Friday

This week has been pretty good, been working on my 2nd toile outfit and managed to get the 1st toile done in like 3 days hooray! Go me! Well, i still have the sleeves to do which i wanted to get finished today but i needed a lot of assistance today from wonderful Kath and because she has to go round and help everyone else you end up doing a lot of sitting and waiting which can be a bore and slightly annoying!

Anyhoo, so yeah 1st toile pretty much under wraps sleeves should be done by the end of Tuesday. Then Wednesday i think i may start on the trousers and hopefully by God's fabo grace these will be done by the end of the week also and then the following week is sewing them up...so let's hope that all works out if not, well, as i always say 'Chelsea it's OK' endure and press on! I have work tomorrow yay and again i say yay...:/ oh the joys of going to work

My 21st birthday is in two weeekkkksss wooooo! Wow 21 where does the time go i still vividly remember turning 16 and thought i was on top of the world (lol) I really wanted to have some imagery it makes the posts so much more interesting but oh well i don't...should do next week or the week after when i start getting the 1st outfits sewn up as my first toiles just show the silhouette which isn't the exciting part.

Ok, so i have to go sleep so i can get up and be chirpy and bright for work really i want to stay up and read blogs, and watch fashion videos and look at some menswear collections and read interviews with designers, all that mish mash but i can't :( tomo after work i must spend an hour on my dissertation was suppose to tonight but ended up catching up on x factor...home is such a distraction!

Love & Blessings

-x-

So, this week is review week! Where we will all be presenting our core shapes and concepts the our fellow peers and tutors. Can't wait to get it over and done with to be honest and not looking forward to sitting around for 2 and half hours but it'll be interesting to see people's concepts coming to life. I always enjoy seeing how other people work and sometimes it can be really inspiring.

Today i feel was the best start to the week I've had, minus the achy back which is very annoying and isn't a pleasant feeling at all :( I must have a look at how to strengthen your back and how to prevent getting an achy back...maybe I'm straining it... I worked on my sleeves today using the shape of a muscle in the arm and i really like the result i got...

So, there will be more playing around with this approach as well as using flat pattern cutting in some areas too. I turn 21 in 3 weeks aaah! Exciting times :) That's all for now going to go now and have some God time!

Love & Blessings

-x-

T h a n k f u l

I'm thankful for the precious people in my life

For all the things that were wrong that are now right

For God's mercy and grace

Knowing I'm always welcome in His dwelling place.

I'm thankful that i am living and experiencing life

And that Jesus paid the only price.

Hope you've had a good day and even if you haven't there's always something to be thankful for!

Love & Blessings

-x-

Week 4: Monday

Wow I've been back at uni for a month, it's all going really quick. I'm feeling a lot better than i was last week. Slightly annoyed because last week when i was stressing about not feeling clear and feeling forced into producing something i found out right at the end of the week that all we really needed was our core shape. So basically a toile of the silhouette for the collection nice, simple, easy. There was me and other students thinking we had to have this that and the other done! Marcus even said to my house mate today that he doesn't even care if haven't done our toiles yet as long as we have a strong concept and idea of where we want the collection to go.

I was really annoyed because most of the things the brief say we need to have in our 1st review which starts next week Marcus has been like don't worry about it as yet because there's certain things that we just won't have or still need to time to finalise. I'm just really glad we have him as our tutor he's really understanding and he understands how things need to work because he is a designer himself (Aminaka Wilmont is his label). For the rest of this I'm going to try my best and not be too anal about things and over thinking!!! Just crack on once these toiles are out the way for the review, which I'm hoping tomorrow I'll able to cut everything on to calico and poss start sewing it at home. There's a lot of experimenting i want to do as well on the stand but I've put that off panicking about wasting too much time and i won't get what needs to be done for the review from now on I'm just going to do things my way.

Here's me experimenting with draping approaches i can use on the garments. It's weird seeing draping on a male but it works with my concept. I have another i done today will post tomo or so. Playing around on photoshop, really like this idea...you can see for things like this i need to play around on the stand to see how the shapes will fit together and work on the body.

More during the week

Love & Blessings

-x-

Nicholas Kirkwood shoeies & Fashion's Meaning?

I apologise for the non-existence over the past week! I have had an extremely challenging and shaky start to the first week of my collection development and have felt all over the place up until today. Figures out, as per usual, i was over thinking and just over panicking unnecessarily...this is becoming a bit too much of a habit one i need to break!

Anyhoo, there will be more on the collections soon soon soon but for now i want to share some utter hotness in the form of shoes by Nicholas Kirkwood.

