First Day of Unit 2

Apologies for not posting sooner about my time so far at UCA. I've needed a bit of time to get used to the work load and create a routine for myself. However I've been doing the course for almost a term now and I feel a lot more settled.

Today was the beginning of Unit 2 which had the name 'Floribunda'.... Yeah the good old floral brief that I remember getting about 7 times in Textiles throughout my time at school.

Floral in fashion - the definition of 'cliché'

My tutor did have a valid point once telling us about the brief; explaining how floral can never be avoided in fashion, despite how overworked it has become. So in fact it is inevitable, that we will one day have to use florals as a theme, and this unit is simply a chance to practice at producing personal and creative work that has started from a conventional subject... Finding the original in predictable, oh the irony!

Research began and whilst looking online, I found that I wanted to look into people who use or work with flowers, combined with the flowers themselves. Taking the cliché path further I decided to focus on gardens and gardening; particularly as I was interested in gardening workwear and the relationship between garden and gardener.
Whilst everyone started to draw, I styled a few clothes on Charlotte. Charity shops always come in handy for research and they are never short on floral books, scarves and tatty clothes... £8 well spent :):)
Below are a few snaps of Charlotte wearing my scarves, and also modelling some flowers that she had bought in... After that are photos of more garments/scarves and flowers that I've draped and styled on a mannequin..

From these images I'll create collages and develop more silhouettes that relate to gardening and gardeners. Next time I'll need to use more pots, plants and gardening tools. Also I should definitely do some drawings based on the shapes and patterns that are in these photos; it'll help decide what to work on next. 

In the afternoon I did some more work on the stand, but instead only focusing on silhouette, so outline of the garments ONLY. I didn't really have much of a direction at this point as I left my work in another room, so I just played about abit. Next time however I can incorporate both the morning and afternoon's outcomes into more developed designs, using a mixture of silhouettes I made during that day.

Read my next post in a few days about tomorrows trip to UCA Rochester for the Fashion degree taster day. Should be fun!  

Lauren Lake Graduate Collection / Coat Wish List

It's December, which means crappier and colder weather and christmas only just around the corner. The ideal opportunity for me to find the perfect coat for this winter... I'm talking about something big, fluffy and preferably pink.
And while scrolling online for a coat to put on my christmas list, I found the collection of Kingston fashion graduate Lauren Lake, which, if you had to describe in 3 words, is big, pink and furry... the dream.
I honestly don't think I've ever seen a collection that consists of that much pink fur - incredible !

Lauren Lake is a womenswear designer who graduated from Kingston this summer with a BA in Fashion, and has recently started an MA in womenswear technology at LCF. Due to her creative talents and beautiful designs, she had the privilege of showing her final collection at Graduate Fashion Week, which was held in June. There she received so much publicity, with alllllll the fashion magazines, journalists and bloggers going crazy over her and her gigantic pink fluffy masterpieces. A picture of one of the coats was even featured on the front page of The Times, which is pretty impressive for a newly graduated designer.

So even though the chances of me receiving one of Lauren's coats for Christmas are slim to none, I still thought I'd share to everyone her unbelievable collection. And due to the fact that they are not available to buy in shops, I have found some pieces that I have ALSO fallen in love with that are available online.

The coats featured in Lauren's collection ^^

I've created a few sets on Polyvore, which include my favourite coats that I found online.. 

(see below)...

Apologies for the expensive choice of outfits, particularly the coats... I'm not sure about you guys but spending over £1000 on a coat seems like something I could only dream of doing.

(Father Christmas, take note!)