Emerging Fervour

I recently handed in a project in my fashion design class. This wasn’t my best moment, you see. I can’t draw faces. Yep. In school during art class, I always said that my work was ‘abstract’ when explaining the fact that my drawings had no eyes, no nose and no mouth. I never really practiced because drawing wasn’t all that important to me. However, now, drawing and a steady hand are more important than ever when presenting work.

So, this weekend I searched through all the fashion illustrations that I loved so that I could get some ideas and thought I’d share with you…

Kelly Sheppard

Pinky

Aurelio Costarella

Miu Miu

X Miss Kitty X

Hiroshi Tanabe

Hanna Müller

Alex Strang

We got a little piece sent through by Vice Style last week about young Colmbianos, their hair and clothing, which if I’m honest – caught me by surprise!

Every Sunday afternoon, after dancing all weekend at bars and clubs around town, a bunch of Mexican Colombianos gather outside the 7-Eleven at the bottom of the Latino Tower in downtown Monterrey. They hang there because their favorite radio station, XEH 1420 AM, is located on the 20th floor of the building above the store. They use a pay phone to call the station all afternoon to request songs and shout-outs to their friends and girlfriends. While other northern Mexican music genres like narcocorridos are blatant anthems for local drug dealers and their violent exploits, the songs Colombianos listen to are about love, peace, and friendship.

It has definitely been far too long since I posted an update on how I’m getting on at ESMOD. Things have been going really good actually and after some much needed sleep and the completion of a pattern-making project, I can let you guys know what I’m working on right now.

For the past week, I have been working on a project for my design class where I have to create a collection comprising of around 35 products for SS11. We had to choose an inspirational designer and choose a theme and base our collection on the chosen theme keeping the spirit of the designer in mind. Seeing as I’m presenting at the end of next week, I will divulge more information around then – ahhh waiting is half the fun! But I can tell you that the chosen designer is someone that I have written about on here more than 3 times – the theme might be obvious to some based on these sketches…

We’ve been contacted by Vancouver Fashion Week this week asking if we knew any young, upcoming designers designers who would be interested in displaying their Autumn/Winter 2011 collection in April. A bit short notice but as you lovely designers must still be in full Fashion Week mode you might be ready!

This season is Vancouver Fashion Week’s 10th anniversary taking place from April 12th – 17th, bringing together Canada’s most influential fashion designers and promoting the ever-expanding West Coast fashion scene. Perfect opportunity to go across the pond to a country I absolutely love and has its own amazing designers but it’s time to inject a bit of international fashion there.

They have two designer packages available including various numbers of models, access passes and so on costing between C$2500 – C$5000 + 12% HST (I’d love to know how that compares to the other Fashion Weeks….) – oh and bear in mind flight on top of that (“,)

So if you’re ready for Canada, contact us or Johanna (+1 778.628.4110).

Digital Fashion Mavens Reed & Rader present an exclusive editorial for VMagazine.com, featuring some of Spring’s most vibrant prints & colors!

Not only are there amazing outfits but the editorial is wicked! The models in the photos wink, turn their heads or do other random things. It’s funny, eerie or even freaky, either way, they made me laugh out loud.

The photos in this post don’t do it justice, so make sure you watch the animated ones by going to VMagazine.com homepage and click on ‘LAUNCH THE STORY’

And of course my favourite:

Ok, it’s still kicking off here in Beirut…more protests have erupted after a Hezbollah-backed Najib Mikati was appointed Lebanese PM (removing the usualpower-sharing system, where the post of prime minister is reserved for a Sunni, while the president must be a Maronite Christian and the speaker of parliament a Shia). I won’t go into details because I will go on 10,000 words so if you’re interested – check out the full story on BBC online.

