Lets go sailing...

This dress was designed for my Shape and Structure project. We were not allowed to find inspiration from anything organic it had to be man made. So I decided to look at Ships with sails as I wanted the garment to have a slight fluidity to it that would be difficult to achieve if my influence had been something with more structure. Apart from the designing I did'nt really enjoy this project though I can't forget the knitting which I loved.

Ethical Fashion...

Should all fashion be ethically produced?
There are always people fighting for and against this question. On one hand there is the ethical and moral fight and on the other the economical. There are many concerns about the exploitative working conditions for people who make cheap clothing for the high street. Adult and child workers are often under paid and abused, the cheap high street clothing means that only a tiny amount of the money goes to the people who make them. Alot of textiles that are produced in these factories are treated with toxic chemicals, they damage the environment and can be transfered to the skin. These unethical practices not only affect the people who make the garments but also the imediate environment. Growing cotton has become unsustainable because of the damage it as done to the Aral Sea in Central Asia, it has shrunk to 15% of it's former volume because of the amount of water needed to produce and dye cotton. Growing cotton uses 22.5% of the world's insceticides and 10% of the world's pesticides. These chemicals are harmful to the world.
Animals are also produced unethically, for their fur and skin. Designers such as Stella McCartney do not use Fur or leather in their designs. In an advert for the animal rights organisation PETA, she said: 'we address  ethical or ecological questions in every other part of our lives except fashion. Mind-sets are changing, though, which is encouraging.'
In an ideal world all fashion would be ethically produced, however for now we have to resign ourselves to the fact that it's not an ideal world but it's changing. People are fighting for a fairer world and slowly wining.

Thomas Heatherwick...

My very favourite artist/designer is Thomas Heatherwick. He creates the most beautiful sculptures including Bleigiessen, I have admired this sculpture for many years. It is created using thousands of glass beads suspended on wire. It is around 5 storeys high and you can just about see it from the street.

I have never managed to view it inside, unfortunately it is situated in an office building and you can only visit on the first friday of the month. He also created the B of the Bang which was designed as a monument to the 2002 Olympic Games. Unfortunately before its unveiling in 2006 a tip of one of the spikes fell to the ground. The name for the sculpture came from the phrase coined by Linford Christie. His studio, Heatherwick studio was established in 1994 to create exciting projects. http://www.heatherwick.com/

Little Green Dress...

For my last project at college I had to create a dress based on Second World War fashion and the 'Make do and mend' theme. I had to imagine I was a woman during World War 2 who had to create a dress for a tea dance. So I used patchwork and a beautiful green floral fabric.

This is my finished dress. I am more or less happy with it, appart from a couple of minor mistakes here and there. This photo was taken on a shoot in college, it was so much fun and such fantastic experience.

My mock final major project...

 Last year I designed and created this dress for my mock final major project. As we could choose our own brief I decided to design costumes for three of the characters who appear in the Shakespeare play The Tempest. The three characters feature in one scene, however they derive from ancient greek mythology. Juno was the Queen of the Gods, she was married to Zeus and she rode in a chariot flanked by peacocks. Ceres, the goddess of the harvest and Iris the messenger was the goddess of the rainbow, this character is who the above dress was designed for. I was very pleased with the outcome of the dress until I added colour. As I am sure you can tell I painted it with Fabric paints however it dried much quicker than I expected it to and it would not blend together. The wings on the shoulders were made using water soluble fabric onto which I appliqued red material using lots and lots of machine stitch. This gave the wings a nice firm structure and I could mold them to a certain extent.