I love Wednesdays!

Wednesdays may be my new favorite day of the week.  The classes are easy for me so it feels like a break from the stress of the normal routine.  In the morning I have sewing.  We are covering the basics and it is almost identical in curriculum to the Iowa State class I took.  I'm getting more practice on the industrial machines and my samples are looking good.

Then I get a three hour break which almost feels like vacation!  I am able to get daytime errands done, call businesses that are only open 9-5, and relax for a long lunch.  Not today though... we have an assignment due on Friday that we were given on Tuesday so several of us booked it to Mood for sampling!  Mood is open limited hours in the evenings so this was our best chance.  I realized it was my first trip to Mood.  I thought I stopped in briefly last year when I visited NY but it was another store.  Then I remember how I felt overwhelmed at some of the other fabric stores so I didn't even attempt Mood!

Greeting us at the door is Swatch - Mood's mascot.  He has a calming effect.  :)

The next thing you see is a sample draped fabric by one of the talented employees.  I can't wait until we get to this level of draping!  The dress looks sewn, but it's simply pinned in such an impeccable way that the pins look decorative and the dress is stunning.

It's interesting how differently we all approach our assignments.  My friend Christine had inspiration and was collecting as many samples that caught her eye as possible.  Another friend Angela was snipping and was already forming a color scheme that looked like her style.  I struggled at first, not knowing where to begin, partly because I prefer higher quality fabrics so I kept veering towards silks but the assignment calls for cotton and knits only.  Bummer.  I really need to learn to use those creatively too!  I didn't have any ideas for the style of the clothes yet, so my samples still need to be edited in a big way.  But I left feeling like I had a lot of choices to work with.

In the afternoons on Wednesdays, Life Drawing is my stress-relief.  Drawing what's in front of me comes easily versus the pressure of coming up with something creative and original.  I love sitting and drawing the nude models and learning more about how the human body is composed.  Everyone is unique, yet there are similarities between any size of person.  I still want to work on faces and everyone in the class has to practice hands and feet because our instructor said those are the most detailed part of the body and the hardest to capture.  He is very right.  I'm seeing improvements already just practicing once a week.

Here are some samples of my sketches.  These are 20 minute poses with a live model and we are mainly focusing on the body proportions and the outline of the person.

Sorry it's so light - the newsprint is hard to photograph in my dark room.

I really liked this model.  They are all quirky (okay, some are straight up strange) but I think you might have to be to get paid to stand naked in front of 25 people for the sake of art.  At one point during a break, she was back in her dress but chose to lay on the small stage at the front of the room for a little catnap.  Hmmm.

Her poses weren't the most interesting, but that meant she was actually able to stay more still.  Her face turned out pretty well - I'm trying to work on my faces.  It's hard to capture personality and expression in a small sketch.

Wonderful Wednesday.  Back to full steam ahead tomorrow.

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. 

Not Your Average Day

Fashion Week in NY begins! My day started with a special event for only 70 students with designer Dries van Noten. He won the 2009 Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion by The Couture Council of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He agreed to accept the award on the condition that he would be allowed to speak to some students (love him for that!!). This school is amazing - the resources are unbelievable. I feel so fortunate to be included in the select few who got to witness this designer answering our questions in an intimate setting. We took a group picture with him and I feel like it was an incredible kick off to the whole school year.

Master of color, Dries van Noten

Anna Wintour, Editor in Chief of Vogue (genius) took an idea from White Night in Paris and generated support from Mayor Bloomberg to have an evening devoted to fashion which could boost the economy of the fashion industry. 700 retailers stayed open until 11 PM and celebrities and designers were on hand for an amazing night of shopping, celebrating and fashion! Fashion's Night Out became a worldwide event with several major cities participating. The fashion industry in NY is second only to finance in the number of people it employs. Helping the whole industry is a fantastic idea, and a huge undertaking. I think they pulled it off beautifully.

I went to Barneys (first time) and they had so many things going on, I never even made it to another store. Champagne and hors devours were on every floor although it was so busy I never managed to get a glass! It was overwhelming even getting inside the store because there were people filming and cameras just waiting for celebrities to enter.

Venus Williams was out shopping with her mom. She seemed unfazed by the madness.

Jonathan Adler demonstrating his pottery methods

In the cosmetics department this gentleman asked to "borrow my eyes" and then he did a mini makeover for me. It wasn't until I was done and walked away that I saw some girls taking pics with him and realized he was on the program bill - Claudio Riaz, "Brush Guru!" Had a good conversation with him about how he got into the biz. He says he is possibly the only straight married man in his line of work! He is based out of Chicago and likes being in the center of the country for easier travel.

