a photo shoot

the first four photos are from an impromptu photo shoot the other night...the last is from our visit to the met

death

robert rauschenberg is dead. i first saw Monogram when i was 9 years old...it was on loan from its home museum in Scandinavia and was temporarily in the Guggenheim when i went with my father in November. little did i know that he would forever stick in my mind and become one of my favorite artists today. sigh..another great artist is gone forever.

casablanca

casablanca is one of my favorite movies...and this is a design from one of my favorite graphic designers

paris!

im actually going! 

floundering

sometimes i wonder if fashion really is the route for me...i am passionate about it, but im almost more passionate about traveling and experiencing other cultures. i'd do that in a heartbeat...

should i finish my education at parsons? should i find something else? what i really want to do is become a peace corps volunteer...what can i really do with my life? and who the hell do i talk to about it?

london transport

thanks to a clive dilnot lecture, i was introduced to the london transport's posters...here are a few of my favorites

a quick link

huge old school neon signs

another photographer i love

amanda mehran

ryan mcginley

all of these are photos by ryan mcginley

artist love

a picture of my ideal marriage...i wonder if it'll happen?

(full text through lexis nexis...)

dali

i fell in love with this dali sketch...

current events

why not be inspired by what's happening right here, right now? god, i watch it every single night on CNN...

idealism vs. experience

young vs. old

strong woman in a man's world

controversy

setting precedents

security, economics, reaching out to the "poor" people

change

fall 2008 fashion weeks

new york:

• threeasfour
• ralph lauren
• rag and bone
• charles nolan
• vera wang

london

• roksanda illincic
• christopher kane
• erdem
• gareth pugh

milan

• emporio armani
• burberry prorsum
• bottega veneta
• prada
• gucci
• iceberg
• dolce and gabbana

paris

• victor and rolf
• balenciaga
• akris
• andrew gn
• chrisian lacroix
• emanuel ungaro
• dries van noten
• rick owens
• stella mccartney
• valentino
• giambattista valli
• celine
• alexander mcqueen
• rue du amil
• lanvin

an obvious preference for overseas designers...

50!

my 50th post in less than a week...but now my notebooks are all up to date! at some point i need to take the time to scan some drawings...

random from my phone

i found this in a book of katies's...dont remember which one

a cool pattern and palette from the floor of Purl

becher photos! these are at the met...have i mentioned how much i love watertowers??

letty lynton

this famous dress that joan crawford wore...

influenced fashion significantly, hence the middle dress below

(i had give up hope that i could ever find this photo again but i did!)

found on ffffound

browsing through ffffound.com, i found these cool images

surrealism

investigate the ideas behind surrealism...translate to fashion? eveningwear project??

if only

so many times i've lamented the state of the fashion industry today in comparison with how it used to function for most of the 20th century. i had never quite figured out why it bothered me -- the speed, the knock offs, the competition...

maybe its because i see high fashion more as an art form than a business plan. to me its a chance to exercise creativity, producing something unique, innovative, interesting without working in a traditional artistic sense. artists are given time to develop ideas...while they do depend on selling their paintings, thats not their main thought -- they arent constantly under a time table or constantly pushed to do something radically different every time. fashion designers used to be like that too...fashion moved more slowly, so the art of designing could be practiced.

if only we could get back to that sensitivity...

holes

inspired by the pattern magic books...i found them at kinokuniya, thanks to my previous methods teacher

holes -- passageway -- both going in and coming out

organic shaped holes in outer layer -- all match up on edges

contrasting piping to emphasize 

chiffon overlay with holes and piping -- see contrasting print underneath 

gives impression of holes flowing over body

evening wear -- very constructed holes and shapes

mummification

a linen gown -- huge train

yards and yards of fabric, wrapped all up to shoulders/neck/face

linen? muslin? -- unbleached

rough vs elegant silhouette

our many deaths

Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it --

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify? --

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like a cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot --

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies,

These are my hands,

My knees,

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

Its the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

"A miracle!"

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart --

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge,

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood.

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

....

how do we think of death? what is dying? 

from ted dekker's blink: 

"Miriam had once told her mother  that a saudi woman dies three times during her span on earth. she dies on the day of her menses, when she is forced to don the black veil and slip into obscurity; she dies on the day of her wedding, when she is given as a possession to a stranger; and, most mercifully, she dies when she finally gives up her ghost. the statement had earned her a slap."

eyes

are interesting things...

different colors

what does it see?

what do you see in it, both figuratively and literally?

"window to the soul"

little house on the prairie

i know that designers have been inspired by bohemian looks a lot...but what if you took fashions on the prairie and transform them? how do you give it an edge?

shame

what is shame a product of?

 is it inherent? do we learn it?

 is it good? is it bad? 

some say that shame teaches us to stay within the limits of what is socially acceptable..in a good way. but doesnt shame hinder us in so many ways?

sometimes i feel like shame is taught by parents, taught at as young an age as possible. they were ashamed, so they shame their children...what would it be to live without harmful shame?

what does shame look like? -- bent over, head down, curved back, submission -- showing that in fashion??

similar to pain -- how does it change us? how does it constrict us? prohibit us from moving forward? how does it make us look different? 

what else constricts? 

