Ramping Up

Today I woke up tired from all the surreal activities of the weekend. Tuesdays are busy because my classes meet from 9 am to 6 pm with an hour break for lunch that passes VERY quickly! In the morning we draped another bodice with different variations of darts and we are learning to drape a collar and a front button closure. My bodice is coming along pretty well. It's hard to get everything perfect because the dress forms are about as unique as people. Mine doesn't have a very good shoulder ridge so my ease measurements were causing problems, but once I figured that out I was back on track.

In the afternoon I had Fashion Art class. I really enjoy the class, but sitting to draw for that long can get to be tedious. We turned in our assignment from last class - 5 heads colored with markers and shaded with colored pencils. It was a new art technique for me so I took a long time completing them last night (also contributing to my tired state!).  Overall I was pretty happy with the final result but I still need to practice hair.

 

My five heads with varying necklines

My favorite.  She was supposed to be blond but the red took over.  Turned out really well anyway.  It was interesting how many of the students seemed to have one head that looked like themselves.  This was the closest to my look!

  

Sexy librarian.

 

 She turned out pretty too.

I really overworked her hair.  I don't have a lot of colors to work with yet so I ended up coloring too much but tried to make it work with pencil over the top.  Prof. Bonner said it looked good even though I didn't get enough highlights.  

During class today we got to walk over to the color lab in the FIT museum.  It was an amazing field trip.  The lab has paint chips organized by color and hue and file cabinets full of every color so you can get swatches of the right color.  The most amazing part was the woman telling us about the process of checking out the lab - she was an amazing wealth of knowledge!  We got to see resources that forecast colors for upcoming seasons.  Some of these resources are worth a few thousand dollars and fashion houses don't always budget for them - unbelievable resource!!  My Prof was even drooling over the chance to see Trend Union color swatches because she said she hasn't seen them in years in her design jobs.  The museum worker took out white gloves to roll open this cloth with all the swatches attached in groupings.  There were also books that explained the inspiration for the colors and the way the groupings worked.  It was really inspiring.

Even as I admired these tools provided by industry professionals, I still had that little voice inside me saying that I want to set trends, not follow someone else's idea of what I should do.  I wonder if I will ever get to that point in my career where I can truly be as unique as Dries Van Noten and do whatever I want instead of selecting colors and designs for the simple reason that someone else told me they would sell. 

We headed back to class and started on our next assignment - three color rendered swimsuit figures.  Prof. Bonner also explained our big upcoming project.  It will be my first chance (outside of my portfolio to get into the school) to show a grouping of separates coming together for a mini-wardrobe.  It's scary and exciting at the same time.  These things are always intimidating to me at first, but I love seeing them come together - I end up surprising myself.