COMING SOON - the Fleet Store

in 2010, the QUT double degree (fashion + business) students from all years teamed up to produce and contribute to the Fleet Store - a pop-up store located in the Wintergarden complex in the Brisbane CBD.
it will return again in August / September of this year, so keep your eyes peeled !
i've been told it will pop up in the QUT Gardens Point campus this time, and while i was a little apprehensive at first, we have been convinced that the space is fantastic.

i'm hoping that i can find some source of income in the near future to be able to sell some of my own designs, but in the very least, i will be part of a Buying mentorship program with another girl as well as a final year student at the helm.

it's a great platform for emerging designers to gain their first legitimate stockist, and to gain an insight into the workings of a small retail project - from all points of view.

get excited Brisbane fashion aficionados and enthusiasts !

i will be keeping you updated here until its launch :)

the masses are asses

i'll be posting more information and documents regarding a shirt-based sister assignment soon, but today was my skirt presentation / pitch:




it leaves a lot to be desired - particularly in details you can see in the back shot above. but i suppose, being my first garment, it could also have been a lot worse.
+ here are some by others in my course:

my kingdom for decipherable syntax

'today Glenrowan is a one-street town with a couple of pubs, a scattering of houses and a short strip of enterprises dedicated to extracting a little cash from the [Ned] Kelly legend. on this hot summer’s day there were perhaps a dozen visitors in town, including Alan, Carmel and me. the biggest of the commercial establishments, a place called Ned Kelly’s Last Stand, was covered in painted signs of a semi-professional quality. ‘this is not a place for whimps,’ said one, promisingly. another added: ‘it is absolutely absurd that after allowing yourself 10 to 20 minutes to take photos, walk up and down the street and buy some souvenirs and then have the audacity to tell your friends – ‘don’t go to Glenrowan, for there is nothing to see.’
the impression one derived from further study was that Ned Kelly’s Last Stand contained some kind of animatronic show. Alan, Carmel and i exchanged happy looks and knew that this was a place for us.'
– p236, Bill Bryson – Down Under


1, 1

2, 2

3, 3

4, 4

5, 5

6, 6

7, 7
+ wah, i'm a little too lazy to re-size this..sad:

8, 8

'something cracks every moment because everything cracks one day, an egg, armour, a book’s spine.
the human spine may be the only exception, though much depends on pressure, time and place. such cases are therefore rare. hardly any. because there are so many pressures, places and times around.
cracks are normally stuck together.
it is not on record that anyone would want to go about cracked, not even the whip-crackers.
cracks are mended with wax, paraffin, soldered, bandaged. or talked out of existence. this most of all.
but a mended egg is no longer an egg, soldered armour is no longer armour, a bandaged heel is an Achilles heel and a man talked out of existence is not the man he was, rather the Achilles heel of others.
worst of all is when hundreds of mended eggs pass themselves off as best eggs and hundreds of suits of soldered armour as true armour, thousands of cracked people as monoliths.
then it’s all one huge crack.
all we can do in the world of cracks is now and then to call out, 'Mr Director, mind your step on the stairs, you have a crack, sir, if i may say so'.
that’s all. afterwards there’s only more cracking.'
- Brief Thought on Cracks, Miroslav Holub

mantastic

'at the CFDA Awards last June, a decade's worth of Swarovski Award winners joined Diane von Furstenberg and Nadja Swarovski on stage. the prizes recognise emerging talent in womenswear, menswear, and accessories, and are voted on by members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, along with a broad cross section of the fashion community that includes leading retailers, journalists, and stylists. a quick count tallied up 18 men and three women at the podium. not every winning designer from the last ten years was present, but further research didn't improve the numbers much. adjusting for design duos and groups, slightly more than a quarter of the winners have been female. the stats are similar for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. the Fund's selection committee, which brings together highly respected men and women from several different fashion fields, has given its top award and accompanying six-figure prize to female designers—Doo-Ri Chung and Sophie Théallet—twice in its eight-year history.

