Chosen background and fashion figure...

Fashion blogs..

As part of my new brief I have been set at college today, I have been asked to blog about 2 of my top favorite fashion blogs that I regularly check and follow;

Style bubble is a blog I've known about for a long time and regularly look on, the reason i like this blog so much is that its very visual, although there is a lot of writing there are twice as many pictures which are good sizes and colour and show off what Susie is blogging about. I also like the way she keeps her text in one large paragraph and not scattered everywhere, her use of wording is fun and innovative and I can relate to her choice of words.

I Also love the moving picture montages she has scattered around her page. They are like picture slideshows and very interesting as they are moving all the time as your viewing your site, this is something I think I'd like to include in my blog.

Another of my personal favourites is the blog Fashion Toast.This blog is very different to Susies and I prefer the way this blog looks. I think Fashion Toast looks more young and fresh, and I like the text font and the black and white theme. She shows a lot on individuality, and also uploads lots of her own personal images and purchases, which is really interesting as well. She also has a search box on her blog which is very interesting as you can search key words for certain blog posts.

She also has advertisements on her page which makes it look very professional and show off the pages popularity.

Another blog which I like to look at is called Sea of Shoes. I really like this blog as it focuses a lot on photography and she takes all of the photos herself. She photographs items of clothing, hers or other peoples in really interesting ways. She also puts together outfits and states where they are from which is always good to look at. Her photos are very nicely edited as well and look very professional, the blog is full of advice, looks presentable and is very informative.

shapes; architecture

street sculptures

turkey 2012

Something that really inspired me this summer was visiting the country Turkey. The country was beautiful and had the most scenic views and landscapes which were full of colour and vibrancy. One of my favourite parts of turkey was the waterfalls we went to visit. Kursunlu national park in Antalya held the biggest waterfall in turkey. As seen in the pictures I have taken, I really enjoyed visiting the waterfall as I hadnt seen anything like it before, you could get really close up too and stand in the waves of the waterfall, the water from from a fresh mountain spring so it was ice cold.

The cold of the water and greatness of the water fall felt really refreshing and incredible. I started looking at different pictures and art of waterfalls.

manufacture plan

Manufacture Plan.

Close darts on front and back of toile dress,

Sew shoulders of front and back piece of dress together with a 1cm seam allowance, over lock.

Sew one of the neck pieces onto the neck of the front dress piece with a 1cm seam allowance, over lock.

Sew front and back dress pieces together with a 1cm seam allowance and over lock.

Ease sleeves into sleeve head and sew on each one with a 1cm seam allowance and over lock.

Insert invisible zip starting from the centre top neck.

Sew underarm seam going through to the side seam.

Take sleeves in by 5cm, take back darts in by 2 cm.

Draw designs lines on toile to match the ones of drawn out design and cut out pieces of dress and re pattern.

Cut out new patterns out of fabric and number accordingly for when you sew back together.

Sew first arm piece together labelled 1, make sure arrows at top of neck and notches meet, 1cm seam allowance and over lock.

Sew both piece 2’s together with a 1cm seam allowance, over lock.

Sew piece 2 to piece 1 with a 1cm seam allowance and over lock.

Sew both piece 3’s together with a 1cm seam allowance, over lock,

Sew both piece 4’s together with a 1cm seam allowance, over lock,

Attach right bum side to dress making sure the notches match,

Take top, middle and bottom pieces of bottom part of dress and attach in order with a 1cm seam allowance and over lock.

Sew bottom half of dress to top half of dress making sure notches match with a 1cm seam allowance, over locking but leaving centre back of dress open.

Place in invisible zip where dress attaches at back of open dress.

When sewing the centre back up with a 1cm seam allowance, leave a 20 inch split in bottom of dress.

Bias bind open back, wrist areas of sleeve and around the neck piece. Hand tack bias binding down.

Hem dress 2cm, hand tack into place.

Add 3 hook and eyes onto neck piece vertically.

Add 3 fabric hooks onto each side of open back to attach bra strap hooks onto, (one set at shoulders, one set at waist, one set at hips), make sure hooks don’t fray.

start of evaluation

In depth Evaluation on final brief.

I am now going to write and evaluation on my final briefs. There were two briefs running alongside each other, brief number 7 and brief number 117. In these briefs we were required to act as a fashion designer wishing to develop our own collection, we were asked to experiment, source and evaluate every different outcome produced. We will be developing and manufacturing a garment which should have been inspired by a certain topic.

