some girls have all the luxe

10 Ways Project Runway (US edition) changed the fashion industry:

1. before Project Runway there was a perception that fashion was an insider’s industry, and would never work on television.
the Project Runway team had a vision for the show and were undaunted. Executive Producer Desiree Gruber: 'we knew how exciting it was. if you’re in fashion you know the drama that takes place to get things made. when you see a runway show it seems like the designer decided these things months ago. behind the scenes people in the industry know they might have changed their minds the night before and stuff didn’t arrive in time. they didn’t have enough leather to make a long skirt so they sent the models out in minis. there is a lot of last-minute preparation that has the power to change the entire tone of a show.'
   2. Project Runway inspired thousands of kids to go to design school.
Producer Eli Holzman: 'a few years after Project Runway premiered i called the dean at Parsons to ask whether the show was having a positive impact on them. i was shocked by her answer. she told me their enrollment had practically doubled, and that, industry-wide, design programs had seen a huge influx of new students.'
 3. Project Runway taught people what designers do, and that it isn’t easy.
Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman: 'people get a glimpse of all the hard work, inspiration, and dedication it takes to create a garment, and that really helps to show that fashion is an art form that should be appreciated.'
 4. before Project Runway the average person had never heard of Fashion Week.
one of the show’s best rewards is the chance to show at New York Fashion Week. yet, before Project Runway brought it into people’s living rooms, most people didn’t even know it existed!
5. Project Runway is one of the only mainstream shows with a cast made up of a large percentage of openly gay people.
Michael Kors: 'i think Project Runway has had an effect on the gay community – big time. look at the wide spectrum of gay people who are on Project Runway – different ages, different looks, and different points of view. the majority of the men on the show are gay, so i think it’s revolutionary in that respect and it’s revolutionary in lifting the veil.'
6. Project Runway taught people that models can be smart as well as beautiful.
Producer Jonathan Murray: 'from day one Heidi has been a huge factor in the success of the show. she has great instincts about everything. she is not afraid to express what she thinks and is not afraid to show that she believes in someone. when Bunim/Murray stepped in to the show in Season 6 she was pretty seasoned. as new producers to the show we saw that what she had to say had a lot of value. just spending time with her you quickly see how good her instincts are.
 7. Project Runway gives established designers a voice they seldom get.
 Michael Kors: 'the interesting thing is you never get to hear designers talk. you can read what they say in an article, you see a still photograph of them, and you see their clothes and you connect the dots, but the missing part is hearing designers talk about fashion on a regular basis.'
 8. Project Runway has taught us the power of being nice.
season 2′s designers went on a field trip to meet Fern Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week. they asked what advice she could give them. Fern Mallis: 'i said the most important advice i can give you is to be nice. they looked at me as if i had four heads. Tim just smiled from ear to ear. i explained to them that at the end of the day there are a lot of designers out there all doing good work. ultimately, we all want to do business with people we like. you can get much more accomplished by being nice. you don’t have to be a diva or a bitch to succeed in this industry. people remember and gravitate to the nice people. Tim was so appreciative that i said that. i’ll never forget right after that episode aired i went to a screening and Sarah Jessica Parker grabbed me and said, ‘i loved what you said to them. i loved it. that was the best advice i think that was ever given to them.’ i got great feedback from that over the years.'
 9. Project Runway has brought fashion into the mainstream.
Marie Claire editor Zanna Roberts Rassi: 'it’s catapulted fashion to the middle of America and it’s made it accessible, achievable, and relatable. fashion was quite a scary, almost sacred world that no one knew about and you kept the lid on it.'
10. Project Runway introduced the world to Tim Gunn.
 is there a more beloved television personality? Kara Saun (season 1): 'all the advice he gave was sincere and spot on. it was clear Tim was on the side of the designers and that he truly was invested and cared about the work and assisting us in being the best we could be.'

