Fall/winter Chanel 2011

How exciting is this though. The atmosphere must of been immense!! How I would of loved to been in that crowd. Even better how i would loved to of  been back stage, seeing all the commosion going on. Absolutly amazing!!  I love the fact that coco chanel is still being celebrated today. I mean imagine a life with out coco 'Gabrielle' chanel, we'd probably still be wearing corsets and unnessesary clothing. And a massive round of applause for the amazing Karl lagerfeld. appreciated world wide, I would love to meet him one day and ask for any tips he has to offer me. ;)

all I can say is OMG

OMG i have never seen such fantastic fashion shows than chanel, this is mind blowing, and I would hate to think how much it cost :s...

If this is'nt inspiring then i dont no what is

chanel website

Here is the chanel website, with fashion shows, photo shoots, ready-to-wear etc, it really is how a website should be, I'll keep this in mind for future prefrences.

http://www.chanel.com/fashion/7#7-chanel-fashion-show

Branding project

I have been given A project for branding, so far I have really embraced and enjoyed it. I am expected to work in a group and come up with our own brand, we have to have a name, and logo for it. The group had debates and brainstorms on what to call our brand, so we eventually came up with the name 'Tempest' Which in the dictionary means storm. so we came upo with the slogan, Tempest, taking the fashion world by storm. we will cover shop reports where abouts in the market we are and each have a collection to design as our indivdual work. I chose to do childrenswear, As did steven so we compromised as a team and decided that I would do casual wear and he would do partywear.

My customer profile is based on children who aspire to be just like mammy, so my collection will consist of little grown up clothing. I decided to call my childrens wear for tempest; 'Tempest mini me'.

Each collection for every season will have a different name and story behind it. I have also created my own logo for Tempest mini me which is 3 little girls who each will have there own colour scheme's and collections and will be included in every story.

So my inspiration is called the enchanted garden. which is full of magical going ons and everything a little girl could ever dream of.

I Have spent alot of time on this project already, and intend on spending as much time as possible on it, to make it just right. I thourouly enjoyed colin reid coming in and giving us tips and help on how to get the best from this project. I enjoyed listening to his stories and I was very humble that he was there spending his own time with us.

 I want to show him the next time his in as much as possible and what I have done. So intend to work really hard and get every thing nearly finshed. Hopefully he will like it, but I also respect his opinion and if not right I will correct the problem asap.

Here is something that can inspire me for the theme:

The enchanted Garden

My icon

I came across this video and this is exactly how I feel about coco chanel, I cant explain how much she inspires me. when I loose sight in every thing and loose motivation which i dont normally do, as im a very positive and self motivated person, but every now and then my energy levels will drop and I often feel like I will never make it as it seems so far away!! but I will watch coco before chanel , coco & igor, or read a book about her, even watch a you tube video and my adrenelin will rush to the top of my head and send shivers down my spine, And then I relise why I really want this career, I dont feel this way about anything else and that in its self shows I was born to do this. I think: Imagine waking up every day to that feeling knowing I am doing something I have wanted to do as a little girl, fufiling my dreams and aspirations. So when getting my motivation back my work improves and my passion floods back in.

karl lagerfeld

I love that karl Lagerfeld has took over for chanel, and kept her spirit alive. He is genius, and even though I respect and look up to the man alot, I am very quite envious of his fabulous job (my dream job) he is so inpspirational. Here is a video of some of his amzing collections for chanel. he keeps her presence and whole idea of fashion alive yet has his own twist on the collection, each peice is timeless and totally insinc with the present, they never date and are always in fashion, That to me is genius and I think any designer would crave to design timeless peices that never dated.

Finished steampunk shirt

Here is my finished steampunk shirt, which I am extremely pleased of, Ive been dreaming of making a finshed garment for as long as I can remember.

Even though its not my preffered style I worked to the breif and created a steampunk, quirky shirt.

I used different tones of gold & bronze's, for the buttons, some were bigger than others and all had different pictures on.

When the girls from the industry came in to give us feed back on our shirts, they said to me that mine was overly designed and that I could of got 3/4 different shirts from just 1. Maybe's I was abit over enthusiastic and because it was my first design I wanted to fit in as many things as possible. But then again when I researched steampunk garments I came across mant enthusiastic ones, and I got the impression of steampunk being quite fetish like. which is why I wanted my shirt to be quite sexy and edgy at the same time. Thats where the suspenders came in.

In all I have really enjoyed this project, learning the whole outcome was exciting, from inspiration boards, colour & fabric boards, to designs and flats. It has been amazing going through each step. Espeically looking at my finished peice. Coming from my brain to paper then to become an actual real garment is amazing. I cant wait for future pratical projects and actually using my newley developed skills in the real world.

I have learned so much that will last me a lifetime I just cant wait to learn more.

steampunk shirt process

This was the start of my twill  for my steampunk shirt. I had to do a twill first incase there was any alteration that needed to be done or if something didnt look quite right. I really enjoyed working in the sewing room and learned alot. Id much rather be doing pratical work, as I feel I learn much more when I do it myself than when I watch some one else do it. I will put the stages of my shirt through out this post and you can see the process i over went to get to my finished peice. I think this will also be good for me as I can reflect on what i have done and how I did it.



Once the bodice was done i added my coller and placket, and the frill down the front of the placket, which will be on both sides on my final proper shirt. I loved the process of making my shirt and could'nt wait to see how the next thing was done. When I first started college and we had our first go in the sewing room I was so nervous, i did'nt even no how to sew a straight line!!! But with determanation and concentration my sewing skills eventually got better. I learned how to thread the machine by looking at the already threaded machine next to me and everytime I sewed a new part of my shirt I thouht my sewing had  improved immensly.

There were parts of my shirt I found really difficult and i made lots of mistakes through out there process but I would sit and unpick the error and start again until I got it right. And if there was apart I really struggled on my teachers Lin & Dorothy were a big help and would help me out on anything I needed, either by showing me how its done or starting me off for me to finish. But with each mistake I made I gained a new skill and new that, that mistake would not vbe made again.

What my final shirt will look like

Here is the start of my final proper shirt, as you can see the middle is not sewn together, thats because the bottom part of the shirt is tight and the top part is loser.

When I sewed the mid section together I had to measure and line up the darts so the would be a perfect match. if they did not meet then that would meen my pattern was wrongly measured and i would have to go back and correct it. but luckily it was fine, as i done that process with my twill.

So once that was complete I added the frills and placket.

 Soon after i made my coller and attached it to the bodice before i added any arms as its easier to put on when theres less on the shirt.

when sewing my sleeves i found the leather arm to be quite difficult, as it was quite stiff