Zimmermann

http://zimmermannwear.com/domestic/

this is where i did a month's work experience in the summer. they were doing the sample fittings for this range while I was there. I love these two pieces; classic, elegant, just the right amount of skin in proportion to the amount of material, beautiful shapes, fabrics working well together- the mesh, the lace and the lycra. It's this attention to detail that I feel sets this level of design apart from everyday high street garments. i loved my time at zimmermann, looking for an industry placement makes me wish i could just go back to them, but I feel I'd probably benefit more from experiencing different companies. It's such a shame because they were so lovely to work with and they have such beautiful designs!

The Uncertainty

I'm currently in the process of finding an industry placement for when I've finished this year at uni, and my uni friends at Leeds have started looking at houses for next year and are talking about who they're going to live with and I hate the uncertainty. Until I have a placement, I don't know which part of the country I'm going to be in, so I can't arrange to live with my uni friends, and I can't even sort out living elsewhere. And it's the uncertainty I hate, I'd really just love to click my fingers and KNOW what's going on.
But then I realised UNCERTAINTY is a major part of life. I'm lucky 'cause in my background I've always known I'll be safe, with food on the table and enough money for the basic things in life, and my friends around me; but I realised the more you grow up, the more uncertain things become, and eventually, it's all going to be uncertain, because it's all going to rely on ME making the right choices, and finding stability. I'm going to have to make my peace with uncertainty before I reach this point in my life!

Fashion - Not just a fad

One of the things I hate about being a fashion student, is the perception other people have of it. About a third of the people you tell will give you a disgusted, disinterested, condescending look that means "oh well if you're doing fashion you must be pretty dumb, anyone could do that" when the truth of the matter is, with my grades I could have done anything I'd wanted, but fashion is what I love and what I want to do with my life, and I'm studying at a prestigious university and working very fucking hard. This to the point where half way through a draining 7hour day of garment technology, me and a couple of friends bumped into a friend of a friend while we were having lunch and she started saying how much easier our course was and how she'd swap our practical for her dissertation - even someone at the same university can't appreciate that there has to be a certain level of difficulty for what you're doing to be worth a degree from a prestigiuos Russell group university like Leeds! Just cos people are studying something that ends in 'ology' they presume that it has more integrity than a creative course, when quite often they're just studying for the point of being at university, not really knowing what they want to do with it. I know what I want to do, and I'm working bloody hard to get there, should I really be looked down upon for that?! Fashion is something interesting to study, from understanding how to make something that starts out flat, fit to the body and work with the shapes of the body, to understanding the context of design and where all these patterns, shapes ideas have come from, how they've developed!
I think the problem is that the fashion industry can sometimes seem like it's all about fads, about keeping up with the latest craze, and people that don't want to spend their life following the crowd reject this. But the study of fashion is so much more, and the reason I love fashion is the beautiful, clever, way that garments can be constructed, how they can express a person and how they can flatter a person, and how the confidence given to you by the clothes that you wear can bring so much to your life. As you'll have seen from the work I've uploaded, I've recently been studying Yohji Yamamoto, a conceptual designer who doesn't design to seasonal trends, but instead designs to create something of beauty, he said that he strives for timeless elegance, which is also something I love. He also has a different ideal of beauty than the typical Western image and I find explore different types of beauty really interesting.
I doubt anyone reading this doesn't already love fashion, so I'm probably preaching to the converted here, but it would be great if the fashion industry could get back the respect it deserves, rather than just being seen as an over-commercialised world of fads and crazes which only a fool would buy into.

Level Two Semester 1 Design Development - Yohji Yamamoto Illustration Boards of Final Collection

From our designs we had to form 10 outfits to make up our final collection, these then had to be illustrated and turned into technical drawings. The background here is a photo from the trend board. Each of the outfits was sketched onto a template pose, scanned in, drawn around in illustrator, colour applied, and then a photo of a face had an effect applied to it to make it suit the rest of the image, and applied on. I attached the print-outs to mountboard so prevent them getting damaged and then filled in over the top of the printer ink with some subtle pen lines and charcoal to give an added depth to the designs. These took me hours but I was much quicker by the end of it and generally I was really happy with the result. The fifth outfit hasn't shown up that clearly in the photo of the board, which is disappointing, it was one of my favourite outfits.

Level Two Semester 1 Design Development - Yohji Yamamoto Design Pages

A few examples of design pages for my design development journal.

The Problem with Radley...

I was sat down on a bench on the train platform the other day and took a look at the person sitting next to me. An old lady, I'd guess in her late 70s, with one of those upright - wheely- trolley - come - bag things, a navy blue doe-skin feel quilted jacket, white wispy hair, and hanging off her arm, a Radley handbag.
From doing our marketing module last semester I've clearly subconsciously started thinking about the image a brand creates for itself in every way and the problem with Radley is that they don't follow the fashion world enough, they're not fast-paced enough, which is not normally a criticism I would make. I really appreciate designers that create pieces that don't depend on fast fashion but rather have a timeless elegance. But with Radley they've got too comfortable. Older ladies such as the one at the station are normally well-off enough to afford more upmarket, higher quality pieces, like a nice leather, Radley handbag, but other such brands appeal much less widely, an older lady would feel out of place buying a younger brand and so they maintain their 'cool' factor. It may be that Radley are happy with appealing to this age group but it's a sure-fire way of them using all their young demographic. Any sense of style or chic that someone may associate with a Radley handbag is lost when you see that little dog label hanging from the arm of an elderly lady such as the one at the station. I wanted to take a photo so as to demonstrate this, but I didn't wish to insult her. I'm sure she is perfectly lovely, and her interest indicates she may have been a fashion-lover at an earlier time in her life, but she has got to the stage where comfort far overtakes appearance; I just think that maybe Radley should realise the effect their customer is having on the image of the brand. Am I being too harsh? I don't know. But it's the thought that immediately sprung to my mind.

Level Two Semester 1 Design Development - Yohji Yamamoto Boards

Customer Board, Trend Board and Fabric Board to move research onto design. When visiting the store in London I made an effort to look at what fabrics he used and all the compositions I looked at included only natural fibres so as far as possible we tried to find fabrics that included only natural fibres. The higher quality fabric is one of the reasons Yohji's work is valued so highly and the construction works so well.

Level Two Semester 1 Design Development - Yohji Yamamoto Customer Research

The Yohji Yamamoto research also involved customer research, and spending time in the London shop observing the customers and talking to the staff was really interesting and gave a real insight to the designer and the people that he appeals to.

Level Two Semester 1 Design Development - Yohji Yamamoto Competitor Research

A few pages of research into competitors as part of our Yohji Yamamoto research. It's quite interesting to look at the similarities and differences between the designs that come from these designers from similar backgrounds.

Level Two Semester 1 Design Development - Yohji Yamamoto Research

At the beginning of the Semester, each group picked a conceptual designer from a list of 4 or 5. Our group chose Yohji Yamamamoto, and these are a few of my research pages looking at the designer and the brand.

Level Two Semester 1 Garment Technology Boards - Rever Collars

Primary and secondary research into different applications of the 'rever collar'. It adds a sense of formality to most garments and added details to the shape or fabric of the collar, such as the shearling in image 8, or the decorative shape, stitching and gold braid in the historical jacket in image 6. In general, I prefer the use of rever collars with double-breasted fronts, as they don't over-dominate the garment too much, which is why I feel they often work better on coats and jackets than on jumpsuits or dresses that are normally single-breasted.