"we call it the lucky boys' club," said designer Victoria Bartlett, remembering the sea of tuxedos on stage at the CFDA Awards that night. luck, to be sure, isn't the whole story. but considering that 85 percent or so of graduates at Parsons The New School for Design, arguably the number one fashion design school in America, are women, a question begs asking: is it easier to succeed in New York fashion as a man?

of course, New York has plenty of driven, powerful women designers—in addition to CFDA president von Furstenberg, there's Carolina Herrera, Donna Karan, and Vera Wang. Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, at the other end of the age spectrum, turned The Row into one of American fashion's most talked-about brands by the time they were 25, but they had the advantage of being famous since birth and millionaires to boot. (they've been nominated for this year's Designer of the Year Award.)

aside from the designing sisters, New York's current under-30 success stories belong to men: Alexander Wang, Jason Wu, Joseph Altuzarra. why the shortage of female counterparts?

"given that fashion, unlike film and art, is run by women, you'd think it'd be the one creative industry that champions women, but for some reason, most of the prominent artists are men," says Sophie Buhai, who launched Vena Cava with Lisa Mayock in 2004, shortly after they graduated from Parsons. earlier this month, after not producing their Spring 2012 collection, they announced a new partnership with Li & Fung, the trading company behind the Rachel Zoe collection, to generate capital for brand expansion. "we see a lot of women who don't get as much attention as the male designers who are adored by editors," continues Mayock.

let's call the phenomenon the editor/designer dating game. the launch parties, the magazine dinners, and the pairing up with celebrities at charity galas (the last of which is almost strictly the bastion of male designers) can keep a fashion boldfacer out five nights a week, and on BFA.com and Patrick McMullan every morning. a gorgeous actress, the prevailing logic goes, is put into further relief by a tuxedoed designer. then, of course, for female designers, there's the issue of familial obligations. "there was a point in my life, i had to stop and think, do i want to have children or do i want to do this?" says Norma Kamali. "i didn't think i'd have healthy kids if i had kids and had a business."

Daryl Kerrigan, who shot to fame in the mid-nineties on her butt-uplifting skinny pants, believes that her own young children put her out of the running for the Celine job she was up for. "Tom [Ford] was in charge of Gucci at the time," she says, explaining that she believes the thinking was: "are we going to share her with her kids, or are we going to hire this man who'll be able to go out every night?" the job went to Michael Kors in 1997.

fast-forward to March 2012, when an eight-months-pregnant Phoebe Philo slashed her Celine show invite list—to howls from magazine editors and cheers from her designer peers. "the pinnacle of success shouldn't be to have a business like a guy," says Maria Cornejo. "in my way of thinking, it's not that guys are better or worse; it's that women have a different way of working, a different business model. bless Phoebe. she's saying, you know what, i'm having a kid and that takes priority." still, Philo's ability to scale back for a season may be less a sign of general progress than of the clout she's earned with her incredible success at the label.

in addition to the after-hours courting match, the clothes that designers make also count for a lot when it comes to press coverage. "when you look at clothes that women design, it's usually things they'll wear. it's about the feel, the fit, comfort," says Victoria Bartlett. "for a male designer, it's more visual. take McQueen, it was like theater. it's incredible visually, not just for his shows, but for press, for editorial."

part of the story seems to be that male designers strive for art while female designers strive for humanity, and this difference influences, even defines, the success they achieve. Rodarte's Kate and Laura Mulleavy are the exception that proves the rule. from the beginning, the designing sisters, now 33 and 31, were championed for their imagination and creativity. the flip side is that their designs have often been criticised for lacking a sense of realism or practicality, areas in which women designers supposedly excel.

beyond accolades and awards, there's another important measure of success: dollar signs. Ohne Titel's Flora Gill points out that in the cases of Alexander Wang and Joseph Altuzarra, at least, "their families are huge parts of their business, and you can't find a better investor than a mom or dad." financial backing, she continues, "makes a huge difference, more than being a man or being a woman."

