Celebrating the Universal Day of The Romanian Blouse in Dubai

Today, 24th of June, is the Universal Day of the IE (known as the Romanian blouse or la blouse roumaine), a traditional Romanian blouse skillfully decorated with fine art hand embroidery. Initiated by the Facebook community "La Blouse Roumaine" just few months ago, this day is celebrated around the world by Romanians and their friends. It is from my knowledge the first time in history (ok, exaggerating) when Romanians around the world enthusiastically unite for a common cause, to unveil the beauty, the sense and the stories behind one of the most beautiful artifacts that Romania gave the world. 

I have few Romanian blouses, but my newest one was brought all the way to Dubai from Romania by TAROM, the Romanian Airline. 

Smaranda Braescu, the first Romanian pilot, also called
The Queen of the Air, wearing the Romanian Blouse

The beauty and elegance of the Romanian Blouse in Dubai

The patterns on this blouse symbolize continuity

Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, has a view of the Romanian Blouse :)

The Romanian Blouse - telling its own story

TAROM's uniform is rather beautiful, but what if we changed it to
something inspired from the Romanian Blouse?

The beautiful stewardesses from TAROM wearing the Romanian blouse.

                                     

Let's dance!

Today is 22nd of June and it was the last week of my fashion design course. It is very cliché to say that time flies but it is so true. I missed the post of my ninth week, but I will include it in a retrospective I am preparing, so nothing will be missed. The past three weeks I have been working on my portfolio, or my first collection, which I am sharing here. My inspiration came from all the music, harmony, dance I feel every moment inside me, from my desire to live the life to the fullest (even if I don't necessarily do it), from my longing for something I can't really describe, but I know is there waiting for me. I am just a music listener, and I'm not even a good dancer, but I imagine that if there is another "me" somewhere in this universe, that "me" is a dancer.

Thank you to our dear teacher Dyali who managed to get us from zero to something decent in only 10 classes (30 hours).

Let's dance!

Eighth week of fashion design course - "What you seek is seeking you"

I know I haven't posted anything for the past week, but this is because of one simple reason: I can't unveil my future collection until it's all ready :)

What I would like to do though is to share a little bit about the process of finding my inspiration. So I keep looking for weeks and weeks around me and try to pick that thing that inspires me to create. And I look and look around me and I keep thinking I fount the idea but then it only takes me few hours, days at the most to drop it. So one of the nights, with one theme in mind, I was trying to create and something started to take shape. And had nothing to do with the theme I had chosen. Then I realised, that what I was drawing had a theme of its own.

I leave you guess where was that inspiration coming from.

"What you seek is seeking you" Rumi

Seventh week of fashion design course - Guideline for building a portfolio

Three weeks left from this adventure, and we are now getting to serious things. Finally we discussed how to compile our portfolio with our first collection. Sounds really strange, I feel like I'm at school and we are playing a fashion design game. The truth is, to put together this portfolio in less than 3 weeks is scary but at least I (think) I found my inspiration (which is different from what I thought it was last week). The good thing is I can't afford to change my mind again, so let's get started.

And because we all seemed so helpless in the course, the teacher shared with us the below guideline, which I think works for any kind of artistic project, so I will share it with you.

Where to look for inspiration ?

Nature / environment
Art / Architecture
Culture / country / tribe
Era in history / costume tradition

What to look for?
Colour
Feel
Texture
Form

What are the components of the portfolio?

Moodboard of inspiration
Profile (age group, country or region, season, type of collection)
Colour story (choose 4, 5 colours)
Fabric story
Working drawings
Illustrations of final designs (minimum 8)
Any other support material

And finally few illustrations I worked on during the course (the first is trying an empire silhouette, the second one a combination between a sheath silhouette and different fabric textures, the third one is an outfit for a beach party for an 18 to 20 years old - in the brief was mentioned that it needs to include denim and stripes):

That's all folks, thank you all for reading or at least watching the pictures, this blog has officially crossed the 1000 visits mark :)