RIVER ISLAND

So this is what I have been looking at the past week, photoshop and indesign trying to complete my print project for the River Island competition and finally I have almost got there!!...I just stupidly forgot to code each design with a production number so I have to go through 293 designs and label them, funnnnnn. NOT. It has been a long and boring process at times and with laptop saga's bringing me to tears with stress I'm finally there! YESSSSS!

After long days and even longer nights trying to get it done so I can carry on with my collection I finally have something I'm kind of happy with! Just have to find a printers that can do it in time for my hand in. So by thursday i will have handed in this project, I've already handed in a 5,000 word draft of my dissertation and then the only thing to left to hand in before xmas is our pre collection development! (i say only, this is a lot of work which i still have a lot more of to do)...oh shit i forgot about 2,000 words for marketing.

LITTLE PEOPLE

My friend Jenna Morely used my two jackets in a shoot she styled a few weeks ago just got hold of the pictures which look so cute with the illustrations worked into them!


Heres my favourite shot with my Fringed jacket i made last year! Check out Jenna's Blog HERE to find out more about the shoot.

SHOES

A few weeks back now i styled a footwear shoot which was photographed by the amazing Alexander Jordan. Here are a couple of the shots...



Hope you like! Also If any of you are writers out there and want to contribute to Alexander Jordan's new publication Mythos Magazine, get in touch!

PRODUCTION

I just got back from a trip to a factory i have some connections with back home in Leicestershire, one thats actually still going! Anyway i took a couple of my toiles to the seamstresses that work there to discuss sewing my final garments for my collection! EXCITING! I'm so happy i have someone who can do that for me i know it will be made to a perfect standard and i have time to concentrate on the other side of my work! The leather work in my collection i will be doing myself though unless i find a leather speacialist cheap enough to do it. We will see.


They have some very interesting machines in this factory! Making socks, tights and jumpers etc something i haven't seen being done before! Pretty cool!

PRINTS

Last night me and my housemate with the camera went out and took some pictures of fireworks, lights and sparklers in order for me to create a print. Heres a few initial prints i made last night by edditing and playing around with the images on photoshop.





Still going to play around more but i managed to change the colours into some really beautiful combination's.

FUNDRAISING

Once all of our collections have been made an internal show is held for the judges, who will be selecting 20 students to represent the universtiy at Graduate Fashion Week in London. This costs quite a lot of money to set up there are so many things that have to be paid for and unfortunately the three grand we each pay a year doesn't cover it! So its up to us to get the money together! I think we are expected to raise about £4,000 to pay for a venue and good professional models. So its going to be a long proccess trying to raise that amount of money but everylittle counts at the point!


Today we put on a cake sale in our uni bar and managed to raise £168 to add to our stash! We have a long way to go but we have many different things being planned so hopefully by the end of the year we will have made a good amount!

MYTHOS MAGAZINE

Alexander Jordan is starting up a new project for an online magazine called 'MYTHOS MAGAZINE' Contributors are needed to write articles for the first issue so if any of you see yourself as a bit of a writer have a read of the brief and get involved!

Mythos Magazine editorial brief: the “issues” issue.

Concept;

I am creating a magazine where the editorial images, be that fashion or portraiture, are included and in reference to the editorial texts and articles contributed to the magazine. To create this work I will need written submissions for the magazine that I can then create visual work for it to be paired with.

Because of this I am looking for pieces of fact based editorial writing, this doesn’t mean that the piece has to be full of statistics but it can not be full of un substantiated claims, other than this you are free to write about anything to do with a current issue and write how ever you like as I want variants in both the magazines content and style.

The deadline for this work is the 20^th of November, as it will then need to be proof read, visually represented and then flat planned before the magazine can be finalized for its launch next year.

Any piece is welcome but not guaranteed to be included due to the concept of the magazine, although I do plan to include some texts without also creating imagery from them. Please send a concept, just a sentence, explaining what you intend to write about before you start to avoid having the same thing being written about by more than one person.

Please email any questions and your concepts to;

mythos.magazine@gmail.com

Thank You,

Alexander Jordan

TOUGH WEEK

It's been a bit of a slow one this week! My last post was about the start of a dress I was making and the top peice of it wasnt so straight forward as I had hoped! After draping and doing the pattern for it in a day once I had sewn it together I hadn't got the fit quite right!


So it was back to the stand to adjust the pattern! it turned out i had put too much fabric to the center to make it stand out and not distributed it evenly enough so the sides looked too flat with a kind of bluge out the middle...not a good look! I took the seams apart and split a couple of lines into the top to add in some more fabric where needed.


Once the adjustments were made i stuck the paper all together again to check it all looked ok, you could tell the difference straight away the way it stood was a lot better so i hoped that it would all work out in the actual fabric this time!


I decided to make two variations of the dress, one out of standard calico where the rest will be fitted and the other like planed out of the Organdi fabric with the latex dress underneath which will have a more interesting bottom which will flare away from the body. I want to test out both styles as the two different fabric types will make a big difference and its best to be able to see it to decide which works better.


The calico version was pretty straightforward to make i fused the pieces to make it extra sturdy and it stands really well. The sillohuette is pretty different its interesting but still flattering at the same time! I really want to make myself a nice black version to wear out!


The Organdi fabric however was not so straight forward and caused me a lot of problems which to be honest stressed me out a lot. You see the fabric is translucent so the seams inside have to be finished in an attractive way. Normally a French Seam is used but when i tried that out it was just not working because of the curve in the middle. It ended up pulling and puckering and was sooo hard to sew! I know it doesn't look like it but believe me IT WAS!


So after a few different trials trying to make the seams more of a feature on the dress i had to settle for normal seems which i think i will just have to end up binding inside. So with all my faffing around with the top part to the dress trying to get the fit and finishing right i have yet to finish it! but this week it will be finished!