These one's are amazing i literally just want to grab them off the screen and wear them (lol) the blue is stunning and i love the texture that suede gives...oh la la i would probably just sit and stroke my feet all day if i had them on!

Aren't the sandals cute :) not only that i really like the cut and shape of them, they come in black and brown also. The two tone flat jazz type shoes are great too, colours that i would associate more with menswear shoes but i like the masculinity that they would potentially give off within a woman's outfit, the metallic colours work nicely together.

Today i had a marketing or rather 'design thinking' lecture with Johannes which was interesting, it ended in quite a heated debate about Margiela and whether fashion is art and how would one describe what fashion is? It was very interesting and funny because of the people that were involved. It's interesting to see how people view and comprehend fashion. There's some that look at the concepts that designers put out and understand it, appreciate it and find the concepts within fashion interesting. Whilst there are others who don't really understand concepts and in my opinion don't look at the depths of fashion and can't really comprehend the meaning and expressions of a designer through a chosen concept and because they can't understand they find the finished work 'boring'. For me fashion is not about merely putting out 'pretty' clothes but for me it's a form of self-expression, story telling, and for me my work has to carry depth and meaning at the same time as being wearable...but anyway i guess everyone approaches design differently!

I'm off now i have work in the morning!

Love & Blessings

-x-

(Images above are from StyleBubble check her blog if you want to find out more about the collection)

3rd year

So, i returned to uni last week Thursday and my oh my did they overload us with information and like 4 different briefings! It's all been a lot to take in but it'll no doubt be a exciting 8 months full of exploration, discovery and just finding oneself. I really believe that if the time is used properly (organisation and time management is crucial this year) it can be although tough and challenging a very enjoyable 8 months! It's a time for me to really find my signature as a designer, to discover what I'm really good at design wise and begin to push this forward.

Today we had our concept presentations which i stressed about all summer and the thing was as easy as... Really informal and Marcus and Donna were really supportive and just cool. I think we all had different ideas of what they would be like Marcus in particular but he was really cool. They didn't try to dictate to us and make us choose something that we didn't want to do they are truly allowing us to do what we want and express who we are. It was so interesting to hear everyone's different concepts and get an insight into each persons personal style. The vibe of our group was really nice too.

As, I've mentioned earlier in the summer that i am going into menswear as opposed to womenswear. Part of the reason being i feel there's a gap in the market for innovative creatively designed menswear that holds ethical credentials...most of what i see is very basic. The only designer that I've come across pushing the boundaries of ethical design is Ravensbourne graduate Calum Harvey. I wanted to come out of my safety zone and push myself and believe i have the potential to create a very distinctive style for menswear in London. Also, i find menswear more appealing in terms of design as it takes more thought and more creativity, the whole process of taking menswear out of it's box is something that I'm intrigued by and I'm excited to see my ideas come to life!

My concept is called Soft Armour and it's taking the facets of strength, authority and dominance and man who uses these facets to protect his heart and his emotions. Then looking at the journey of falling in love and the elements/impulses that are expressed in love such as touching, caressing and embracing, all elements that affect the body in some way and relate to the body receiving and reacting. Almost looking at love as a weapon that breaks down the man's guard of protection.

So, yeah that's the start of it all it's quite conceptual more than i thought (lol) but it's something that is personal to me as I've always loved romance and just that idea of love and being loved and the expression of it, the way being in love makes you feel and the effects it has on you physically and mentally i find interesting. But anyways, I'm off to go and watch the 11th hour and hopefully i won't fall asleep through it!

Love & Blessings

-x-

Off Tomorrow

So, tomorrow i go back down to chavy Chatham. Uni officially begins on Thursday but i am going down tomorrow as opposed to Wednesday, which was the plan, because i have dance practice Wednesday evening. To save me going down to Chatham Wednesday and then coming back up bleh i am going to go up tomorrow settle all my stuff in...oh shoot i was suppose to do my food shopping online...will have to do it in a bit! Yeah, so, settle my stuff in and all that, go into town quickly, visit the library and bring books back and just work on my sketchbooks/presentation/dissertation one of the three!

I won't be doing the last day of On/Off tomorrow but i am cool i have had a good experience and insight into a LFW event and it was really cool i really enjoyed it! Met some lovely people too! In February, if i have time, i may try to do a couple of days helping out backstage with some designers as that's a good way of getting into the main LFW...so I'll see. Sketchbooks have come together, every chance i get I'm just adding things in here and there. Started on the PP Presentation the other day too.

OK, well that's all for now. Until tomorrow!

Love & Blessings

-x-