crying doesn’t indicate that you’re weak. since birth, it has always been a sign that you’re alive

i will never really be able to handle this mind-blowing campaign (Dolce & Gabbana A/W12):

i hope the last page of your 800 page novel goes missing

- Bridget Foley & Dennis Freedman
 = Trade Editor & Creative Director 
'the trademarks of both W and WWD are the well-written essay, coverage of breaking news, and concise reportage; thus the team can afford to be brazen and obsessive in the search for the utmost in scintilating images. 
'one of the most meaningless words to describe fashion photography is 'edgy'. 'provocative' isn't new, either. what i look for in photographs is a quality and an honesty, not images that are provocative for the sake of being provocative,' Freedman says. 
W is a laboratory for the avant-garde, and the team's missionary-like zeal has led to controversial results. in the late 1990s, W was pilloried for what appeared to be a promotion of 'heroin chic.' however, W did not intend this depiction of street chic to be cultural commentary or endorsement; it was pure, hard-edged, documentary observation. 
Foley states, 'W's editors are passionate about fashion. there are so many levels on which fashion can be enjoyed and deliberated, debated and dissected. in the grand scheme, fashion provides a way of reading social history, but in the most basic sense you also have to put on clothes to leave the house. fashion is the convergence of all kinds of disparate elements - from street culture to rarefied haute couture.''
- p87

- Melodie Weir
= Outrageous Runway Makeup Artist
'considering the future of fashion, Weir speculates, 'people do not want to live in an austere, sterile environment.' she predicts a rebellion against minimalism: 'people want to surround themselves with comfort and colour.''
- p141

- Susan Forehand
= Trunk Show Impresario
 'Forehand defends the sophisticaion of her souther customers. 'we get it. we aren't living in Tara without electricity. our clients are world players,' she comments. 'in fashion, there is a tendency to think of any city outside New York as very provincial. this is especially true of the perception of the South. our major women travel the world, run major corporations, and act as patrons of the arts in a thriving city.' Forehand must constantly remind designers of this fact: 'i'm an advocate for my clients. i make bringing them the world's very best my mission.''
- p148

- Zendy Rapoport, Alexandra Lapegna & Afrodita Badescu
= Shoppers Personal and Otherwise
'most of the world encounters fashion only while shopping. the shopping experience is the single indispensable fashion moment, the instant when the designer's vision must communicate itself. in the store - small boutique or enormous emporium - these messages are explicated by chicly clad sales associates.
gone are the days of minimum wages and meager commissions. talented in-store personnel now receive benefits, vacation packages, and impressive salaries. in a world where customers have less and less leisure time, the salesperon's role - preselcting and editing - is more critical than ever. professionals like Lapegna at Les Copains in New York make the buyer's life far easier. 
 'the day of the accidental shopper and impulse buyer is gone. you have to buy for specific customers and keep meticulous records in your client book.''
- p160

- Roberto Jorio Fili
= Exporter of Italian Style to the World
'during his tenure at Calvin Klein, Fili analysed the emerging predominance of American sportswear, which has taken centre stage from French and Italian couturiers such as Christian Lacroix and Giorgio Armani. 
he notes, 'America often stays ahead of Europe not necessarily in terms of fashion but in the way it interpets lifestyle. American designers such as Ralph Lauren are more pragmatic and more free.' 'today there is a completely new type of consumer,' states Fili. these consumers have the aspiration but not the means to afford luxury. he contrasts this group to 'the consumers at the top of the pyramid'; he plans to 'transfer our expertise to design and create other products that have the same sensation of quality but at a lower price.''
- p184, Style Makers: Inside Fashion - Marcia Sherrill & Carey Adina Karmel (2002)

the shirt hits the fan

our home-grown designers are slowly and steadily gaining due recognition overseas.. but at what cost ?


Alexander Wang SS13 vs Dion Lee AW12
+ there were glowing (when lights are switched off) pieces in both collections

Christopher Kane SS13 vs Josh Goot AW12

or perhaps i'm just over-reacting..

