A friend of mine just sent me this adorable article after reading my blog....
(הכתבה בעברית לכל השנקריסתים בקהל)
ENJOY! : )
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Raw Edges...
So things are starting (slowly, but surely) to come together.
For now, i have 3 out of 4 pieces sewn...without belts, facings, and finishes, of course.
Yesterday, I managed to perfect the edges of the shirt...which are done with an overlock machine in BRIGHT PINK! I had to mess around with the size of the stitch and practice on a LOT of scraps since every mistake is visible! I love the way it came out....Now I just have to take on the collar...
And last, but most certainly not least....I spent a full day cutting the jacket with the chiffon! The next few days are dedicated to sitting and sewing LOADS of sequins (and perhaps watching some trashy television in the process....what can i say? I'm in a Kardashian phase).
Please note: The Red Bull might as well be sewn into the jacket...End of semester diet for fashion design students at Shenkar: Red Bull and Coffee....It's possibly that we're killing ourselves, but at least we look good doing it.
More to come!
For now, i have 3 out of 4 pieces sewn...without belts, facings, and finishes, of course.
Yesterday, I managed to perfect the edges of the shirt...which are done with an overlock machine in BRIGHT PINK! I had to mess around with the size of the stitch and practice on a LOT of scraps since every mistake is visible! I love the way it came out....Now I just have to take on the collar...And last, but most certainly not least....I spent a full day cutting the jacket with the chiffon! The next few days are dedicated to sitting and sewing LOADS of sequins (and perhaps watching some trashy television in the process....what can i say? I'm in a Kardashian phase).
Please note: The Red Bull might as well be sewn into the jacket...End of semester diet for fashion design students at Shenkar: Red Bull and Coffee....It's possibly that we're killing ourselves, but at least we look good doing it.
More to come!
Friday, June 3, 2011
Fit for a princess
The last few weeks, I've been busy sewing multiple "drafts" of all of my garments and fitting them on a model. Here are some pictures of the first fitting (from several weeks ago)...since then, There have been 3 more skirts and 2 more jackets all in raw materials... It takes time to get the right proportions and fit, but as of this week, I'm good to go!
I've already sewn parts here and there of the final pieces (from the real fabrics) and I'll be sure to load pictures in the next few days....
The skirt was kind of a disaster the first time around, which is kind of funny because I always think my patterns are really simple...but now I know that sometimes the most simple garments are the hardest to fit! After fixing the pattern and sewing a few more skirts with the changes, I managed to get a silhouette that I really love and it looked great on her! (I'll post those pics soon)!
So anyways, I know these pictures are a hot mess, but I promise, I've already made great strides in improving the overall look and fit!
I've already sewn parts here and there of the final pieces (from the real fabrics) and I'll be sure to load pictures in the next few days....
The skirt was kind of a disaster the first time around, which is kind of funny because I always think my patterns are really simple...but now I know that sometimes the most simple garments are the hardest to fit! After fixing the pattern and sewing a few more skirts with the changes, I managed to get a silhouette that I really love and it looked great on her! (I'll post those pics soon)!
So anyways, I know these pictures are a hot mess, but I promise, I've already made great strides in improving the overall look and fit!
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Behind the Seams...
So it's been a while since my last post.... but don't you fret, Project: Las Meninas is well at work.
My mid-term presentation went really well and aside from needing to focus in on my customer profile and some other minor details, my collection overall got good feedback.
For now...I'm working hard on sewing my toille for the outfit I've chosen to carry out.
Here she is:
Tomorrow I have my first fitting with a model...So after some long nights, battling with myself over why I chose to sew an entire jacket from chiffon (explanation to follow)....here's what we have so far.
At this stage, everything is sewn without finishes and from raw fabrics....in order to check sillouhettes, lengths, proportions, and the like. I can already see that I want the skirt a bit shorter and the jacket longer, but I'm waiting to see everything on a model (with actual legs) before I make any changes.
This is the textile I've decided on for the jacket. The fabric is a barbie pink brocade (whoever created it is a genius in my eyes)...It is, however, INCREDIBLY gaudy...so I decided to tone it down by adding a mask of very transperent chiffon. I'm hand embroidering sequins all over the jacket and in certain places I'll sew them on top of the chiffon.
Because chiffon is such a tricky fabric to work with, I felt like I needed to practice, so i sewed the entire toille with an additional layer of chiffon over the muslin.
And when by some miracle I managed to actually do that, it was around 1 am Thursday morning at Shenkar, and this is what my workspace looked like (it's actually not nearly as bad as it had the potential to be).
All in all...sorry for the brief hiatus, but as you can see, it wasn't for nothing. I'll post pictures later this week of the fitting.
Peace, Love, and Meninas!
My mid-term presentation went really well and aside from needing to focus in on my customer profile and some other minor details, my collection overall got good feedback.
For now...I'm working hard on sewing my toille for the outfit I've chosen to carry out.
Here she is:
Tomorrow I have my first fitting with a model...So after some long nights, battling with myself over why I chose to sew an entire jacket from chiffon (explanation to follow)....here's what we have so far.
