The history of fashion in images - from ancient times to 2000s

I am getting closer to the moment I have to find my inspiration for my first collection (this Saturday I will start my 5th week of fashion design course) and I am nowhere close to find it. Is in this context that I started to study a little bit the history of fashion and before getting into details I really felt the need of having a compilation of images to easily illustrate the evolution of fashion. There are many resources on the internet and many interesting articles focusing on specific fashion eras, I just picked different images that are relevant for what I am looking for. I am aware that some of those images might be subject to copyright, so I am going to mention the source for every image.

Ancient Egyptian, Roman and Greek women wear - Copyright www.fashion-era.com

14th Century

Laure de Sade. French medieval fashion. 14th century nobility. 

Source - http://world4.eu/french-fashion-in-the-middle-ages/

14th Century
Source - http://world4.eu/french-fashion-in-the-middle-ages/

16th Century
Source - http://www.costumes.org/history/racinet/2/16theuro3.jpg

18th Century
Source - http://www.ekduncan.com/2012/03/naughty-side-of-18th-century-french.html

19th Century
Source - http://gsaartdesign.blogspot.ae/2009/06/19th-century-fashion-plates.html

19th Century
Source: http://www.costumes.org/history/victorian/women/fashionplates/1874godey4.jpg

1879
Source - http://www.costumes.org/history/victorian/women/fashionplates/1879review.jpg

Early 1900s
Source - http://www.etsy.com/listing/45632123/early-1900s-womans-art-deco-fashion

October 1900
Source - http://www.ohhhlulu.com/2011/10/styles-for-october-1900.html

1910s
Source - http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sewing%20book

1900s
Source - http://pinterest.com/pin/119556565077577615/

1912 US
Source - http://pinterest.com/pin/119556565078028800/

1920s
Source - http://benmayfield.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/1920s-fashion.jpg

1920s Soviet Fashion
Source - http://www.vintag.es/2013/04/soviet-fashion-from-1920s.html

1920's - 1930's Skirt Length
Source - http://munchweb.com/the-roaring-twenties

1930's
Source - http://education.gtj.org.uk/en/blowup1/27253

1940's
Source - http://kellsan112-fashionista.blogspot.ae/2009/11/1940s-bombshell-era.html 

1950's
Source - http://theglamoroushousewife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/jp%2B10.jpg

1950's Marilyn
Source - http://julialinn.com/category/history/

1953
Source - http://sites.psu.edu/blazer/2012/10/04/52/

1954 Chanel
Source - http://julialinn.com/category/history/

1960s
Source - http://pinterest.com/pin/154670568425077660/

1965
Source - http://www.mintagevintage.com/fashion/1960s/how-date-vintage-clothing-1960s/

1970s The mini skirt
Source - http://pinterest.com/pin/240731542553694650/

1972 YSL
Source - http://redroom.com/member/terence-clarke/blog/yves-saint-laurent-in-san-francisco-is-high-fashion-high-art

1980's
Source -  http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/80s%20style

1980's Versace
Source - http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f135/vintage-ads-1980s-fashion-accessories-68882.html

1990's Beverly Hills
Source - http://fashionhunters.net/1990s-fashion

Waaaw, this was an amazing virtual trip for me! 

Can anyone find me an iconic image for 2000s fashion?

Or we are just recycling?

“You Wait. Everyone has an Antarctic” (Thomas Pynchon)

Shackleton's Way is one of the most inspiring stories I have ever read. It is a true story about “the greatest leader that ever came on God’s earth”, a story about honesty, solicitousness, selflessness, freedom, kindness, optimism, generosity,  loyalty, respect, compassion. A story about love and respect, for yourself and for others.

A must read: Shackleton's Way, by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell

On August 5th, 1914, Ernst Shackleton departs for the Antarctic expedition, from South Georgia, with the boat “Endurance” and  his 27 men crew. On January 18th, 1915 Endurance is trapped in ice, not far from the expedition’s intended landing site. On October 27th, 1915 the crew abandons the ship that is crushed by the ice. After months spent on ice floes, the men embark three small lifeboats and start sailing looking for land. They end up on the Elephant Island which they called a “Hell of an Island” – “stinking, wet and dangerous”. Shackleton left the Island on the April 24th 1916, with a small crew and the best of the three boats, to look for help. After 16 days of sailing they reached South Georgia and they needed another 10 days and super powers to cross the inhospitable land to reach the whale station where they could ask for help. On August 30th 1916, Shackleton came to the rescue of the men stranded on the Elephant Island. First he asked them: “Are you all well?” 