#danke

i have finallly finished reading a book after almost a year of reading sporadically (having a two hour commute to the internship helped me find time). i guess it doesn't help that i also read many books all at once. i found a book called 'The Fashion Conspiracy' at Archives second hand books in the city many, many moons ago. there are ocasionally some gems in the fashion section, but it is usually quite a limited section of the book shelf.
the fact that it involved both fashion + a conspiracy within the title made me die a little on the inside - my two favourite things !
it speaks about all different areas of the industry and somehow manages to be both objective and subjective with the most perfect, humourous and insightful balance.
the fact that it was written in the 80s is also fantastic, because i hadn't known about some of the major players back then, and it was also interesting to read about corporations or figures that are still at large now, and to measure their progress since the publication of the book.

'the larger the fashion industry grows, the fewer the players that really count. in the developed world, fashion emplys eleven million people. and yet, when you pare the cast of leading characters to the minimum, it reduces to sixty. thirty of these are designers: eight in New York, nine in Paris, three in Tokyo, five or six in Milan and three, perhaps four, in London. the next twenty are the fifth colunists: five or six crucial fashion editors, a dozen buyers for stores and boutiques, a handful of backers and entrepreneurs who underwrote the boom. the final five are fashion legends like Paloma Picasso, Tina Chow and Loulou de la Falaise Klossowski, the late French-Tunisian columnist Hebe Dorsay, and John Fairchild, chairman and editorial director of Women's Wear Daily.
it is scarcely surprising, with such a tiny nucleus of opinion-makers hurtling around the world, that the level of paranoia is so high. no industry induces insecurity on the scale of fashion. the structure of the fashion year provokes paranoia. designers become paranoid under the pressure of producing two, sometimes more, collections a year; store buyers become paranoid at buying millions of dollars' worth of clothes that might not sell; fashion editors over the age of 40 become paranoid and begin to fear for their jobs.
twice a year ALL the new collections are shown within a few days of each other, and directly compared.'
- p7
'it was then that i asked Oscar de la Renta, in a the year that his turnover was estimated to have passed $350 million, where he gauged the status of designers in modern America against, say, the husbands of his customers: the world statesmen, record tycoons, arbitrageurs and chairmen of merchant banks. he thought for a long time before replying.
'i don't think that designers have ever been as wealthy as we are now,' he said. 'we have become world businessmen. in the old days fashion designers - seamstresses really - made and sold only dresses; today we sell a lifestyle to the whole world. we have moved into more and more areas of influence, and i think that this has made a huge difference to how we are perceived. it has made the career of fashion designer more socially acceptable. and i think that in the end all social structures come to depend on power and influence. and, of course, on the influence and power that money brings.''
- p27
'most said they were frustrated by the enormity of Seventh Avenue.
'it sucks,' i was told by a raven-haired PA wearing Andrea Pfister fur-topped suede boots. 'if you want to break into fashion now yourself, it's pretty well impossible. the established names, have sewn up the market, so new ones haven't got a prayer. how could they? the guys upstairs in the building are so cosy with the stores there isn't anything left for anyone new. the stores don't want new anyway. they want reliable ideas twice a year from the peopl ethey know, reliable ideas they can promote and be sure of selling. it's got to be blockbuster business or nothing. i think it's wretched.'
it was a theme to which fashion people at adjacent tables could warm.
'Klein and Lauren, even Oscar de la Renta, got into this business almost by accident,' said a skeletal young man with a mop of red hair. 'the prospect of walking into Bloomingdales today with a pile of ties and coming out with an order is zilch. the only new name who has broken through in the past few years is Carolina Herrera, and she wasn't exactly starting from zero.''
- p28
