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MOTIF, presented by ‘RAW Hobart’
On Thursday November 17th @6:30pm the Hobart Unibar is holding an event called Motif, presented by the RAW organisation. I am so excited to announce that I have been invited to take part and display my work in my own fashion show on the night. I need your support and sponsorship by selling 20 tickets to the event, so please help me to get there so I can put on a great runway show, and my first ever show for Tasmania! After this event in Hobart, I will have the opportunity to go show my work at other RAW events around the world.
“With artists from all genres in each showcase, RAW events come together to form an amazing one-night circus of creativity.” To view my profile and get tickets, click here!
Thanks to Julia Ralph (Newstead Hair & The Voice Australia) for recommending me, I am excited to collaborate with you to create unique look for our models.
“RAW showcases indie talent in visual art, film, fashion design, music, performance art, hair and makeup artistry, and photography. RAW is a fun and alternative way for artists to showcase both to their local community and the world-at-large. We are not your average art show. We are loud, colorful, creative, and all about our artists. We are RAW. RAW currently operates in over 60 cities across the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK!”
Angel of the Streets…
I spent the month of July in Paris studying with the Arts of Fashion Foundation in their Summer Masterclass Program. Under the guidance of French Couture designer, Stephanie Coudert, myself and the other 9 international students were all able to complete our two body collections ready for the exhibition and photoshoot.
We were extremely fortunate to have our exhibition held in the Decorative Arts Museum, in association with the Louvre Museum. The exhibition was a one night only event in which industry representatives, people we had collaborated with, and some of the student’s family and friends attended. It was a successful night with everyone’s work being well received.
This blog is about my final designs that I created in the very short amount of time over there. If you want to read about my week one experience please click here and if you want to see my ‘One Month in One Minute’ video, click here.
My ‘Angel of the Streets’ collection is inspired by the street culture of Cuba. Skateboarding is a relatively new craze in Cuba as there is no places to actually buy skate equipment in the country at this time. There is a non-for-profit organisation based in America called ‘Skate Cuba’ who is providing boards and tools for people in Cuba. Targeting the younger population, Skate Cuba is helping to make a positive difference in people’s lives. The idea of the collection is to bring a positive and light energy to the skater culture. The clothes are versatile in the way that you could dress them up with a pair of heels, or easily pull of the look with a pair of luxe sneakers.
The loose-fitting, light-weight jacket is a beautiful piece to wear. It creates its own movement and flow in the back whilst still maintaining structure in the front. It is made of a soft cotton with an organza lining to add volume and edged with a unique straw like knitted fabric. The sleeves are held up with straps made of the straw, held in place with a rustic D-ring buckle.
The dress has matching straps to the jacket with the body of it falling softly. There is a clutch bag incorporated into the design that can be held in the hand or attached magnetically to the back of the dress for when you’re skating along. I have never made a bag before so this was a new venture for me.
The insert in the bag is pleated along with the pants and the drape piece on the top. I hand sewed the draped pleat piece onto the individual top patterns before constructing it, this only took 10 hours… The pants were very difficult to create as the accordion pleating does not sit flat. I had to pleat the pleats myself at the top of the pants in order to sew them flat around the waist, which was not easy. I want to thank you to Maison Lognon for creating these beautiful pleats for me to work with.
On the final night we had a farewell and were all presented with certificates of achievement by Stephanie and Nathalie. I am very excited and so honoured to announce that I received the top award of ‘Couture’ which is extremely humbling. Stephanie said that she saw a lot of fight in me and that she and I share something in common…
“Fashion is not just anything to me… it is a matter of life and death.”
I was so humbled by the words and I can’t thank Stephanie enough for all her guidance and for being such a beautiful, calming soul throughout the course. I also have to thank Nathalie and Phillip Doucet from the Arts of Fashion Foundation for accepting me into the course and giving us students the opportunity to see and learn from some amazing companies. Thank you to the interns that worked with us, Clémence Doucet and Paul Gibert; and the beautiful dancers who modelled my clothes, Kelly Riffaud-Laneurit and Naïs Duboscq.
