3.1 mood board

Ali's feedback:
The images put together are nice - but the fabric and color story are too big and over powering the mood board. Make them small and complimenting to the rest of the composition otherwise show them on an all together separate board. Also the images suggest some nice gray and lighter shades much more contemporary and elegant then your primary tones. 

My reponse:

I'm just struggling with the whole 6 fabrics thing. I edited the gray out because as is I could only get down to 9 fabrics. So I chose the colors that were in the plaid. I would love to have gray in there but is that too much? I'm not wiling to get rid of the plaid, so if i add a couple grays I'm up to 7-8 colors. I mean you saw my original fabricsplosion.

I'm I misinterpreting something or can i just disregard the 6 things rule?

I made some stained glass windows that broke that rule. My prof (who I butted heads with at every turn) said I could only use 5 colors of glass per window design, so for my thesis show I sorted and organized all the scrap glass in the studio and made two quilt inspired windows and used some of every single color.

So I know that limiting a palette is important, but with the right training and discipline one can break the rule of thumb and still be successful!
I was REALLY missing the gray when designing though, so with your ok I'll put it back in and change the color relationship in almost all the looks. I would like it to be mostly gray and black with 2 color accent on each look.

what the big boys are buying

Retailers Praise New York Glamour

This article listed the top shows, in and out trends as thought by the top global retailers including Nordstrom, Barneys, Bergdorfs, Lane Crawford and Harvey Nichols. I think it was fun to read because it's exciting to compare the tastes of these big wigs. Essentially the fashion magazine editors and high end retailers select what is going to be accessible to and coveted by the masses, and therefore what trends will wax and wane.

I really enjoyed the glamor of this fall season. The sleekness and sophistication are things I hope to achieve in the looks I'll be creating this semester. Glamor with an urban edge, or as Ed Burstell, managing director, Liberty said "Street-inspired luxe."

is eco the best option?

In reference to: No Subject posted by Lauren Edgecombe

Colombia has developed a cotton/plastic blend fabric and is selling it as EcoDenim.  The Colombian textile industry has suffered in recent years due to illegal imports from China and South Korea, the appreciation of the peso, increased denim competition from Turkey and Central America, and a bitter fall out with Venezuela.  All these combined have resulted in a 42% downturn in Colombian exports. 

Two of Colombia's leading manufacturers: thread maker Enka and fabrics weaver Fabricato, have joined forces to create EcoDenim.  Fabricato's president states, "People don’t just like the product, they like what it does, which is recycle these (plastic) bottles that otherwise would take 100 years to degrade."  The fabric costs 10 percent more to produce than all-cotton denim but that affords higher margins from environmentally conscious consumers.

Kudos to these two companies for finding a way to recycle our trash into a comfortable and wearable material.  I'm torn on how "environmentally conscious" the product truly is though.  While a pair of these jeans might actually last forever since they aren't 100% cotton (which is biodegradable), consumers will probably still want to buy a new pair of jeans at some point.  In the end you still have tons of plastic waste that will take 100 years to degrade.  They're just no longer plastic bottles, now you have plastic jeans.

Chris Kraul.  "Colombia Counts on Recylced Denim for Revival."  WWDStyle issue 02/15/11.  http://www.wwd.com/markets-news/colombia-counts-on-recycled-denim-for-revival-3490047

I found this to be an interesting article, as well.
My concern was, who wants to wear plastic pants?
I personally started seeking out "green" products back in the late 90's and while a lot of great steps have been made to create sustainable healthy and even recycled products, there's a lot of greenwashing and gimmicks and fad chasing going on. I'm thinking most earth conscious consumers are not going to want even food grade plastic rubbing on their skin all day, and absolutely will not want their kids wearing it. I work in an organic baby store and we sell all organic cotton, soy, bamboo, and hemp clothing. Polyester and other plastic based fabrics have gone the way of the 8-track, as far as eco-conscious consumers go and so who are they marketing these jeans to.The average joe still doesn't care (although if you work the never breaks down angle some boomers may buy into it- and the tight-fisted usually aren't too worried about having the cutting edge styles).

If they want to make a real difference they should create a system to donate all that recycled fabric to people living below the poverty line, where long lasting clothing makes a bigger impact. Educated people with a lot of money are just not going to choose EcoDenim jeans. There are too many higher quality and natural fabrics on the market. And like Lauren said, they will want new looks long before the jeans wear out.

Before we go patting anyone on the back, how about chilling out on the plastic bottle production and consumption and coming up with a way to cut down on plastic production and consumption altogether... This jeans effort feels a whole lot like "too little, too late", and not really addressing the core of the problem... Oh capitalism.....

