PanTease!

The best way to spend a Saturday afternoon, in my humble opinion, is in an underground venue with tea and cake, a hot redhead by your side, and sexy, talented people stripping for your viewing pleasure. I also advise that you then hang out with the sexy talented people for the remainder of the evening and wander around in the rain giggling and talking about sparkles. I would recommend that you fill all of your days with hilariously clever people, feathers, sequins, balloon popping, boobs, butts, stockings, nipple tassels, sailors, boy-lesque, and sugar.

Yes, I can safely say that in my experience, this is a good way to spend a Saturday.

At the Moment

My life looks something like this at the moment:

Two internships, one starting on Friday, one in a couple weeks I hope. One job I don't honestly have the time for, but need the money. Helping to organize an event (though I've been useless the past few days), and pulling together three complicated costumes for three different events. Meeting with my boss in a week and a half so we can figure out if I'm going to be starting a shoe design school in San Francisco and teaching there.

Ok, um I have got to fit the gym in here somehow. It's time to stop feeling so awful.

Blegh

For reasons I don't care to go into, today was a horrible day. There were moments when I thought I might explode. I gave myself my second stress-caused migraine-ish thing, and felt my head was going to pop.

But tomorrow will be better. I will make it be better.

Good night.

*Sigh, So True

What I Wore

What I wore today was surprisingly normal for me. I never wear skirts like this, but now I really like the length. It will be good for spring....

Curiouser and Curiouser

I just got back from my first visit to the British Library, where I attended Curiouser and Curiouser, a talk on Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll. Christopher Lee and Michael Sheen did fantastic readings from the text, and the writer Will Self blew my mind with his gigantic unpretentious vocabulary and thoughts on Wonderland.  (I have an intellectual crush on Will Self now- I want to rape his brain. If anyone knows him, please let him know.) And now I am obsessed with an idea he brought up during his talk, and want to use it for my next collection: interior exteriors. Sky underground. Etc

The BFI is now in possession of the only remaining copy of the 1900something film of Alice in Wonderland. At twelve minutes, it was deemed too long to watch as a whole film back then. You see this was only a few years after the invention of film and most movies were one or two minutes long, so cinema owners used to only buy one scene to show of this epic extravaganza. Because of this, most people never saw the film in its entirety. At the time, the cast of 100+ and the wild special effects were outrageous and fantastic- the world had never seen anything like it! The film will soon be available to view in the BFI archives, but we were the first people to see the film in full in over 100 years! I highly recommend that you take a few minutes out of your day and watch it (I've posted it below for your viewing pleasure)

My brain is going wild!

One Tiny Step for Me, Hopefully Leading Toward a Giant Leap for... uh, Me

Whilst sitting on my ass at my job, having finished all my tasks, cleaned the store, restocked all the shoes, and listening to classic Bowie, I found myself thinking about how much I despise retail. Even on the best of days, I think, "I have got to make something of myself so I never have to work retail or food service ever again."

Spurred by the fear of amounting to nothing, I decided to pursue my boss (aka the head of the shoe design school) about an idea we once discussed over coffee. See, this mini school of shoe design also occasionally holds classes over in San Francisco, and my boss and I once discussed me helping her set up a more permanent school over there (think Stitch Lounge, but for shoes). She also asked me once if I wanted to be a teacher (this was after only making one pair of shoes, mind you).

So, I emailed my boss today to say that if she still wanted to pursue that idea we should sit down and have a discussion about how best to use the last year I am here. Should I start attending classes and being a teacher's assistant so that I can learn how to run a class on my own?

A few minutes before I sent the email, I got a serendipitous text message from the shoe designer I will be interning with, asking if I wanted to start playing with ideas and design next week!

All signs point towards better things to come!


I feel good. I really want to make use of my remaining time in London. Although I'd like to do everything (go to all the shows, travel all over Europe, live in every part of the city, see every thing, hear every band), the truth of my life is that I need to focus and really use this time to help me get a head start in a field I just jumped into rather suddenly. This is the sort of knowledge I will only get here and now- all that other stuff can come later. I'd rather be busy learning and interning, stressed with all the work I have to do, than have all this free time, a part time retail job, and depression creeping in at the edges while I sit on my fattening ass wasting the time I have left in the UK.

Body of Modeling Work (some nudity)

In response to my previous post about the design work I do, I've decided to post a bit about the other work I do, which is in front of a camera. I feel I've had much better luck in this department. I love being part of the creation of interesting images, and since I haven't been able to do much in my own design work, I can take a little comfort in having made lots of ridiculously over-lit, carefully posed, and photoshopped facebook photos....er I mean, um, tasteful art.

A smattering:

Body of Work

An artist I've recently become acquainted with has asked to see my work. I get this question a lot when I say that I am a designer, but it's a question I dread answering. I don't think that any of my design reflects my artistic sensibilities yet. In my meager body of work there are many failed experiments in "pushing myself" and "trying new things", but surprisingly little work that actually shows the sort of thing I really want to do.

I have posted a number of entries about various design projects I've done, and I don't think the collection of work, much less any single project reflects my aesthetics all that well. However, maybe you all see something I don't... So here I am going to collect my "Body of Work" via all the blog entries that contain photos of what I have spent the last few years doing:


I Need an Internship with a Shoe Designer
Ignore the text, and take a look at the photos at the bottom.

Visual Overview
Some repeat from the entry above, but some other photos as well

Making Shoes
Making some shoes!

The Spaces In Between
A photo heavy journal entry about a project I did at Saint Martins.

Thinking In Fabric
I did a lot of draping to get ideas for projects

 Some Old Work
A collection of crap I did in art school and fashion school before CSM

A Little Artistic Venture
A few photos my flatmate and I took when we both had time and wanted to start up a photography blog. Yes, I mostly just modeled, but I had a lot of input and put a lot of work into the final product as well.

Last Two Weeks
Again, the text is useless, but I loved this retro-future I created in my sketchbook. This page on propaganda and conservative politics felt so cinematic to me....

Hair Fabric
The text is useless, but I loved making this plastic hair creepy fabric, even though we ended up not being able to use it.


That's all for now, folks.

Who Needs Fashion Week....

... When you have inspiration like this??