Our topic was equality and diversity. We thoroughly researched into all the different headings within e&d, which was very interesting indeed as it made you become more aware of all the different kinds of issues relating to e&d and how they affect everyday life. I researched into most of the different categories but I decided to focus on religion for my final dress design. After plenty of research deeper into my chosen topic, I decided that I wanted to focus more on the bad side of religion and how a lot of religious people are trapped and imprisoned in a religion they either don’t feel relaxed or happy within their own lives or are being abused or bullied or forced to do things that they are not comfortable with. I looked a lot into honour killings and forced marriages which are sadly frequent within certain religions. Girls are forced to marry people they have never even met in their lives, their cousins or a son of a family friend or anybody, the majority of the time it is their parents’ choice and it will mostly reflect each family well.

Children as young as 5 years old have been forced into a marriage they are not comfortable with, and the majority of the time they are then shipped off to a foreign country to live with their new husband on their own. They can be abused mentally, sexually, any way possible by their new husband and there is no way out as divorce is very highly frowned upon in most religions and they cannot escape their prison. Only when they do finally find a way to run off or divorce their husband, it puts extreme shame on each of the families and they would be the talk of the town and no one likes to be spoken badly of?

Sometimes, it could be any member or members of the family, they will arrange for which ever person has ran away from the marriage, to be killed. Whether it’s by a family member or someone else, whether it’s in front of an audience or not, it does happen and so many people have gotten away with it as well.

I wanted my dress to show restriction, control and restraint, showing that the person wearing the dress is uncomfortable and can’t escape it. This is how I was inspired to create a restricting tight fitting dress. I also wanted it to have a look of fabrics being wrapped around the person, holding them in tight so that they cannot get away. This is where I came up with the ‘wrap around’ effect and creating all kinds of different design seams all around my whole dress. I also wanted to create a backless piece, with the zip to the dress travelling upwards towards the top of the neck, going through a black cross which is also symbolizing religion and the clash between Christianity and Islam. Although the cross idea didn’t work out, which I will explain why later. But I was very pleased with my design and how I had come up with my dress and all the details on it and I was feeling confident that it reflected my final topic well.

We learnt a lot about the critical path and time management plans which was very interesting indeed. The critical path is used often in all sorts of industries. It’s extremely important as it provides companies with particular information and reminders on key tasks that are necessary to the project. If companies apply critical paths, they can also use it to refer to which certain tasks are more important than other and need to be completed first second or last, it gives an order and helps everything to run smoothly which in a demanding business can be very helpful and supportive indeed.

We also researched a lot into time management plans. Time management plans are a lot like critical paths except they help you to be able to manage your time properly and get certain tasks done for a certain deadline, helping the overall project run smoothly. It will help you to prioritize certain tasks and work and once you no where you are up to in a busy work schedule, you won’t be getting stressed or run behind deadlines. Also if you are providing for another company or business, it can help you to make sure you deliver what’s promised and to an excellent standard as well making sure you do not disappoint.

It can also help people to keep things into context, and also feel a lot better and more organized about their lives, if they have a plan and manage their time combined with their work, then they can just get on with what’s on the list and deliver to a good standard too. Knowing what to work on when, and how much time you have to complete the task means more quality work.

We also did a lot of research into different designers and how they portray their thoughts and ideas into their designs. One of my favourite designers was Alexander McQueen. I loved his collection highland rape, as I thought the clever title and the way he represented his models to reflect to the real topic behind the appearances was so inspiring. I really admired the way his real meaning was so subtle but also so ‘in your face’ and obvious. I applied this to my work as I tried to design a dress that wasn’t necessarily screaming out what I wanted it to say, but for people to maybe look at it and think to themselves that my dress has a deeper meaning, that may not be entirely obvious through the design but through the overall performance my meaning will start to creep out to the audience.

In my dress, I created a very restricting pattern as I wanted the dress to look to the audience that it was too tight and uncomfortable, therefore portraying the way some people can be trapped within a religion, so I tried to be more clever about the overall meaning of my dress, and not make my topic totally blatant to the audience, but so people would think about my dress more deeply and look at exactly how it is made to gain better understanding of it.

When reflecting on both of my units I would say that the creative thinking technique I used mostly was;

My target audience for my design was ready to wear.