Foo Fashion show

This saturday my friends and i went to the foo fashion show! it started at 8pm and we decided it would be a good idea to have a drink or two before we set off. finally we left and stumbled our way to Motion nightclub - the venue for this evening. This is new teritory for us and upon arrival we felt sort of out of place and way to drunk in comparrison to everyonbe else so we swiftly hid ourselves in a corner until the show started.

The show was amazing! Forgetting the rather awkward start, the clothes were cool, models cool, perforemers cool. The whole thing ooozed coolness!

I particularly like the Fud hoods (apologise if spelt wrong) below is a collaborative hood designed by my new friend Ashley Marc Hovelle - AMH. PLease also ignore the stupid face! I am simply very pleased to be wearing this hood... and i'm no model.

These hoods were in most of the collection and i would definately recomend. This particular hood reads 'I'm bad' in glowing neon ink, needless to say this is going to be my next pruchase.

Other designers at the show included Sew that jazz, puckoo couture, Motel, Adidas and an adidas clad breakdance group, dutty, a burlesque dancer, nipple tassles, a brilliant whistle playing beat boxer, hula hoop, fire, acrobatics and a magician.

This old thing

Firstly, please ignore that pouty/grumpy look. This is another one of the dresses from my final collection. This one first started as a 1950s style twinset comprising of a calf length dress and cardigan. Which i rejigged to make a a bodice. I am trying to locate a picture of the original garment which i will hopefully post up here soon.

Here is the finished garment.

I don't particularly like the silver skirt thing that i knocked up in about 5 mins... It looked better in my head. However, the bodice underneath is actually quite cool. The cardigan of the twinset was beautifully pleated and i inevitably decided to cut it up into shreds, or trendils as i like to call them and arranged it across the bodice to follow the body contours. I also decided to leave a trailing, floaty piece at the side (I do have a passion for floaty trendils!) Unfortunately the majority of all of this detailing is hidden by the grotesque silver thing! grrr! Never mind, more to come...

Installation Piece

Although i do love everything fashion i appreciate that it would be naive of me to think that a transition into the fashion world would be simple. i am increasingly aware that opportunities rarely come around for the luckiest of people. you have to push yourself, push to get yourself heard. Think of how many people are studying fashion related degrees every year in all the universities across the uk?!?!?!?! Therefore i am constantly keeping my options open and look at other art forms for inspiration and interest.

textiles artists, sculptures, ceramics, instalation artists, photographer and illustrators frequently feature in my research as they can often bring organic shapes, materials, ideas and ways of working into my own creations

Whilst doing an Art foundation i decided for one of my projects to create a piece of installation art. I looked at artists such as Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski. In particular the sculpturasl pieces by christian boltanski and his use of shadows of light. The example shown above is taken from http://likovna-kultura.ufzg.hr/obrazovniweb/English/plane01.htm although i am sure this isn't where the original picture came from.

The title for my project was 'urban' and the final piece was a selection of clothing that i had solidified in human shapes (by soaking the things in pva and then hanging over college chairs etc due to lack of resources) and then burnt, painted, anything to dirty them up a bit. the clothing was representational of people within a community and the idea of destroying them came from the pictures i took of the local council estate i grew up in - parks graffittied, fences broken, bins burnt out, drugs, booze, cigarettes, etc etc. I projected a pen and ink drawing of a swing in one of the parks, symbolical, something we all must have done when we were kids... played on a swing.

Unfortunately these are the only 2 pictures i seem to have of the installation. they are close ups of some of the clothing i destroyed. I shall try to locate more and post them on here. The beauty of installation art is that it is around you, enticing. I feel that it gives the viewer more options. people can make their own assumptions of what the piece means. The thing i enjoyed most about this project was the freedom. The freedom to push your creativity. To push boundaries so effectively. I enjoyed this project much more than some of the fashion ones i have done. Any comments would greatly be appreciated or even recommendations or pictures of your own work. 

My Fave!

This is my favourite of the dresses that i made fo my final collection. For this i used an old white t-shirt and 20 disposable overalls which were donated to me from Waitrose. i stitched them all together to create a skirt and a train and voila! a homemade wedding dress?!