A final congratulations to all the other students; Maria Alejandra Parra Parodi, Kartika Wijaya, Young Woo Kim, Anette Nyseth, Mimmy Begazo, Yanchen Yao, Yanting Yao, Yi Ding and Yiwen Li; I loved getting to know you all and it was an honour to present my work along side yours.
One Month in One Minute…
Paris Trip 2016!
I don’t even know where to start when it comes to the month I have just had so I thought you could see it for yourself with a few 1 second videos of my trip.
If the video above didn’t work please click on this link to download ‘One Month in One Minute‘
Song: Little Talks – Of Monsters and Men
Video: 1SE App
Arts of Fashion Masterclass: Week 1
Wow! What an amazing first week it has been at my Summer Masterclass course in Paris with the Arts of Fashion Foundation!
Monday 4th July:
Today was the first day of the course. I walked 2km to the Louvre from my apartment near the Notre Dame and found the Musée Des Arts Décoratifs where our studio is based. We all got to meet and it was nice to know that some others were nervous like me. It is amazing to see so many cultures in the one place and have everyone bring something different to the experience. I am the baby of the group but there is a mix of ages up to 32. We all shared our initial thoughts on the Cuba theme and the research we had done prior to the commencement of the course.
Our artistic director and mentor, Stephanie Coudert is amazing to work with! She has such a wealth of knowledge and I am excited to see what she will bring to my individual work. Stephanie proposed the idea for everyone to use white for our projects to have a cohesive look when it comes to the exhibition at the end of the month. This goes against my initial thought of bright colours for Cuba but I think it is a great and unexpected theme. Bright colours and Cuba is very predictable.
After lunch we travelled to Aubervillier to visit Maison Lognon, a pleating company and I fell in love! It was such an extraordinary place with the most intricate pleating patterns I have ever seen. This overwhelmed me a bit because there are so many different possibilities and I don’t know what path I should take. I knew before I came here that tis first week would be my hardest, trying to come up with the designs is what I struggle with the most but there is definitely a lot of inspiration here in Paris!
Tuesday 5th July:
We started off today working on our individual projects before seeing the ‘Fashion Forward’ exhibition on display at our working home, the Musée Des Arts Décoratifs. We had an amazing guide take us through the collection of 300 silhouettes from the past 300 years, such an amazing insight into so many iconic fashions.
After lunch we went to see ateliers Maison Lesage and Maison Lemarié to see their world famous embroidery work. Both of these companies work with big couture houses including CHANEL which is just across the way and I could see it through the window. This was all very surreal as Chanel was presenting their Autumn/Winter 2016/17 haute couture runway that same day and we got to see the samples of the collection! Maison Lesage was working on a special edition for another famous company but I can’t say who or what but I got touch it and I loved it!
Wednesday 6th July:
Today we met at the studio at 8am and travelled for two hours by train to Calais in the north of France to visit the Museum of Lace and Fashion. The town of Calais, along with Caudry, produces 70% of the world’s high end couture lace. The machinery was amazing to see working away… The looms require 11,000 threads and takes two months with two people working on it to thread!
After viewing the lace part of the museum we visited the temporary exhibition of Anne Valérie Hash’s works. We were incredibly lucky to have Anne with us for the day, catching the train with us and giving us a private tour of the collection. Her work was so inspiring and definitely worth the long round trip. She even signed one of her books for me!
Thursday 7th July:
We worked in the studio today on our individual projects with Stephanie Coudert and went in two groups to see some fabric stores with Nathalie Doucet (President of the Arts of Fashion Foundation) and Clémence who is interning with the foundation. Fabric stores here are not very well organised and I was certainly overwhelmed with the mess in some. Others said that they weren’t that different to ones in their countries so maybe it’s just an Australian thing!