the good news here, says Daniella Vitale, the chief women's merchant at Barneys, is that a designer's gender is immaterial to the store's customers. "they respond to the design, quality, fit, and aesthetic," she says. "it's not gender-specific." Ikram Goldman, the Chicago retailer, agrees. "i love Ohne Titel, i love Sophie Theallet. Erin [Beatty] from Suno is so hip," Goldman says. "are they getting the press? maybe not, but they sell, they sell beautifully."

still, says designer Tess Giberson, "more press recognition directly affects the power of a brand. people buy a name they recognise more."'
- 'Where are the Women?', Nicole Phelps for Style.com

the kind of happy that people write embarrassing songs about

i've been fortunate enough to have some really really inspiring people enter my life from afar in the last few days. i had thought, before hearing their stories, that i had been overwhelmingly happy in my life and my relationship/s and the content of my university course right now.. but i have just been filled with so much inspiration to do more and to be more that i know i have the potential to be much much happier even - i'm not living as much as i could be.

i'm going to add subheadings to this whopper, so that you can choose whether or not to read sections / any of it :)

THURSDAY NIGHT - WESTFIELD STYLIST'S APPRENTICE COMPETITION

- i attended the Stylist's Apprentice competition
- at a funny little 'warehouse' location in Westfield Garden City shopping centre
- a bundle of fun, great chats with friends and my brilliant teaching staff
- accidentally nibbled on sushi and cupcakes complimentary only to the VIP attendees (not us)
- other people i would have loved to chat to (and have done so adoringly over email and other forms of social media for many months - if not years in one case - and so should have been 200% confident) but i got a case of the rachel shy's. zzzzzzzzzz

FRIDAY NIGHT - FASHION SUSTAINABILITY TALKS - X&Y BAR

- night of talks re: sustainability in fashion, as hosted by Undressed Brisbane
- tiny entry fee of $5, leather + vegan bows / bow-ties handed out at the door
- the first speaker was Alice Payne, who i've been fortunate enough to have for a guest lecturer + tutor
- she brushed over some of the main courses of action currently being taken in and outside of the industry to help to sustain resources and not pollute the earth
- as well as the issues at the helm of the current eco-attack
- a real focus on what isn't being handled so well + consumers can (and should) be the ones making one of the biggest differences through purchasing / recycling decisions
- i liked that notion - that it shouldn't all be left in the hands of the manufacturers and designers
- an analogy that if the entire history of man on earth over the last 70,000 or so years was compressed into a 1 hour feature film, only the last minute would involve man cultivating and harvesting crops, while only the last second would cover the period of industrialisation - from inventions such as the steam train, onward
- fascinating to think of the damage that has been caused in such a 'tiny' amount of time..

- next, an eco-fashion model, Amanda Rootsey spoke
- she has been modelling for ~ 10 years
- she was in Italy for work a couple of years ago when her agent noticed a lump on her neck, it was Hodgkin's Disease - a cancer
- she had had a few fleeting moments beforehand in her work when she had worn a fur, for example, and had felt a little squeamish by the idea but quickly made the idea leave her mind - largely out of convenience, as we do
- she researched her cancer
- a number of properties in dairy and animal products often quicken the onset of certain cancers. while Australian dairy products are regulated for this property, European dairy products are not. she had just been over there for a fairly long period, eating and drinking, particularly products such as the local cheeses
- she found that animal products, such as leather, in clothing are meant to perish but we treat them with so much to preserve the colour and the texture and etc, that these chemicals often enter the skin when they are being worn
- her entire attitude to her work and eating habits were turned around
- she moved to Byron Bay with her partner and lived in a shipping container with minimal possessions, some water tanks, a vegetable patch and a solar panel for survival. this further instilled in her the idea that the earth and its resources are incredibly precious.
- she also found out that the livestock industry is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases (?) - even more so than any of the world's transportation industries and outputs combined
- she now works purely with brands and publications that support similar vegan views

i'm sure i've missed or mis-quoted several major parts of that story..but hopefully you get the gist..