2_2 story

Utimately the story is a strange juxtaposition of wild uninhibited rawness mixed with very tailored clean traditional elements. Richmond is so full of revolutionary and civil war history. The plan is that I'm going to get color schemes and interesting shape relationships from the paintings, but I want everything to be be perfectly "constructed". I don't like messy looking clothes, unfinished edges, contrived deconstruction, etc. I want to create looks for various occasions. Out of 6 looks I'll maybe do 2 dresses, and the rest separates. Most of the collection will be black, mixing textures, but then the prints are very bold so the black will be broken up. I try to avoid all black, but too many colors/prints start feeling too young.


 

Maxime Simoens

 Maxime Simoens posted by Kimetha King

              

This is absolutely gorgeous! I wonder if he masked the white or used opaque white over the wash. Lovely effect! Thanks for sharing, Kimetha!

week 2 discussion

I would like to dicuss the most recent article on wwd.com containing the query "haute couture," titiled, "Dior Expands Hong Kong Flagship." What I find interesting about this article is the idea that Dior is not a quaint high end boutique; Dior is a fashion power house.  It's kind of like a big box store in a way, with everything, clothes for ladies and gents and jewels, all under one roof. It does make for a more convenient and destination shopping experience, including the VIP room. I also like the quote from Sidney Toledano, "Luxury is space." If you think about it, it makes sense. Rich people have the most land, the biggest homes, convenient access to jet set the whole globe. It makes sense the high end retailers would want their stores to have plenty of room to move around and see everything. They are as much galleries of works of art as a retail stores. This article was good food for thought in terms of thinking of haute couture not just as an artistic trade revolving around clothing, but rather an entire lifestyle of luxury, cutting edge, and exclusivity.

1.1 Report on Haute Couture Fashion

Visit the website www.fashion-era.com and other web- or print-based resources and research about haute couture, its history and development, its influence on fashion, and the major names involved in it. Write a one-page report on what you think is the role of couture within the fashion industry. What is the relevance of haute couture to our society over time, especially today? What are the specific aesthetics of haute couture that differentiate it from ready-to-wear designers? And what does the future hold for haute couture? 

Couture? Gesundheit!

My favorite thing about haute couture is it’s not bound by restraints of practicality and versatility. People know the garments are for special and fancy and over-the-top-events, and there, stopping the show is the goal rather than selling the most.

Haute couture still creates and overall tone for the season, even though many ready to wear collections come out before couture, HC can be a fabulous snippet of what’s out there. Then RTW and medium to low-end designers and the common people try to emulate the qualities of the hc collections that can be translated to every day looks.

Since couture is all about luxury, exclusivity, and being the elite, the finest fabrics must be purchased to make the garments. This seems like a huge investment because the designs are not guaranteed to be sold, especially in this economic climate. So the fashion houses need to have a certain amount of projected sales (or savings) to even think about creating couture collections.

Most fashion houses can’t take that kind of financial risk and in turn the whole industry is suffering. Couture used to be a place designers could really take chances, since they were only looking for that one perfect client for the dress, rather than a whole target market. Those chances are what moved fashion along. Granted, maybe some of that power has been handed down to the RTW designers, but they are still being held to a notion of wearability and sales to a broader audience. There’s not as much space to be flamboyant and dramatic.

I think the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture should do a stimulus endeavor. The committee was assembled in the first place to protect the creative quest of the haute couture designer, but back then there was less distance between social  classes and qualities of materials. It’s time for an evolution. Perhaps the criteria could be reevaluated. Maybe lowering the required volume of annual looks would give smaller fashion houses a chance to show haute couture designs. And less people are buying couture, and there is no rule on how much the garments have to sell for, perhaps young designers would rather their couture be seen by the masses than to sell each piece for  “a Harvard education”[3]. At this point they don't even have the opportunity to make the clothes that would attracted high end buyers. This catch 22 needs to stop or haute couture will probably end altogether, and that would just be sad.

1. Blackman, Cally. 100 Years of Fashion Illustration. London: Laurence King, 2007. Print.
2. Davies, Hywel. Fashion Designers’ Sketchbooks. London: Laurence King, 2010. Print.
3. Horyn, Cathy. "Full Spectrum, Less Spectacle." Fashion & Style. New York Times, 07 July 2010.  Web. 7 Feb. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/fashion/08COUTURE.html>.
4. Rosa, Joseph. Glamour: Fashion, Industrial Design, Architecture. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2004. Print.