• boxes
• straight jackets
• prison
• ropes
• impressions
• lack of self confidence

men vs women

• do we have equality? should we? what does it look like? 
  
• what is proper?
  
• should a woman stay home? is it okay to run for power?
  
• what is the masculine/feminine relationship? what should it be?
  
• aprons vs suits vs ties vs sex appeal

so many ideas

random brainstorming from my notebook:

• bullfighters
• jockey
• pope -- elaboration, shape
• janitor -- juxtaposition (remember richard's quote?)
• referee
• manhole covers -- detail
• trash heap -- texture, color, shape
• land fill -- like the one by penn state -- old cars, etc
• rusty cars
• nesting dolls
• rhinoceros 
• construction sites*
• safaris
• african tribes
• arctic chill -- what would you wear?
• farmers
• make clothes look like sketches -- rough, linear
• mta transportation -- subways, buses, taxis, trains
• bicycles
• faberge eggs
• windows -- rose windows, guggenheim roof
• textures*
• hot air balloons
• buddha
• fishing*
• poetry*
• slavery
• prison
• binding
• casinos -- cards, showy, gaudy
• early electronics -- line, color, awkwardness
• neon sign

*construction sites

• screws
• cranes
• orange/yellow
• reflectors
• silver
• dark grey
• vests
• huge machinery
• dust
• rough -- ability to get dirty
• ny times new building

*textures

• grasslands
• old quilts
• corrugated cardboard
• old gates/fences
• baskets

*fishing

• nets
• sea spray
• hooks
• ocean -- all different colors, moods
• lines
• ropes
• knots
• sails

*poetry

• rhyming
• syncopation
• symmetry
• sound
• flowing vs. staccato
• meter

artists:

• rauschenberg
• klimt
• egon schiele
• matisse
• rothko
• jasper johns

contradiction

being sophisticated vs. being fierce

if i'm not thinking, i tend towards understated glamour but quickly become dissatisfied... secretly, i really just want to be like the women in helmut newton's photographs...

ketchup

found this picture on my phone..took it at the diner up the street. i liked the arrangement of the ketchup bottles but i wish that i had been able to zoom in a bit.

value

what things do we value? how can you critique such values?

• morals
• expensive art
• signed artifacts -- jerseys, art, random belongings
• cultic followings for celebrities

make something elaborate -- finish with a huge dose of sarcasm

beetles

maybe redo my denim project's beetle inspiration in something soft? --> juxtaposition

random ideas:

• CDs - shine? shape? texture? reflection? holds information invisibly?
• electrical wires - colorful, linear
• sheet music - rhythm, lines, shapes, flow, dynamics
• football uniforms - seam lines
• hula hoops
• bike streamers
• inner tubes
• bad mitton
• nets of all sorts - how they're knotted together, shapes, attachments, uses

too much?

i always try to combine so many elements into my one little collection for concepts..

maybe make the focus the prints and colors that i like?

maybe make another collection focus on the construction techniques?

loose inspiration is still inspiration

i'm not a feminist but...

niloufar brought up in class how ridiculous a statement that is. feminism has become such a horrible thing to claim to be unless you want to be associated with butch lesbians in man clothing who haven't a regard for anything sacred... yet so many of my own ideas could be called "feminist" in the traditional sense of the word. 

in days like the ones we're living in now, when women have more rights and opportunities than they ever have before, it angers me when my gender gives those up for something less. i can respect dreams and goals...and if a woman genuinely dreams about that for their own life, then so be it. but when they give it up or when they have no passion or direction for their life, and end up as a housewife because of it, it makes me cringe. they have the chance to do something amazing...why not take it? do they take for granted their freedom of choice?

how do you show that in the clothing you design? maybe clothes that look stereotypically housewife-ish with a deriding twist? subject the housewife to ridicule and criticism through clothing...

from a book in pottery barn

"in that spellbound moment when we're suddenly willing to call this the only home we'll ever want on earth, new york lets us into a bigger secret yet: that it "gets" us, that we needn't worry about those dark and twisted, spectral thoughts we are far too reluctant to tell others about -- it shares the exact same ones itself, always has."

hidden emotion

i'm a shell full of churning, rushing lava, boiling, roiling, trying to escape.

hmm interesting imagery. but seriously, so much of the time it feels like i'm just covering a true emotional passion with this paper thin layer...any day now it could just burst or rip and with a whoosh, i'd empty and collapse flat to the floor. 

how do you convey that?

trees

using the branches of a bare winter tree as inspiration, how do you translate that into a garment? 

• gathering like branches...random all over 
• slashing and paning to show what's underneath
• huge skirt with lots of visible structure...like an upside down tree -- or like the roots, with the rest built up in an avant garde way over the head and shoulders
• huge volume on top, balanced over something much tighter

linda larson

i couldn't believe it but i actually liked mrs. larson's dress one sunday in church...dont let anyone know i actually admitted to that. mental note: it had horizontal pleats across the back of the shoulders that opened into full sleeves. dont really remember the rest...

atonement

loved keira's costumes in this movie...for obvious reasons.

although not explicably related, watching the movie made me think of a design for the back of a very tightly constructed dress, where the middle and sides of the back almost form around the shoulder blades, exposing them but reaching up higher on the back as well...