THIRD YEAR INTERN #4

WEEK 4

As third years deadline is creeping closer and closer, the stress within the studio's is building at a rapid pace!  Therefore Michelle (my intern) needs as much help as she can get.  This week I helped out with small jobs that are time consuming so overall save Michelle a lot of time, which is very valuable to her at the moment. I unpicked a zip off one of her final outfits ( a pair of trousers).  I then cut out some fabric for her for another garment, so now she can assemble the garment quicker as the fabric is all cut and ready.

The fabric Michelle used is a True Black Spacer Fabric.  I laid out all the pieces of her pattern in a logical order so that there was minimal wastage.  Some of the pieces required to be cut on the fold and some doubled so I made sure I took this into account before hand.  There was a slight struggle when cutting the fabric out as the fabric is quite thick (approximately about 5mm), especially when the fabric was doubled over.  Michelle got her fabric from MacCulloch & Wallis.  Here is the link to the fabric :

 https://www.macculloch-wallis.co.uk/p/20845/technical-fabrics/mw/5mm-spacer-fabric.

THIRD YEAR INTERN #3

WEEK 3

Last week was a stressful week for Michelle as she had her toile review on Thursday afternoon.  Toile review's are a regular occurrence within a fashion university course.  They are one-to-one tutorials with your design tutors that show the progress of you designs, sketchbook work, and making of final garments in toile format.  They usually last up to 10/15 minutes and allow for feedback and guidance on possible improvements to make and praise on work progressed so far.   These improvements are often in the format of shape and silhouette adjustments including, length, style lines and fittings on a test model.

Therefore in order for preparation for Michelle's toile review, I organised her work that would be needed to be provided in this short meeting, created a final line up of her final 6 garments on an indesign document (using photoshop to edit the outlines of the images.)  I ensured I used a white background so that fabric samples and colour swatches could be attached to clearly show the aesthetics of her final collection.  I also stepped in to be a model for this toile review and wore the second to left outfit in the image below.

THIRD YEAR INTERN #2

WEEK 2

Following up from last weeks intern session, today I helped out Michelle again with her portfolio work.  A portfolio is a document that summarises the work from the project, making sure all the best work is displayed in a concise, visually appealing format that is easy to read and shows progress of the work over the unit.   The majority of designers showcase their portfolios at shows, exhibitions or even potential future job interviews, as they are ideal to professional display the work of the designer.  See below my pinterest board of really aesthetically appealing portfolio work.  I like to take inspiration of layout ideas as this is a great way to decide what will look best when strategically placing all the collated work together.

  Follow Bronwyn's board Fashion Portoflio Layout Ideas on Pinterest.

Firstly I scanned in all of Michelle's sketchbook drawing, selecting her best work, making sure I had a variation of photography images, sketches, designs and illustrations.  I had to edit a few of the scanned images using Photoshop to recolour the images, sharpen or remove the background.  I then used Photoshop again to layer up the chosen images, whilst carefully selecting appropriate layouts which display her work best.  The use of white space is deemed effective so I ensured that I didn't use too many images on one page which may of made it look cluttered or busy.  This can be a long and tedious process, however I feel I am quite confident with Photoshop and InDesign software which definitely helps speed up the process.  In addition, Michelle had briefly made a simple layout of the images she would of like to use and provided me with this before I started.  Below are some screen shots of the final layouts that I created for her.

THIRD YEAR INTERN #1

As part of the Professional Practice Unit on my course, I am currently interning /helping out a third year fashion student for her Final Major Project (FMP).  I will be documenting the progress till deadline in May, creating a series of blog posts dedicated to the internship.

WEEK 1

After a brief introduction to Michelle's work so far on her FMP I created some flat drawings
for her, based on current fashion illustrations, and toile's of these garments.

BELGIUM TRIP

In December, I took a spontaneous trip for a weekend to Ghent, Belgium with my family.  Luckily the Christmas markets where still up so we walked around these during the day, and we found a graffiti street that was filled with interesting and diverse art work from artists around the world.  The images above are some of my favourite pieces I saw that day, and also a few of the town.  The image directly above is from the artist Matthew Dawn, where some of  his other work can be seen at http://matthewdawn.com/

CALVIN KLEIN TOO CONTROVERSIAL?

As part of my university course I will be creating a magazine prototype publication for a chosen area topic that interests us specifically.  This will include images, collages, mixed media texts as well as an 800 word article piece to support our chosen topic.  I have chosen to specifically look at Sexualisation in Fashion advertising and why it is so popular in current branded campaigns. I know that Calvin Klein is often criticised for their provocative themes within their advertising campaigns so I will aim to look at this brand, as well as others such as American Apparel.

I will explore why the sexualisation (usually of women) is so prominent and whether it sells asking - Does the sex appeal sell?? Using brand research as well as media theories such as Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory as to why it creates a hype; whether its positive vibe or negative press.

 

GIF INSPIRED BY ANA STRUMPF

Above is a GIF that I created using Photoshop.  I took inspiration from the artists Ana Strmpf and Hattie Stuart.