Supermodel Iman. Sweeeet.

Do you recognize this man?

Manolo Blahnik! Shoe legend!

Gina (from my dorm floor) and I even got to make a flip book with Coco Rocha! We met her (she's super fun by the way) and danced with her for 5 seconds and then they made a little action flip book of it!

I was a little surprised that the biggest excitement seemed to be for Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. The crowd gathered to meet them and it was insane. Gina got a picture but it was just because she held her camera up over the mass of people and pointed it down to where the girls were. The security guards had to be concerned that they would be trampled! Meanwhile, I met a photographer from Hollywood and also talked to a nice woman from Rhode Island that has a daughter interested in fashion. It was fun answering her questions about FIT even though I told her I was new and didn't know everything!

We ended the night at McDonald's. I would have loved to support the fashion industry instead of the fast food industry, but trust me, the burger fit my budget better!

In the beginning...

In case you need to catch up to this point in my life:
After 11 years working since high school, I finally get my chance at full time college. I'm in the one year AAS Fashion Design program at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT (cute, right?)) in NYC.

After a hectic summer of work, selling my townhouse, two classes, four garage sales, selling my car, packing to move in with my parents, still trying to sell my townhouse, packing and storing leftover stuff for storage, still dealing with the townhouse, packing to move to NY, STILL trying to close the townhouse sale, then packing the U-Haul and finally getting the mortgage dude to complete the transaction... I left for the road trip to NY with my parents.

We decided to take the very scenic detour through Niagra Falls on the way. First night was in Chicago area staying with my sister and bro in law. Had a fun short visit with them. Carissa gave me a funny book showing actual notes roommates have left for each other to prepare me for the shock of living in the dorms. "I lick my cheese." A great way to keep others out of your food supply. :) Then the long day of driving to the border.

We were nervous about crossing the border with the U-Haul because Dad has us on a tight schedule and can you imagine if they searched it?! A mean looking Canadian border guard questioned us and I had to dig out proof that I was accepted into FIT, but then we were good to go.

Niagra Falls was very pretty. We had a nice room that overlooked the falls. The American falls were very rocky so they were pretty because of the changing direction of the water, but the Canadian falls are the ones you usually see in pictures. Massive falling water, spray that shoots so far up and out that we could even feel it from the rooftop pool at our hotel - quite a distance away. We got there in time to take a few pictures before the sun set

The view from our hotel room.


One of my fave shots of the American falls.

Dad treated us to a nice buffet meal up high in the hotel with another great view of the falls. Then we headed out for a walk and got to see fireworks and the waterfalls lit up with bright colorful lights.

Mom and Pa enjoying the spectacular fireworks - ooh, aah.


And a little shopping in the tourist shops. "See how GREAT you look in it!" I think stores should put that on all their mirrors!

Dad and I hit the casino for a while. The casino band was hilarious. They kept doing these 80's rocker-chic songs but it was a guy with a beer belly that could sing great falsetto!

Pa had to choose between high stakes tables for blackjack, or an electronic table with a creepy computer generated dealer. I found it interesting because it would obviously save the casino money over a real dealer, but I wondered if they also programmed it so the casino would win more than normal odds. Dad ended up doubling his money though so it was great for him. I walked up just as he hit the doubled amount so I asked, wasn't he supposed to stop? He called me the gambling Nazi after that because he may have kept on playing if I hadn't caught him. Hey - double or nothing; it's his own rule!! We laughed that I made him lose money because he could have kept going on to win even more... right.

Saturday, back to the falls. We walked up closer and we could really see the magnitude. We read about several people who have attempted to cross the falls - mostly on purpose, although there was the occasional accident too. As we got closer, I couldn't believe anyone would try it. If you could survive the fall/landing, you have no way of knowing if you'll get out of the whirlpool effect at the bottom, or if you land behind the falls, how would you get out?! From what I read, it looked like the survivals over the years have been about 50%. Not good odds.

The spray got us very wet as we approached.

Look at the bottom of the picture for a better idea of scale. The people are standing on a platform for a closer view.

One thing that surprised me at the top was that I could actually see the rocky bottom of the lake before the water rushed over the edge. It really isn't that deep up there. The water was a really pretty blue instead of the greenish lake water I'm used to in Iowa.

Thanks Mom and Pa for the extra excursion on the way! It was a very fun time.

Best parents in the world.