At this stage, everything is sewn without finishes and from raw fabrics....in order to check sillouhettes, lengths, proportions, and the like. I can already see that I want the skirt a bit shorter and the jacket longer, but I'm waiting to see everything on a model (with actual legs) before I make any changes.
This is the textile I've decided on for the jacket. The fabric is a barbie pink brocade (whoever created it is a genius in my eyes)...It is, however, INCREDIBLY gaudy...so I decided to tone it down by adding a mask of very transperent chiffon. I'm hand embroidering sequins all over the jacket and in certain places I'll sew them on top of the chiffon.
Because chiffon is such a tricky fabric to work with, I felt like I needed to practice, so i sewed the entire toille with an additional layer of chiffon over the muslin.
And when by some miracle I managed to actually do that, it was around 1 am Thursday morning at Shenkar, and this is what my workspace looked like (it's actually not nearly as bad as it had the potential to be).
All in all...sorry for the brief hiatus, but as you can see, it wasn't for nothing. I'll post pictures later this week of the fitting.
Peace, Love, and Meninas!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
All That Glitters is not Gold...
Well, my friends, here you have it! After many long nights and sparkling days, this menina is finito (hey, i live my life in a constant chasm of multiple languages....i can mix in the occasional spanish and italian whenever I want)! In any case...Tomorrow is my mid-semester presentation...So I present you now with Las Meninas: The Collection!
In this collection, I wanted the looks to bring through the same feeling I get when looking at my collection of childhood portraits or the portraits of the Infanta Margarita, for that matter. While the portraits themselves may be sparkling and glamorous, there's a sad, lonely little girl in each one who seems to be staring out from behind a sort of proverbial mask.
To create this so-called "mask," I tried working with transparent fabrics (tulle, chiffon), and using them over the traditional wools and brocades.
Here, I embroidered sequins in a pattern on the brocade, then covered it with a second layer of chiffon where some of the sequins from the pattern are visible above the chiffon.
This was an off/white-gold brocade that I dyed fuschia, then cut out pieces of the brocade pattern in order to expose the grey dress underneath.
Hot pink tulle over brown wool.
This is an amazing metallic pink brocade that I happened to have stumbled upon!!! The collar and the pockets of the jacket are with an extra layer of green chiffon over the brocade that makes it less metallic.
There you have it....Wish me luck tomorrow! And good luck to all my classmates! Check out their blogs and their presentations linked in my sidebar! : )
In this collection, I wanted the looks to bring through the same feeling I get when looking at my collection of childhood portraits or the portraits of the Infanta Margarita, for that matter. While the portraits themselves may be sparkling and glamorous, there's a sad, lonely little girl in each one who seems to be staring out from behind a sort of proverbial mask.
To create this so-called "mask," I tried working with transparent fabrics (tulle, chiffon), and using them over the traditional wools and brocades.
Here, I embroidered sequins in a pattern on the brocade, then covered it with a second layer of chiffon where some of the sequins from the pattern are visible above the chiffon.
This was an off/white-gold brocade that I dyed fuschia, then cut out pieces of the brocade pattern in order to expose the grey dress underneath.
Hot pink tulle over brown wool.
This is an amazing metallic pink brocade that I happened to have stumbled upon!!! The collar and the pockets of the jacket are with an extra layer of green chiffon over the brocade that makes it less metallic.
There you have it....Wish me luck tomorrow! And good luck to all my classmates! Check out their blogs and their presentations linked in my sidebar! : )
Monday, April 25, 2011
Narrowing it Down...
From what feels like a thousand sketches and fabric samples; this week I managed to narrow my collection down to a mere 15 looks that I really liked! Now, the only problem is that I have to narrow it down even further to about 5! Here are the top 8...LEAVE COMMENTS and let me know which are the strongest and which I could manage to get rid of!
And the most important part...BUTTONS (and snaps, in this case)!! Some of them are from my personal collection, some I bought this past week in Paris, and some are from here in Tel Aviv.
Stay tuned throughout the week for more exciting posts...My mid-semester presentation is next week so this menina is hard at work...
that's all for now, HAPPY SPRING! : )
And the most important part...BUTTONS (and snaps, in this case)!! Some of them are from my personal collection, some I bought this past week in Paris, and some are from here in Tel Aviv.
Stay tuned throughout the week for more exciting posts...My mid-semester presentation is next week so this menina is hard at work...
that's all for now, HAPPY SPRING! : )
Sunday, April 10, 2011
If You Can't Get a Cab, You Just Can't Get a Cab...
When we were about 16, my dear friend, Alexa, and I took a trip to New York by ourselves. Alexa's mom sat us down before we got on the plane and gave us some important traveling pointers. The grand finale of it all went a little something like this: "...And just remember girls, sometimes if you can't get a cab, YOU JUST CAN'T GET A CAB!"
We died laughing. It seemed so ridiculous..."Obviously!" (We were 16 and from Southern California, so it was probably more along the lines of "like, duh!") And yet, these words seem to manifest themselves over and over in my life.