So, this basically means that I haven’t been to my classes since yesterday and I’m hoping this get’s resolved ASAP please because I’ve got some pretty interesting things going on at the moment. Take for example, making a SHIRT! Yessss, look at me and my talk of making shirts!! Before the Christmas hols I had just finished creating my skirt – check my post. On Friday I handed in a file for 3 shirts (1 normal fitted, 1 fitted with enlargements and another shirt according to a picture) and this week we’re learning how to create a three-piece shirt with buttoning tab above the ‘teet’ as our teacher would say. All very exciting stuff.

For our design course, we have a project due in on the 2nd of February where we have to create a small collection for AW2011 with 6 shirts, 4 trousers and 4 skirts… and of these 14 pieces we had to draw 2 figurines each with a shirt and trousers and shirt and skirt. The theme is transportation and I chose the old steam trains because it seems that I am really into sharp lines and shapes so this was perfect….

Last week I went to the opening of the Make Lemonade pop up store in London. Make Lemonade is a vintage brand and fashion blog, whose creators decided to take advantage of the pop up revolution and put their energy into setting up this delightful little shop on Chalton Street, in between Kings Cross and Euston stations.

On show and for sale are Make Lemonade’s vintage collection, along with their own remade label, along with press favourite Supermarket Sarah and young designers such as Tope Tijani, who we featured on Emerging Fervour back in October last year.

Supermarket sarah’s wall of joy

Tope Tijani’s new collection

Holly-an  for ML – hand printed cards and notebooks

A steamy opening night!!

The pop up shop is located at 24 Chalton St, London, NW1 1JH. It’s only open for just over a week so get down there quick, sharp!

www.make-lemonade.com

So something is happening in Lebanon if you haven’t heard. Currently, we have no government and it’s all going to shit at the moment. There have been a few incidences with different civil groups following the collapse of the Government, which have meant road closures and seeing masked men with guns running around. Surprisingly, I’m not that frightened because I know as with most things that happen in Lebanon – it will blow over and things will be back to some sort of normality sooner or later.

Before the Christmas break, the first years had an exam focusing on creating a pleated straight skirt with a buttoning tab. It sounds pretty easy right? Hmmm, it actually took us around 2 weeks to complete. Here are the 3 main steps…

1. Work the fabric on the dummy

2. Cut the fabric and create patterns

3. Cut the final material from the patterns (9 pieces all together) and add buttons and add button holes

Here is a shot of me and some of the girls with our skirts….

I feel that lately it’s all been “moan, bitch and moan some more” coming from me… but I can’t help it – I can’t stay quiet when I see something undeserving of any positive press. First it was about the annoying Cecilia Cassini, then about Pete Doherty and his new jewellery line and now it’s about Prada and their ‘exclusive’ lettering project. Like many of you reading this, I like people – especially designers and musicians, to get recognition for something really amazing, wonderful and unique. This is what forms the basis of Emerging Fervour and this basis shall remain for as long as EF lives.

I’m all for big names in fashion. If you can afford it, then good for you – but frankly some things are just bad taste and there purely to make money, nothing more, nothing less. For example, the Prada Lettering Project is just one of a long list of such things that I intend to bitch and moan about in months and years to come, I’m sure.

Smack-head turned jewellery designer Pete Doherty has teamed up with London jeweller Hannah Martin to create a new jewellery label Albion Trinketry borne from a longing to re-introduce the days when every man had a piece of jewellery to wear with his Sunday best. Reading this, you would assume Pete knows what ‘Sunday best’ is.

To be fair though, the collection is pretty nice…

Rose Gold Cuff Links £2100

Bone Cross Necklace, Mammoth tusk and black diamonds in White gold £2650

Silver Pendant £565

Gold ring with mammoth tusk and black diamonds £8725

In an interview, when asked if he wore any pieces from Albion Trinketry he said ‘No, I’m not allowed to’. Why? We will never know.

F**K SAKE PETE! It’s ALBION TRINKETRY… TRINK – ET – RY

Oh and here’s a video of Pete talking (I think?!) about the collection…I can just about make out something about putting ideas into motion (I think?!) and then the rest is a mystery to me… gold star to anyone who can send us the translation.