Even if the expedition didn't reach its initial purpose, Shackleton reached the only goal he cared about: bring all his men safe, back.

How did he succeeded, when all the odds were against him? My notes below on Shackleton’s Way of leading:

• The values you learn from your family are of a great help in forming you as a leader. Those values are honesty, solicitousness, selflessness, freedom, kindness, optimism, generosity,  loyalty, respect, compassion
• Being a life long student, searching guidance and wisdom in the books he read
• Open to any opportunities
• Careful with planning, paying attention to details
• Learning from past mistakes, he knew what he doesn’t want to be
• Always putting the well-being of his team first
• He always engaged in respectful competition with rivals
• Bringing out the best in human beings
• Hired people that shared the same values and vision and that are best at what they do, hard-working and talented, enthusiasts.
• Most of all he hired the people that had the experience he lacked. A leader is not afraid of competition.
• He made clear all his objectives and expectations. He provides people with the best tools available. He knows anything else would be waste of time and money.
• Created a team spirit – always observing and paying attentions to everyone’s concerns, The Boss treated everyone with the same respect and consideration. He created an atmosphere of security, trust and camaraderie.
• Shackleton  led by example, he would participate to the daily tasks and would complete in the best possible way and with the most enthusiasm, setting standards and inspiring his team.
• “He led, he did not drive”
• Shackleton had a vision and rules, but he was flexible and sensitive to change, and he would change his strategy along the way if the situation would require it. But he would only change something if he had the conviction that it will bring an improvement of the situation.
• Shackleton was interested in his men’s mental and physical health and he would focus on keeping them always cheerful and motivated. He brought the best out of them, giving them feed-back, correct them when they made mistakes and was interested in the human aspect of each of them.
• When they reached the crisis, he didn’t change his ways, but cultivated the same values and spirit and kept everyone optimistic about the future, but with a real sense of their situation.
• Shackleton was leading with only one goal in mind, to bring the men safe, home. His determination, along with his faith and willing power, made him go beyond his limits and inspired the rest of the crew to do the same.

Forth week of fashion design - getting into fabric details

Saturday's Fashion Design course was more like a practicing session, where we learned how to use the tracing paper and got to practice different poses. So another way to draw poses without thinking too much  is to copy from magazines on tracing paper (see below). After you copy the shape (try to guess where the body lines are behind the clothes), you can draw another similar one that is closer to a fashion figure (leaner and taller). Then you can draw your own clothes on it. I used the same figure to illustrate what we learned: lace and jeans. I wish I had a different shade of blue and some other colors. My next acquisition is some extra colored markers.

                          

So finally we learned how to draw the lace, however for a better rendering I would need to get a black fine pen of 0.1 (the one I used here is a 0.2 and it is a bit too thick). If the lace is transparent, draw first the skin color, if it has a lining draw the color of the lining first and then the pattern of the lace.

                                         

And finally, as i was supposed to be practicing satin and lace, I thought it would be a great idea to draw my favorite ever red gown. For shiny fabrics like satin, we show the shine of the fabric with white lines, as below.

About karma OR Think less action more

I don’t know about you, but I hear lately more and more often people that are talking about karma, most of the time in a kind of “retaliation” context (like you have done something wrong to me, wait and see what the karma will do to you!) but also related to fears people have about bad things that might happen to them.

Is in this context that I wanted to clarify, at least for myself, what exactly karma is about.  And again, Sadhguru, my favorite wise man gave me a common sense overview and few helpful tips to take away and apply in my life.