My designs are coming along and I am starting to figure out how it will come together and what fabrics I will need…
In the evening we went to Palais Galliera to see another exhibition called the Anatomy of a Collection. I was in awe when I saw Rick Owen’s Spring 2016 Human Backpack garment.
Friday 8th July:
Today we went as a group to another fabric store which caters more to couture designers and some of the materials were beautiful. Luckily we are working in white because I think I would be too overwhelmed otherwise. We went back to the studio and I worked hard to finalise my designs (still room to refine) and choose all of my fabrics. I decided to head back out and buy all of my fabrics today so I would not have to come back to it. I had to buy three times the amount I need of the fabrics I will be pleating as it gets smaller once pleated. I am feeling like I am on track but there is a long way to go with less than three weeks until we will be exhibiting!
Saturday 9th July:
I was in the studio from 12pm-6pm today and was able to work on my designs. I created sample of how I will be finishing my seams and hems. I have also started the process of hemming five metres one of my fabrics in preparation for the pleating process. It works best to do the hem prior to pleating so that it sits properly, if this is attempted after the pleating has been done them it is very complicated and will be difficult to make look professional.
Sunday 10th July:
I think I deserve a day off today but there are no days off when there is so little time to complete a collection! I am still working hard on putting together some drawings and information to take to the pleaters before Tuesday. Of course I also wanted to write this blog to keep you all up to date so I hope you enjoy!
Born From A Boombox
Another semester done and dusted now only one more to go. Three words to sum up the past couple of months; hard, fun, and nocturnal. I honestly don’t believe I have ever worked as hard on something as I have on this collection and the supporting assignments.
Despite only clocking up about 13 hours of sleep in this last week, I have enjoyed myself so much creating a collection that was fun and upbeat.
My concept this semester was about being Born From A Boombox (BFABB). It is the idea of being born with a natural talent for hearing and understanding rhythm and beats but creating your own sound. I wanted it to be a bit of fun and a celebration about being confident in yourself.
As a part of my research I looked into the behaviour of sound. Although sound does not emit a colour, the wave frequency is not that different to that of light. ‘The higher the frequency and the shorter the wave means the louder the sound. Therefore the ‘loudest’ sound when looking at the light spectrum would be ultraviolet. I subsequently made violet the feature colour for the collection.
We had to incorporate a form of fabric manipulation into our collection this semester, I chose stitching. The manipulation can be seen on each body, the men’s coat and the women’s dress and bomber jacket. Using free machine mode I created two variations, one more compact and interpretive, and the other being a more realistic representation of a sound wave.
I was asked many times this semester “why thirteen?” Thirteen is my lucky number, but I didn’t just pick it randomly, there is a reason as to why. Superstition states that thirteen is an unlucky number and I have had some unlucky times in my past, but I think it is important to recognise these times and not just pass them aside. Take power from the bad things that have happened in your life and use them for good!
Shout out to my amazing models that made my collection look as cool as it does, Heidi Fettke, Josh D’Monte and Miranda Fish!
I’m going to PARIS…
I’m very excited to announce that I have been accepted for the 2016 ‘Arts of Fashion’ Summer Masterclass to be held in July. The most exciting part of this opportunity is that I will be travelling to Paris and be working day in day out at the Decorative Arts Museum in the Louvre!!!
It is a four week intensive course where I will have two design, make and produce two bodies; along with only 14 other people selected from around the world. The final Thursday of the course will be an exhibition within the Museum of all the student work. Followed by a professional photo shoot on the Friday.
I can’t believe I’ve been given this opportunity and I am so honoured to be chosen. I don’t mind if I don’t make the best thing there but I am going to soak up every bit of information and use this time to learn as much as I can about the industry. It will also be a huge personal learning experience living by myself in another country.
I have to you thank Nathalie from the ‘Arts of Fashion’ foundation for giving me this opportunity, and my mentor Juliana Luna (Whitehouse Institute of Design) for helping me in the application process.
I will be blogging about my experiences whilst I’m in Paris as much as I can whilst maintaining the full on course in July so tune in for my adventures.
