VOGUE nostalgia

Sometimes I think my interest in fashion is a paradox, as I am not what you call a fashionista, not even close to it. I see fashion more from a sociological perspective, and I am interested to discover how women and their role in society have evolved in relation to fashion. But this is another story, and I just mentioned it to introduce one of the most thoughtful presents I have ever received, a book with a collection of fashion drawings from Vogue magazine, starting from 1920s to the 1980s. A beautiful book of "marvellously fresh and alive" drawings.

I am not going to pretend I know what the author is talking about. I am reading, watching, discovering and learning. What I understand is that the author, William Packer, is nostalgically looking back at the times where beauty and fashion were more intimately related to art, and is trying to revive the passion of fashion drawing (not fashion design!) in young artists today.

"Photography is not the answer, and anyway it has become very boring, repetitive and limited, especially in the fashion magazines. [...] Preparing the model, the make-up, the lights: it is all related to the theatre really, in a way that drawing never is. You can train yourself to observe and remember, to absorb and recreate, but the camera can only deal with what is in front of it, at the time. Whether from memory and experience or from the model, the artist works in his own time, simplifying and transforming what he sees and know into something of his own." (David Hockney in Preface)

I leave you with some snapshots from the book, it is a must have for any aspiring fashion designer, drawing artist, or just anyone who loves art and beauty.

Thank you Marie for an amazing present!

Inspired by... Lavinia

Lavinia has the most beautiful voice in the world (ok, almost :)) and she is the kind of friend who doesn't know to say "NO". She has brains (too much I think sometimes), and she sings like an angel. But most of all, she has the biggest heart. I have never seen her wearing orange, or grey, but for some reason this is what the muse inspired me to use. I guess the the grey reminds me of her soft, sometimes indecisive nature, the green reminds me of her fresh, powerful, rebellious thinking, and the bright orange is all the passion and warmness she emanates through her singing, writing, or just being. She is incredibly strong, but she is also fragile... it seems like a lot of contradictions, but I think she "wears" all these attributes. 

I am curious if she thinks my description is accurate and if she will like the dress. 

So, Lavina?

Inspired by... my sister

Today I will start a feature "Inspired by..." and the first post is dedicated to my beautiful sister, who inspired me to design this dress. We will also try to make the real thing, with the help of a tailor, so hopefully soon I will post a picture with the real model wearing the real dress. Wish us good luck :)

Never stop dreaming

When we get to a certain age, we tend to feel shy about our deepest dreams... It would sound ridiculous for me to say now (at 33) that I want to be a ballerina. But that is what I used to say as a child, as many other girls I guess. I think the desire of being a ballerina is rather symbolic. Our intuition as little girls relate us to the values attached to it: grace, balance, harmony, beauty...

The decision of taking a fashion design course was not about me wanting to make clothes, sell them and make money. It was about dreaming and searching for my true self.

Never stop dreaming, and if you feel like there is something about you that you need to explore, do it. You never know where this will take you, but it will certainly be a better place.

My last piece of drawing (the pose was inspired by a painting). 

Learning to draw human bodies is not only useful for fashion design.

I have't said too much about the place where my introduction to design / drawing happened. 

It is the Dubai International Art Centre. 

Check their website, they have lots of new courses coming.

Our dear teacher Dyali, she is great and I can only hope that all the teachers are as good as her.

PS I didn't mention something so far: there were ten of us starting the course, only four actually finished. I was the only one who attended all the classes, and I am probably the only one who started to blog about it :)

Fashion design - inspiration sources

Even if my fashion design course is over, I still have some material from the course that I've been delaying posting it. Some of it is below and the theme would be "inspiration sources".

 This design is inspired from a fabric, a pink cotton silk with a beautiful pattern.

These are inspired from a fashion era, the 20s. There is a wrong idea that there were short dresses in the 20s. There weren't. The day dresses were knee length, the evening or tea dresses were longer.

The design from the right is inspired from a picture in a magazine (left). The idea was to be avant-garde.

The design below is inspired by the Vera Wang ad on the left. 

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 :)