Very shortly, he says that one person has an allotted karma for one life, and most of this karma is written on your energy (also on your body and mind). Now there is a certain amount of energy that is dedicated to action, to emotions, to the thought process, and to the experiential dimension within us. Sadhguru says that our problem in the modern world is that we use too much energy for thought, almost no energy for physical activity and we are not capable to express our emotions in actions. More energy we use in the right way, more karma we spend, and more karma we spend, more balanced and at ease we will find ourselves. But if the energy is not spent or is spent in only one direction (for thinking for example), then you will find yourself restlessness and you will build even more karma.

"Today, in modern life, in the present way of living, people's emotions are not finding their full expressions. That part of the energy, the unexpressed emotion, cannot become something else. Either it has to find an emotional expression or it will turn inward and do funny things to you", Sadhguru, Isha Foundation

I recommend you read the entire article here Sadhguru about Karma

What do I take away from this lecture? Two principles to apply in my life:

1. Think less, action more (I am the master of thinking, so I applied this principle today and I already feel better and I even have a concrete result)
2. Find a way to express your emotions (that’s what this blog, my fashion design projects and my yoga endeavor are about)

These are some "karmic" messages me and my friends blindly picked in a restaurant in Bucharest. Mine was the 4th one - no wonder considering Eckhart Tolle wrote the book that changed my life (A New Earth). For those who don't speak Romanian, the 3rd message is "Love is possible only if two people communicate from the center of their being / existence " (The Art to Love, by Erich Fromm)

"La blouse roumaine" - how I see it (and this is just the beginning)

Talking about handcrafts... I am over the moon with these two new items in my wardrobe, my own interpretation of "ie" - a type of typical Romanian blouse (also found in other countries in Eastern Europe and North Europe in different variations), most commonly known as "la blouse roumaine". This name became famous after the French painter Henry Matisse fell in love with the Romanian blouse and started to create a collection of paintings called "La blouse roumaine" (one of them you can see in the background of this blog).

After few other trials, I am lucky to have met an amazing woman who understand exactly how I want my "blouse roumaine" to look like and created these stunning pieces that are entirely hand embroidered. I am seriously blown away by the quality of her (and her team's) work!

This is not about fashion, it is about creating life long lasting pieces that you can pass on, clothes that have a soul and a story of their own. It takes about 3 weeks to make one piece, so imagine the energy, the emotions, the skills, the passion, the the effort that it takes...

My first own design with brief

Or let's say my first try.

As I was mentioning in my last post, the brief was to create a design for a wedding party on the beach, in Dubai, taking place in February (when the weather is really pleasant, sometimes a bit cool, it might even rain). The thing with Dubai is that is always posh, and even if it is a beach party, don't imagine girls coming in flats or sandals to a wedding, no matter how much sand is around (not that the party will actually take place in the sand). And here usually there is not much in between flats and sky reaching heals.

I tried as much as possible to not think of what I will wear, as i would have tried to cover my knees, be as comfortable as possible in my shoes and not be cold (I'm always cold!).

Yellow is somehow THE color now, and I think is a good color for a beach party, but is not for everyone either. Anyway, this is it. The front pose sketch is ok, but the I don't like the back one (again, I should have done a straight back). The bow is not placed correctly. You may wonder why I don't give it another try then, it's because I like to track and keep an evidence of my mistakes so I know what to pay more attention to next time.

I am not getting into fabric and textures details, I don't want to talk nonsense. After all all I have is 9 hours of training so far, and I started from ZERO skills; lots of curiosity and passion though, I don't know how much talent.

Would you wear this dress? I would if my legs were skinnier :)

              

Templates are ready: front and back pose

For this week we had to draw the 4 templates that we will be using from now on for our designs. They are done, theoretically from now I won't have to draw them from the scratch again (which is good, as it was very time consuming). In terms of progress, I noticed I don't have to go back to the rules anymore, drawing comes naturally, but still using the proportion lines (no free hand drawing yet, except my stylized sketched :))

Now working on another assignment for this week, creating a dress (or any combination of clothes) for a lady attending a wedding beach party in Dubai, in February, in the afternoon (the teacher wanted to be very specific on the brief).

In a practicing mood

Last night I wanted to practice my drawing skills, grabbed the sketch pad and the new fine line pen (which I love and I prefer to the HB pencil), I googled again "famous fashion designers sketches" and here it is the result.