MONDAY NIGHT - FASHION ILLUSTRATION LECTURER LIFE ACHIEVEMENTS

tonight, my lecturer and tutor for my current fashion illustration subject had about 20 minutes left over before class officially ended and so asked if we wanted to listen to her autobiography. that sounds a little self-absorbed, but the humour of the situation was not lost as she mentioned that she only has it in a powerpoint presentation as it was required for her doctorate / appointment of lecturer at QUT / i can't really remember but it was academia-related.. (?)

- Deborah Fisher grew up on a property with the closest 'neighbours' 75 miles away
- played with barbies as her 'friends' and would steal her mum's visiting friends' lace handkerchiefs to cut up and make into dresses for her dolls
- she attended primary school for the air - via radio transmission, though moved to a property near the Gold Coast in highschool in order to avoid the prospect of boarding school.
(in grade 10, she was part of a play with Keith Urban who was then in grade 8 - she was his first kiss hehehe)
- she had an interest in drama and intended to pursue it after school until her drama teacher / production person (?) ironically broke their leg (..'break a leg'..) and Deborah volunteered to make the costumes
- she fell in love with the world of costume design and studied fashion at the Queensland College of Arts (i think)
- in the 80s, the college was brimming with creative types with interdisciplinary interests and new ideas
- up and coming bands such as the Triffins, the Go-Betweens and Hunters and Collectors hung around playing music between classes
- she was the only one in her class to secure a job straight out of graduation, and her desk was hidden behind racks of bridal and 'mother of the bride' clothing. she was told to design uniforms for the new Sheraton Hotel that was arriving in Brisbane.
- she ran into a friend and they launced a fashion label together - 2D Designs
- they went into the venture with only $500 between them, and while they won a number of design awards, could not financially keep up
- Deborah decided to go to New York alone at 21 years old to gain more business insight to help the label
- she went to study merchandising and management (?) at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, one of the most highly regarded Ivy League creative institutions
- during her degree, there was a day trip (?) led by a woman (who's name escapes me), a major, major tastemaker at the time (think the Devil Wears Prada, though within the Buying / Retail world)
- following the tour, Deborah asked to spend a day with the woman. the next day she did just that and sat in on a meeting with Ralph Lauren pre-fashion week
- the woman oohed and ahhed, explained what she did and did not like and what would sell. the board asked Deborah of her opinion, and she blurted out that she hated the khaki colour. the room was silent and she said that she could have thrown up.. until one of the board members finally exclaimed that she had also thought that all along
- she was then offered an assistant position (unpaid due to her student visa), working full time for six months as well as studying and still working at the cafe..doing anything and everything that was asked of her.
- after six months, she graduated and was awarded a $50,000 cheque by the company as a 'graduation present' and offered the woman's job as she was being promoted
- she travelled a great deal with the job and had millions of dollars worth of responsibility - and all at 23 years old
- she was poached twice after then, once for a private consulting firm and another time for Liz Claiborne designs. she lived the good life.
- she married and had kids. one (presumably, her first?) son was not reaching the regular milestones and at a checkup it was found that he had Cerebral Palsy + Autism. this was extremely humbling for her, as was the realisation that all of the carers that she came across were amazing life-savers.
- she had a big realisation that her job was actually entirely shallow - she was, after all, just making frivolous frocks.
- a doctor mentioned that she had recently gone into surgery to separate two twins at the brain. upon finding out that Deborah worked for Liz Claiborne, she told the story that after that surgery, she had gone home and out to dinner with her husband who had mentioned that she looked beautiful in her Liz Claiborne dress. she said that if Deborah is able to make someone feel beautiful and loved and womanly, then her job is just as important as the doctor's was.
- Deborah worked on a job in Romania, after the Berlin wall came down. a rural factory had only made white singlets for years during the war for the soldiers, and she went there to show them how to instead make tee-shirts, in order to be able to sell to America and sustain themselves.
- she showed them how to add sleeves, collars and pockets to the singlets. she ate 3 Wiener schnitzels a day for meals, for months (hehe).
- toward the end of the project, she was woken to a knock on the door in the early hours of the morning, and expecting the worst, was led to the front doors of the factory. she saw families and grandparents (and donkeys!) lining the streets along the way, and they were all singing their national anthem. no-one could speak English, but they had realised that she had opened doors for them to be able to trade and hold their own internationally - she had literally saved the village. she said it was the proudest moment of her life.
- another time, in a joint venture with the United Nations, she travelled to Mexico. there was an old weaving technique that was dying out as there were only a handful of 80 year old women left who knew and were practicing the art.
- amongst other consultants, Deborah was brought in to 'pimp it out' and get the youth to see the appeal of the cultural tradition. the village is now self-sustained and around 200 people are onboard - most under the age of 30.
- still working in the fast-paced fashion world in New York, she came across a Mexican taxi driver one night when she was tired and irritable. he said, 'hey lady, did you forget to choose happiness?' (she still finishes every email and QUT Blackboard announcement with 'choose happiness').
- she decided to come home and learn to be a mum. she volunteered in the school tuckshop, covered books in the library and became a soccer mum.
- today, she takes part in a truckload of charities and community events, such as one that she runs alongside Carlos Santana and his wife for Californian kids (i think ?), and a Queensland folk organisation involved in things like the opening and closing of Woodford Folk Festival.
- she is now also teaching as a way of giving back, at institutions such as TAFE and QUT
- she practices buddhism and kung-fu