'at each interview i asked the designer about their customer, and heard described the same amorphous woman: married or nearly married and yet the mistress of her own destiny, building a career but with a full round character, confident but confiding, ambitious but yielding, a workaholic but intending one day to quite the rat race for a beach house at Newport. her life sounded so shot through with contradictions that you feared for her sanity. she needs a dress malleable enough to fit into a spongebag, while appreciating the luxury of frills and applique. she requires a wardrobe so versatile that a single garment carries her from power breakfast to bedroom, but she sends a man flowers just because it's raining.'
- p29
''it's worst in menswear,' he continued. 'it's an old thing: "welcome to menswear but don't change anything about it."''
- p39
''the trouble with Yohji's clothes,' said Meredith, 'is you can't get out of them in a hurry. do you suppose those girls get any sex at all?'
it would certainly have been difficult, had the opportunity presented itself, to know exactly where to start. 'they're clothes for puritans,' she went on, 'mind clothes, not body clothes. Yohji's an intellectual, a recluse. never cracks a smile. Rei Kawakubo's the same. deadly serious. the Japanese will be interesting for a couple more seasons but they've nowhere to develop you'll see.' Meredith eyed the Elle table with the spectral wisdom of an astrologer.
'it's ethnic, that's all. it's old National Geographic school of design.''
- p77
'another problem is that the companies are so small they can only afford to employ half-wits; that's why almost everyone on the periphery of fashion is a half-wit. a journalist friend of mine was asked to do half a dozen pages in advance of the British collections for the New York Times. she narrowed down her list to six designers with great difficulty and invited them to take part. five of the designers failed to produce any clothes for the session. she was astonished. each page in the New York Times is worth $35,000. she couldn't believe the lack of professionalism.
the trouble is that most designers don't have any form of business partners. there's no Pierre Berge in England. it think it's immoral that young people leaving art school should be encouraged to set up fashion businesses with no business strucutre at all. what you need to do is take all those endless graduates and teach them something about marketing and merchandising. fashion isn't there to dream about, it's there to be sold. - Annette Worsley-Taylor'
- p129
''there are a lot of famous designers in New York,' he said, 'but most of them aren't designers at all in the European sense, they're stylists really. i call Karl Lagerfeld a proper designer because he also has a sense of fun. and sometimes he says very true things.
he says, "we're not curing cancer. we're not putting people into space. it's only clothes. let's not take ourselves too seriously." i think that hits the nail on the head. it's just frocks. London understands that. at least most of the English designers know how to have fun.''
- p157
'the average off-the-peg designer suits - Saint Laurent or Chanel - costs 1,500 pounds and takes twelve hours to manufacture from fabric to rail. or, more accurately, the process takes twelve hours which is not quite the same thing since for much of this time the garment is idling on a workbench awaiting attention. a couture suit which costs, say, 10,000 pounds may have 200 hours of concentrated work in it, by a dozen seamstresses in the atelier. in this contrast lies part of the much-vaunted quality of couture.'
- p179
'Lagerfeld has a slightly disconcerting habit, during interviews, of fanning himself languidly with a large eighteenth-century fan.
'actually,' he went on, 'fashion is the apotheosis of flimflam. you can make it work with no real knowledge.. many people in fashion think that instead of stylists they should have been.. architects.. architects! they don't seem to even suspect that one has to study, i mean really study, in order to become an architect. if a house falls apart, people get killed. if a dress doesn't fit, you just don't put it in. they should realise how incredibly lucky we are. we can put our names on a bottle of perfume without knowing a thing about perfume and we make fortunes with it. but no, there they are: suffering.''
- p188
'designers who cannot face their peers with an entirely Gulf-biased (or Rio-biased) collection produce one line as camouflage, then adapt it to export. in the Gulf, these couturiers are more respected than they are at home.
'the French amy not wish to talk about their Arab clients,' an American editor cautioned me, 'but they're even more shakier about the South Americans. all those drug baronesses. without cocaine, half a dozen couture houses would have gone to the wall. but they won't talk about that. no way. deep graveyard.''
- p194
'the selection of merchandise remains a diffuse algebraic compromise of personal taste x corporate policy x 'open to buy' x market buoyancy / the memory of unsold stock from the last season.'
- p268, The Fashion Conspiracy - Nicholas Coleridge