                  

                                 

                                                 

Letting aside the non originality of my sketches and designs (practically I looked for famous design sketches and tried to copy them), I am quite impressed about the result. These are stylized sketches, which I really prefer to the "realistic" ones, as they convey more attitude and they are easier to work with.

I figured that learning how to draw the different "real" fashion poses and understanding the proportions of the human body and its movements is helping a lot in rendering an idea, an attitude, without having to draw the full body (of course, some areas of the design will require detail drawing, but this is another story).

Back to practicing!

Back pose, a little bit of progress and lots of good feelings

Third week, 9 hours of fashion design course were completed yesterday. We have been introduced to the secrets of the back and over the shoulder poses, and the profiles which I am going to ignore for the moment – I don’t think we need them and they seem too difficult.

Before I get to the back pose, I realized there are two more materials needed that I haven’t mentioned. The colored markers (specific for fashion design) and the Uni Pen fine line – water and fade proof pigment ink (the 0.2 seem like a good choice, it’s not too thin and not too thick). I use it for the outlines, on top of (or replacing) the HB pen.

Ok, so no getting back to the back pose, I have to say it wasn't easy. The plain back was ok, but the over the shoulder was a bit challenging. This week I will be practicing the 4 poses that we will be using from now on: front, three quarter, back and over the shoulder. Once I get the templates that I am happy with, I will start to use the templates instead of drawing the figure each time I want to do a sketch.

Below are my attempts in the class – the naked and the dressed ones. I can see a little bit of progress and I’m happy J

I have few assignments for this week and need to practice more. I’ll let you know what and when.

I realized I am not talking at all about how I feel about this venture and I will be covering this in another post. The only thing I can say now is that it feel right and I enjoy it. I don’t think about the finality, I only enjoy my way to some direction I can’t see quite clearly yet. 

About Gaultier, balance, harmony and attitude

Here I am, the week 2 of my fashion design course, getting ready for my 3^rd course tomorrow. So theoretically in 6 hours of course I learned few basics about drawing fashion sketches, but I can’t say at this moment that I am really able to express any idea I have in my head (maybe I have none?!)

As I was mentioning in my first debrief post on the second course, there are some other things that we discussed briefly. Firstly about balance, harmony and attitude in fashion design, and second about big fashion designers and how we need to study them and their styles. I suggested for the next course we can discuss about Jean Paul Gaultier and we decided we will. 

I like the way he gets inspired by nature for his creations as well as by all the cultures of the world and can bring things so diverse together so harmoniously. I also like him because he seems one of those artists that are more interested in the “creation” itself than in where or how the creation will end. He is all about attitude and innovation, his women are powerful and grounded. He uses natural, earthy colors, but the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of him are the stripes and the bullet bra. He is bold and crazy, he is one of the few designers using over-sized models (for the norm of the industry), and introducing the skirt for men.

Below are few Gaultier creations (images from shows or sketches) that illustrate some of the observations above.

JP Gaultier, fall 2005 couture, www.stylekilling.com

JP Gaultier - fall 2005 couture, www.stylekilling.com

                    

JP Gaultier - Spring / Summer 2011 - Paris  www.designinspiration.net 

The Mosaic Foundation - Sketches from the 2005 Benefit Dinner

As per my homework, which was not really defined (I understood we had to draw something that is balanced, harmonious), anyway, to practice what we have learned so far). My first try was an idea I had in mind, the second one a copy from a magazine. Honestly, not really happy about the result. For the first one I tried to use the ¾ pose we learned last week, but a front pose would have been much better to illustrate this design. The second one is a copy, so not much of a challenge, but I realized I am still at the “kinder-garden” level when it comes to using the colors.

                                    

After drawing this I went online and looked for sketches of famous designers and I realized some of the things I am doing wrong. I try too much to stay within the lines, to use an uniform color, to keep the proportions, when actually this should more stylized. I should use more vigorous lines, and try to render an idea, an attitude, as opposed to draw clothes on paper. Enjoy the beautiful sketches, the first three are sourced from Fashion Imperative Blogspot

Sketches of Jason Wue - bridal collection