved by many of the young college students who are my peers.
Finally, for the fourth challenge, we went to the Simeone Automobile Museum in South Philadelphia, one of the largest private collections of antique cars in the world. It was beautiful. I had no idea that I even liked cars until I went to the showroom, which was freezing on a cold winter day. We were to take inspiration from the cars and translate that into style lines in a garment.
My original piece consisted of over 25 different pattern pieces, with the fit of the garment coming not from darts, but from these style lines. After three muslin fittings, my design was certainly simplified, though not by much.
My concept was thinking about what a woman would wear as she was commuting in a vehicle of the future... My girl was a Judy Jetson of sorts. My favorite part of the garment was the way the "racing stripes" flowed into the pockets of the dress, and also the way the pointed light pink detail on the back became sort of skeletal. This dress was also received well, yet minor construction issues prevented me from being able to wear it... yet. I will definitely fix it in the near future... when it's not too hot to wear wool.

Dispatch: From Albright NYC

Friday I returned to the Albright Fashion Library on Cooper Square in NY. If you’re like me and have been dreaming of a closet like Cher’s in Clueless since the mid nineties, then walking into Albright is literally like dying and going to heaven.

The loft has changed and rearranged a bit since my last stint as a summer intern there, but mainly just to accommodate the never-ending influx of high fashion’s new “IT” items. One thing I poignantly noticed: All of the Alexander McQueen pieces had been removed from the racks and given it’s own, standing alone, highlighting the designer’s immense talents over the seasons of his collections. It made me realize how much the fashion community had been affected by his passing and also like I’d gotten out-of-touch with that community.

In fashion school, McQueen’s suicide just prior to the showing of his latest and last collection was just another topic of gossip. He was not eulogized or mourned. Suddenly, after seeing his stand-alone rack on Friday, I’m very emotional about it. The purple dress pictured was my one of my particular favorite discoveries of last summer at Albright. It’s really indescribable the way the satin drapes and folds, hugging the body and showing off the leg. The fullness of the neck is the exactly right proportion, balancing the shortness of the skirt, or the negative space of the dress.

This garment is a perfect study of fashion design—it’s elements—while also quintessentially sexy—showing enough but not too much… you’re really covered up here and very uncovered there. And I absolutely love it. So I thought, for my first posting under the Dispatch: From Albright heading, that I’d pay homage to it (and it’s designer) while also looking ahead and wondering what else I would fall in love with this summer.

Thanks, Albright, for a great first day back!

Gossip Girl Does Not Disappoint

Gossip Girl, my favorite show on television, did not disappoint towards the end of the season. Sure, I’d yawned through Serena and Nate’s ENTIRE relationship, and wished that Jenny would just give up that black eyeliner already, but they brought the DRAMZ for the final episodes.

The absolute highlight and epitome of GG fashion came when Blair Waldorf attended a NYC Library fundraiser in this absolutely STUNNING gown by Zac Posen for his most recent resort collection. She kills it in this dress. It’s just so perfect for her character and the event, and if you could have seen her walking up the stairs from behind… time stood still around her. It was an epic moment for me, a bright star in the midst of the cloudy chaos of Fashion Design School.

I die over the large scale floral, a bit transparent, and the earthy tone of the solid underneath of it. The look book image shows the more avant-garde side of the dress, but I much prefer the way Blair wore it. And I’d kill to have one for myself, but in navy. I think the flowers would just have so much more dimension on a navy ground, but that’s not to say I don’t very much appreciate Zac’s choice in olive green.

The whole thing is just super inspiring.