Tiny Steps

Today I did something I've been wanting to do for over a year. Today I threw out the project that haunted me and nearly drove me to murder at Central Saint Martins. I never got rid of it for fear that, I dunno, I might suddenly fall in love with it later on. I unceremoniously shoved it under my bed and glared at it every time I happened to catch a glimpse.

Remember this horrible thing?

No you probably don't, and that's a good thing. It was a two person project and I got teamed up with my favourite person in the whole class. She and I worked out asses off, doing every step of the project together. She designed and printed the muscle-inspired dress, and I designed and printed and made the skeleton-inspired cage over it, printed with a photograph of hair and skin.

When it came time to present the entire class was impressed with what we had pulled off in ten days. I hated it, and it wasn't well made, but at least it was done and it looked just like my idea. However when it came down to grading, my partner passed and I failed. We were graded by the Evil Tutor, who adored her and hated me.

I was so furious and defeated at that point I gave up. I stopped feeling any semblence of optimism and began assuming the worst- which did indeed come to pass. This project marked the beginning of the end in my mind.

So today I pulled this piece of shit out from under the bed, pulled the dust bunnies off of it....

Carried it downstairs looking like a hairy, curled up dead spider.....

And happily threw it into the skip, never to be seen again!
 

It was incredibly liberating! I look forward to going through my other projects soon and tossing them out as well!

Coco de Ohshit!

This evening my favourite redhead and I went to see Sam Roddick, creator of the amazing store Coco de Mer, speak on sexuality. And after this inspiring, enlightening talk, I somehow managed to worm my way into asking if I might design a range of shoes for Coco de Mer. Why? Because I felt ballsy at that moment, and I know I could do it. To my surprise she was interested and gave me the contact information of her head of design development.


Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit! What did I just do??? Ok, I need to source some makers and materials, stat! At least I know I can aim high for quality when it comes to price point because CcdM is not a cheap store. I need to have a small line of designs with some projected costing ready to show her, and it needs to be soon.
Why do I do this to myself? Because I need deadlines and a fire under my ass to do anything.

Christ on crutches, I need to enlist all my contacts to pull this off. But it’s worth it because how fucking incredible would it be to release my first line of shoes at Coco de Mer?

I have a LOT of questions to ask my design internship mentor guy now… oh shit.
Oh shit.

I Don't Know How I Do It, But...

There are very few books on shoemaking and pattern cutting for shoes. It's a dying art, as most shoes are designed by someone with no knowledge of production, and handed to someone else to make. But I feel I need a more in-depth understanding of shoes, and I also really enjoy the process of making them.

I have found one book that has been immensely helpful. Of course it is also immensely expensive. So I did some price shopping around the intarwebs, and I found that I could order the book directly from the publisher for half the price. I email them, requesting an order form, and not ten minutes later I get an email from the author of the book! It seems he works for this publishing company as well! He invoiced me and said he could send the book this morning!

But that's not the really interesting part. That's just the lead up. So, of course I sign all professional-ish emails with my phone number. I hate getting phone calls, but when it comes to my design work, I want people to contact me! But no one ever does. So you can imagine my surprise when at noon I receive a phone call from the author, letting me know he mailed my book. He asked if I was a student and we get to chatting. He is a lovely chap. It turns out he used to teach at Cordwainers (back when it was a good school) and has been in bespoke shoemaking for over 45 years! We talked about schools and how hard it is to find a real education in footwear. And then he did something amazing. He offered me two things- first, that I may email him with any technical questions I may have about shoemaking. Secondly, he said he teaches in the US and knows a lot of suppliers, shoemakers and other people he would happily put me in contact with.

HOW did that just happen? I order a book and somehow get a phone call from the author who offers me his shoemaking contacts in another country?? I think he sussed out that I wanted to do more than make Manolos and was happy to meet someone who appreciated the knowledge he has to share. But still... WHAT? HOW?

The Spaces In Between

Let me tell you a story, dear readers. A story of one of the only projects I really enjoyed doing at Central Saint Martins. Well, "enjoyed" might be too strong of a word.

This project had a prompt as lackluster as porridge: "what is your journey?" I was feeling particularly lonely that term and so I planned to do the project on physical journeys, historic journeys, epic stories and poems, migration, the hero cycle, and my own journey from San Francisco to London. After I had amassed a pile of research several hundred images thick I approached my Evil Tutor with my idea, only to have him cut me off with a disappointed sigh and the question, "why don't you do it on fashion or something more interesting?"

At that point I realized he wasn't going to like anything I produced, so I whittled the grand concept down to something so basic even a luddite like Evil Tutor could grasp it. But I had to keep in mind the fact that this was Saint Martins, and they don't like anything too direct or obvious. So, first I narrowed the concept to something physical: two iconic bridges. One from the city I came from, and one from the city I came to. And then to make it more Saint Martins-y I decided to focus not on the bridges, so much as the way they cut up space... the negative space around the bridges. (This is when my fascination with negative space began.)

The project was called "The Spaces In Between", and now I'm going to share it with you.

I began with my two iconic bridges, and followed it up with a few pages of sketches of the negative space created by the bridges (which didn't turn out in photos, and weren't all that interesting anyhow)



From these sketches of negative space I began to wonder what defined space as negative. If you are looking at the space around an object at the same time as you are looking at the object itself, you are seeing the same thing two different ways at the same time. So my next step was to find a way to visually explain the idea of "looking at the same thing from two angles at once" visually to my Tutor.