The Beauty of Disease…
‘The Beauty of Disease’ collection addresses the mental and emotional struggles of living with cancer through the use of design and photography.
A young friend of mine was recently diagnosed with cancer in her spine. This brought back memories of my father and his brain tumour. I have been wanting to create a conceptual collection based around cancer for a while now and after hearing that more people around me are being affected by this disease I decided to take the project on now.
I wanted to my collection to be a creative, yet literal look at cancer and have the garments appear to breathe life; juxtaposing the softness of the pinks with the hardness for the plastic and sterile silver studs.
As an outsider looking in, I see the impacts that cancer has on people and those close to them. Societies fear cancer, people dread the thought of it affecting someone they love, but the truth is that in Australia, 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with a form of cancer by the age of 85.
The print is designed with repeated triangles containing images of my dad’s angiogram scans.
Every day, 3 young Australians aged 15-25 are diagnosed with cancer. Young people affected by the disease are 6 times more likely to be at high risk of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder than their peers. A lack of support and understanding from friends is one of the biggest challenges faced by young people living with cancer.
I have designed this collection to represent the notion of friends being supportive and helping their loved one get through a tough time.
The plastic dress becomes an armour for the wearer, it gives protection although you can still see through to the disease, but this is not what defines the person. The film depicts the friends creating the plastic dress around the girl to show that they do understand what their friend is going through and they will be there to support.
Cancer is not what defines you, it is the courage and strength to triumph over it that makes you who you are.
Music: “I’m Gonna Love You Through It” – Martina McBride
Copyright: 2011 Republic Nashville Records, licenced to Humphead Records
Thank you to my beautiful models for their time and for the empathy they showed whilst working with me on my project.
Hannah Goddard. Sarah Stuart. Georgia Nadler.
La Peluche AW15 Collection…
Year 2, Semester 1 at the Whitehouse Institute of Design… Our brief for this semester was to design and make a two body collection, incorporating an original print and channelling an Autumn/Winter aesthetic.
I named my collection La Peluche which is French for plush. I took the soft, luscious elements and juxtaposed them with my bold print.
I created my print from an image I took of the internal architecture at the NAB building across the bridge. It is an amazing building and I am often there as that is where my sister works. I then manipulated it on Photoshop before mirroring a section to make the print you now see. I have included the development in my folio. I created the stripe print using small slivers of the image.
I definitely believe that my collection was on trend! The silhouettes of the wide leg pant and having bulk around the neck can be seen from many designers latest collections, especially Chanel’s bar runway for AW15. The over-sized long length coat is also on trend but I took a different spin on it adding the cloak like hood. I wear my dressing gown everyday so I wanted to design one I could wear out of the house.
The scarf and belt I have hand knitted myself from unspun merino wool roving that is untreated and even has small husks entwined. I searched for all different products that I could use for this and I found this gave me the bulky look I was going for whilst still being cushiony and comfortable for the wearer.
Thank you to my beautiful models Heidi Fettke and Lucille Croft and thanks also go out to the lovely Chloe Elizabeth for the photographs.
Remember My Name…
It feels so amazing! I am being recognised for my latest work left, right and centre!!!
My AW15 collection was received very well at my panel assessment last week, and it has been a whirlwind since then. In the panel, Leanne Whitehouse, founder of the Whitehouse Institute of Design was so impressed that she took some photos and instantly posted them to the university’s instagram!
The full length image has been shared numerous times since, even by my old school Scotch Oakburn College and the APEX Australian Teenage Fashion Awards group!
My creations were then involved in a professional photoshoot by the Whitehouse on Monday and will possibly be used in upcoming promotions for the university. My collection is also going to be featured at Melbourne Whitehouse’s Open Day this Friday and Saturday (19 & 20 June) in the runway show at 12:30pm. It will be great to have as much support as possible so come along if you are free.
I just want to thank all those people out there who believe in me… thank you for helping my dreams come true!
More photos from my AW15 collection to come and also the inspiration and concept behind the whole thing.