i mean....!!

i enjoy the way, commas are used just because he, decides he wanted to put one somewhere

just when i think that colour isn't my main inspiration point, someone like the divine Heidi Middleton comes along and proves me wrong..

my name is Labelfeld, not Lagerfeld

'isn’t it ironic that the same people who preach equality are the ones who are the most discriminatory? discrimination to those of different colours or sexualities is no different than discrimination to those of different incomes. and, similarly, discrimination of the poor is equally as wrong as discrimination of the rich. how does anyone expect to thwart prejudice when the current perception of equality is clearly skewed? and why it assumed that one income bracket works any less than another social bracket?
certainly some inherit wealth but most have worked to earn that wealth (and, without this bracket, the economy would be static, for it is the high income bracket that provides jobs)– and yet society determines this earned success be penalised.
no doubt, the atmosphere between classes is toxic. it seems those pushing for class inequality should look to the civil rights movement, for, in many ways, the situations are synonymous, but while one was a move to equality, the latter is a move to victimise, to use a social class as a scapegoat.'
- unknown tumblr account

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a handful of some of the cool skirt designs by other people in my class who happened to be presenting their sample for review in the same timeslot as me yesterday:




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'today, fashion creatives just don’t seem to be pulling from these kinds of personal stories, neither at the shows nor in the pages of magazines. collections are hailed for having great 'pieces,' but if this becomes the focus, it leaves the rest of fashion’s creative ecosystem starving and unbalanced.

magazines, like great absurdist theater, whether operatic or minimalist, tell only vague stories, made from carefully art directed still images that leave a lot of blanks for the reader to fill in. who didn’t want to run off to Greece after seeing Bob Richardson’s romantically gorgeous editorial in French Vogue, a tear running down the girl’s tanned face as she ends her summer romance in the final spread of the editorial? this is what makes storytelling so important. it allows us to fool ourselves into believing that if we purchase the following list of items, or wear our hair a certain way, we too would be jetting off to Greece in no time. and if we just head over to Bergdorf’s, we too can have that life.