Like, for instance, over the past week with this project. I found myself trying the same things over and over. The same sketches, the same ideas, with the same inspiration in front of me... I was, as my boyfriend put it so well, "Lost Meninas". Until it hit me....If you can't get a cab, you just can't get a cab...So you find other means of getting from point A to point B. You take a bus, or a train, or you walk. In any case...you get there. Or, alternatively, you stand in the same spot on the side of the road repeating the same cab-hailing motion over and over again (or, i guess, in my case...drawing the same ugly jacket over and over again).
So I took matters into my own hands and made two new inspiration pages. I felt like they better represent what this project means to me at the heart of it all. Because when it all comes down to it, my collection of childhood dance portraits are saturated, drenched, soaked in unmitigated irony...because my childhood wasn't sparkling at all; and in my opinion neither was the Infanta Margarita's (damn...she wanted out of that corset and onto the playground)!
Here is the new inspiration:
And Color Palette for the collection:
Some fabric manipulations I worked on this weekend...
And a few of the sketches that came out of it all...
So here you have it....the ebb and flow of the design process. Changes happen along the way...and I'll be sure to keep you posted (pun absolutely intended) as to how things progress. For now... Consider me, Found Meninas!!!
We died laughing. It seemed so ridiculous..."Obviously!" (We were 16 and from Southern California, so it was probably more along the lines of "like, duh!") And yet, these words seem to manifest themselves over and over in my life.
Like, for instance, over the past week with this project. I found myself trying the same things over and over. The same sketches, the same ideas, with the same inspiration in front of me... I was, as my boyfriend put it so well, "Lost Meninas". Until it hit me....If you can't get a cab, you just can't get a cab...So you find other means of getting from point A to point B. You take a bus, or a train, or you walk. In any case...you get there. Or, alternatively, you stand in the same spot on the side of the road repeating the same cab-hailing motion over and over again (or, i guess, in my case...drawing the same ugly jacket over and over again).
So I took matters into my own hands and made two new inspiration pages. I felt like they better represent what this project means to me at the heart of it all. Because when it all comes down to it, my collection of childhood dance portraits are saturated, drenched, soaked in unmitigated irony...because my childhood wasn't sparkling at all; and in my opinion neither was the Infanta Margarita's (damn...she wanted out of that corset and onto the playground)!
Here is the new inspiration:
And Color Palette for the collection:
Some fabric manipulations I worked on this weekend...
And a few of the sketches that came out of it all...
So here you have it....the ebb and flow of the design process. Changes happen along the way...and I'll be sure to keep you posted (pun absolutely intended) as to how things progress. For now... Consider me, Found Meninas!!!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Because Size Does Matter...
I've been hard at work for a few weeks already searching for textiles and sketching ideas for what I want this collection to look like. Before I can really delve in, however, I had to come up with a general idea of HOW i want to use the whole connection between my old dance costumes and Las Meninas.
I decided that I want to use the idea of a child "playing dress up" to play with exaggerated shapes and silhouettes. After some much appreciated guidance from my teacher, I took some of my own clothes and dressed them on a child mannequin to see what happens to their shape. Here's what happened....
This is a slip from Free People that is fairly loose on me and comes to just below my knees. On The child's body it is floor-length and the neckline as well as the arm holes are at or below the waistline. Also...the dart for the breast is below the waist.
With this Anthropologie dress, I was curious to see what would happen with the cut at the waist. In the back, it fell below the mannequin's tush (which isn't very clear in the picture).
The first button of this jacket (which is generally at the waist) is around the hips (if a child were to have hips, that is). Also, the sleeve reaches the mannequin's knees and the collar sticks out past the shoulders.
The jeans are a bit more self-explanatory; although I did notice that the back pockets were about the size of the mannequin's entire behind!
I took the whole experiment and tried to create general silhouettes on a woman's body. These are more or less the shapes I'm going to try working with for the collection.
I decided that I want to use the idea of a child "playing dress up" to play with exaggerated shapes and silhouettes. After some much appreciated guidance from my teacher, I took some of my own clothes and dressed them on a child mannequin to see what happens to their shape. Here's what happened....
This is a slip from Free People that is fairly loose on me and comes to just below my knees. On The child's body it is floor-length and the neckline as well as the arm holes are at or below the waistline. Also...the dart for the breast is below the waist.
With this Anthropologie dress, I was curious to see what would happen with the cut at the waist. In the back, it fell below the mannequin's tush (which isn't very clear in the picture).
The first button of this jacket (which is generally at the waist) is around the hips (if a child were to have hips, that is). Also, the sleeve reaches the mannequin's knees and the collar sticks out past the shoulders.
The jeans are a bit more self-explanatory; although I did notice that the back pockets were about the size of the mannequin's entire behind!
I took the whole experiment and tried to create general silhouettes on a woman's body. These are more or less the shapes I'm going to try working with for the collection.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Go ahead, inspire me
Here we have it...My inspiration board for the project:
I decided to use the header I created for the blog because it really just says it all. I changed the colors a bit (because these will be more or less the colors I will have to use for the collection) and made a couple of other changes...but all in all, here we have it! Go ahead, be inspired...
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