I found a photographer whose name escapes me now, who photographed the same arch from two perspectives and placed them one right next to another. How would that translate to fashion? I imagined a woman wearing a dress with a naked body printed on it that was facing a direction other than the one the wearer was actually facing.

But Saint Martins likes to see that you always refer back to your original concept by the time you design rough sketches. So after some playing with 3d application of this concept on top of this my naked torso ideas (again, which didn't photograph well), I designed a number of very strange garments.



Now, before you think, "holy shit, those are some crap drawings and hideous designs," let me explain that I went a bit crazy with this project because my tutor told me two conflicting things at once shortly before I began this project. First he told me that I didn't experiment with shape or concept enough, and then he told me not two minutes later that my designs were too outlandish and not at all wearable. So I tried to both experiment with shape, but not go as overboard as I previously had.

Moving on....

That same photographer also played with space by taking photos of an archway, cutting it in half and thereby redefining the space it occupied. It was a natural progression from my last idea, so I started cutting up the body and redefining the space it would take up. I then took something very basic- the jeans and t shirt- and cut those iconic shapes up, changing the space and shape they used.








I liked the idea of playing with familiar shapes on the body, so I asked one of my flatmates to let me tie her up. Using string I created some interesting shapes on her body, around her body, and then translated these shapes into negative and positive space, before changing the negative into positive again etc etc. I ended up using some of the shapes created by the string and raising them by quilting a fabric sample...





I also looked at artists who responded to the shape of the body in unusual ways, and found that I was drawn to things that protruded from the body in unusual ways, so I did a few fabric samples to create little nubbins that would protrude from seams...



But I worried I had strayed too far from my original starting point and Evil Tutor hated my train of thought, so I explored the use of space again by literally taking the images I began with and cutting them up, sewing the paper back together, etc in order to create new shapes out of them.



Which I then combined with the idea of quilting shapes (thereby turning a flat space into a 3d space) and designed a few more roughs:



So now I had a lot of ideas, but I had more to do. Being a fashion and print student, I also had to design and produce a print for my fabric.

I once again went back to my original bridges and my idea of negative space and began looking for art and photography that served to illustrate my ideas. In the end I ended up tracing out the negative space around the bridge in the black and white photo on the top page. I then repeated that pattern, cut out out and made a ghetto screen which I used to print, foil, flock, and dye fabric with. (The print looked like what you see on that sheet of tracing paper stuck in the book.)



I then proceeded to combine all these concepts together to create a booklet of about 15 fabric samples using my new print, some of my original concepts, and all the various artists I ended up looking at. Here are a few poorly photographed samples:


Nubbins, a clear foil print, and industrial looking seams/bolts. Very bridge like and also very in line with what I wanted to do. Pardon the brown fuzz on the fabric sample. heh.



The ass print from the original "looking at the same thing from two angles" idea, combined with the bolts, and the print, done in foil.


Just the print, quilted in select places. Um, I did this one very quickly so please excuse the mess. It was just a quick sample, remember.


Taking the concept of the bridge print and making it less literal.


A painting using the artist I found late in the project that I felt showed the softer side of the steel structures.


Now, using these and my other ten samples, I did a few more sketches recycling my favorite styles from the previous sketches and applying my new prints onto them:






And finally, I attempted to change the very fashiony way I illustrate (being trained for 3 years in fashion illustration will do that) to reflect the playful nature of the designs I settled on. These were a lot of fun to do:




I think my favorite is the ass dress, which I aim to produce at some point...


So that's a rough idea of how a project went for me. I got a lot of good response from my classmates on this one. And although it was a very new way of working, and I had to disregard all the research I did in the beginning, I felt like I arrived at something that I could see being worn.

I also realized that the project could have been much more Me. It would have been more interesting, more in-depth, just "more" if I hadn't had to waste time visually explaining my ideas to the tutor, instead of just working the ideas through to their logical and creative end. I was too tutor-aware my boyfriend said, and he's right. This project would have been much more interesting if Evil Tutor didn't need each step explained out to him. He could never follow my thought processes and so I went to a great deal of trouble trying to visually explain them to him which in the end distracted me and stunted my design process.

Of course I failed this project. Evil Tutor never told me why, and frankly I didn't care. Shortly after this project I realized I didn't want to be at Saint Martins anymore.

Funny how a project about journeys would end up pointing me in a new direction.

Design Ideas

Here is a shitty photo of a quick design rough I did in the second of my shoe design courses today.

I'm kind of in love with the design, to be honest. I want to produce this one. The body of the shoe will be thick, ruched black leather while the heel/back/collar and toe are in taupe leather.

It was compared to Rick Owens' work by my teacher, and I am VERY flattered.

(MY design, please do not steal. If you do I will send my ninjas after you. Shiny ninjas. Shiny ninjas of pain.)

The Beginning of a Little Artistic Venture

My flat mate and I have been discussing a number of projects we want to do together. They range from ridiculous business ventures (a butcher shop called "Please to Meat!") to the basic art student shit. You can probably guess which we feel is more realistic for us to pursue at this time...

She got a fantastic digital SLR camera for her birthday and we've been DYING to mess around with it. So today, we found time to choose an outfit and shoot in the park just as the sun was setting. But of course the light disappeared quickly and took the warmth of the day with it. Not ten minutes into our shoot the temperature dropped and the rain began. We got only three photos, which I will now post here to mark the beginning of an artistic collaboration between two idiot girls with a camera and some pretty dresses.

All photos are by the very talented Nivina Hameed.
(ps- not all the photos will be of me, we're just starting this way because we have to work with what we have.)