why did all this start to change?
maybe it was because of the rise of celebrity in fashion. or the focus on ‘behind the scenes.’ or the practice of referencing upon referencing. maybe it was the focus publishers put on cross-marketing film and record releases. or perhaps it was their relationships with merchants, because, the truth is, for the most part, we now take pictures of clothing in order to optimise merchandising.
it was not so long ago that fashion ejoyed a rich period of more personal storytelling, starring creative forces like Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Yohji Yamamoto, Hussein Chalayan, Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang – and boy did they put on a show! all of these designers found tremendous inspiration in their own life stories. then the teams that make up the rest of the ecosystem – from hair and makeup artists to shoemakers, jewellers, set designers and music producers – all contributed to the ‘mise en scene.’ there seemed to be a balance then, between the vagueness that allowed us to dream and the more informational ‘where can i get that?’ aspect of it all.

while watching The September Issue, the documentary about the making of American Vogue’s September 2007 issue, at first i was honestly perplexed by Grace Coddington’s insistence that Galliano’s costume drama collection was her focus for the season. with all due respect to Mr. Galliano (for whom i do have a great deal of respect), it hardly seemed appropriate that in 2007, he would be the key reference point for the creative director of American Vogue considering the radical change we have seen in the way designers, editors, and photographers work today.'
- Why Do We Take Pictures of Clothes?, Debra Scherer, Business of Fashion blog

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things that we say today which we owe to Shakespeare:
'knock knock! who’s there?'
‘heart of gold’
‘set your teeth on edge’
‘good riddance’
‘fight fire with fire’
‘faint hearted’
‘so-so’
‘seen better days’
‘too much of a good thing’
‘send him packing’
‘wear your heart on your sleeve’
‘laughing stock’
‘not slept one wink’
‘come what may’
‘for goodness sake’
‘the game is up’
‘what’s done is done’
‘full circle’
‘bated breath’
‘green eyed monster’
‘vanish into thin air’
‘be all / end all’
‘out of the jaws of death’
‘death as a doornail’
‘in a pickle’
‘brave new world’
‘makes your hair stand on end’
‘naked truth’
‘break the ice’
‘the world is my oyster’
‘wild goose chase’
‘off with his head’
‘love is blind’
‘a piece of work’
‘heart of hearts’
‘a sorry sight’
‘lie low’

all the raj

the blast from the past 'jelly' shoe has been on my mental to-do list for years now, but for some reason they were never anything that i actively pursued other than the occasional ebay search and eventual disappoint at the range at hand. recently, Ivania over at the Love Aesthetics blog re-sparked my desire and even included a little link to a super duper cheap pair over at Topshop..
they took a little longer to arrive than estimated, but i am now the proud owner of a pair of transparent / glitter jellies, and i couldn't be happier !
hopefully i can find ways to style them in the colder months.. i'm not sure if i can wait until summer to wear them.



some other items on my constant ebay watch list include:
- more / different sized donut hair bun holder / creators (my new favourite 5 minute hairstyle)
- bandeaus that extend down to just above the belly button - for layering (inspired by a friend)..i have a million in different colours with straps that i live in, especially in summer, and i can't believe i had never considered strapless versions
- creepers..they have finally crept into my 'like' radar, though not necessarily of the standard black gothique variety (some people can pull them off - just not so sure if i would feel 100% comfortable in them), perhaps more of just a lace-up or sandle flatform
- velvet..i'm having such a huge velvet moment for some reason
- forehead necklace/s..think Isabel Lucas at the Met Gala - can anyone help me out with what they are actually called ?
- beanies..of the basic black and slouchy Olsen variety
- over the knee + Happy socks
- some pairs of fun + inexpensive sunglasses
- loooooooong cardigans - ie Oscar PR Girl's floor-length number
- circle skirts (i know i know, i should just DIY)
etc etc etc

some more progress on my skirt creation..it's coming along okay but still a little shapeles in the bottom half. the sample is due on Tuesday..