spandex is a privilege, not a right

i have recently (now finished) been interning at a fashion production warehouse for a local womenswear label that exclusively stocks at its own stores in most major shopping malls and districts around Brisbane and the Gold Coast. the clothes had a market that was significantly older than me (in my opinion), and so a lot of the pieces and accessories i wouldn't have worn myself, but that seemed irrelevant. to be able to experience that sort of environment (half of all of their pieces are made on-site in Brisbane, the other half in China) in Brisbane is wildly rare, and i really loved it.


+ i've been working on a shirt at uni for this semester's assignment. we had to construct it out of a combination of the same / different basic geometric shapes, rather than regular pattern making. this is to find out whether or not a more hands-on approach may suit our learning styles instead of designing and then making a toile. it also removes any subconscious design inspiration in which you can rip-off other designers through your own work without really realising it when sketching, or that when designing on a drawn figure, you tend to stick to more conventional garments / pieces that cling more to the body. i have found it really difficult, but i can appreciate the process in those respects.
i found that shapes like rectangles / triangles just did not work for me. i either came to dead ends or created repulsive things. circles were also difficult and somewhat restrictive, but i found semi-circles worked for me because they also had the straight edge to play with.
we had to include a collar, some sort of button / fastenings, and sleeves with cuffs that were finished appropriately.
most people used regular sleeves from a pattern block but i decided to make my sleeves from semi-circles.
i don't like the collar as it is at the moment, i think it seems to be competing with the front draped sections, but that's something i can work toward fixing for the final pieces.
we have to make two shirts of the same style - one in a structured fabric, and one in a more soft and flowing fabric, to see how they sit differently.



i went out on an unsuccessful resume drop in West End a week ago, and took some of my would-be Fleet Store (now closed - how quick does it feel like that happened?!) pieces for a spin. i've been wearing the bloomers to uni every now and then on a hot day, and i'm pretty thankful that i decided not to put fastenings on the bottom of the leg openings at the side. they're borderline unflattering as it is, so i think i made a good decision there, ha. the top can be unzipped or fully zipped, and i'm still trying to decide which i prefer..

+ i won tickets to go to BigSound Live last night and Wednesday as well with a friend. so much fun ! the fact that v well-known bands just walk around or can be seen hanging out at local bars felt really homely. last night was a little less fun walking around because there were the usual student night enthusiasts in all of their high-heeled, short-skirted glory. i missed my train home because we were speaking to an American tourist from Texas and giggling at some of the clothing we were seeing. especially on a night when all of the indie kids were out to see local bands.. he thinks that Australia, or at least Brisbane, is stuck in an 80s time warp. he said, 'spandex is a privilege, not a right'. phun-knee.
we saw some of the most magnificent artists though..44th Sunset, Ball Park Music, The Falls, Flume, The Trouble with Templeton, Tin Sparrow, Oliver Tank, Voltaire Twins, Hayden Calnin, Club Scouts..

life is not as confusing as chicken salt

design experimentation journal from an upcoming assignment, this was part one..



'concrete patternmaking and sewing skills will be combined with more abstract processes to extend and challenge your personal design philosophy.
design is a deeply personal experience and there is likely to be as many design practices and approaches as there are designers. developing your own individual design ‘handwriting’ and methods takes time and determination; however, it also takes study and experimentation. while each designer’s approach will be unique, investigating the ideas of those who came before you and applying their principles and ideas to your own experiments can be vitally important. by expanding your awareness of design principles and approaches relevant in the past and present, you may learn new and valuable skills and techniques for creative design development for your future career.
this assessment works parallel to the studio series and supports you to further experiment with diverse design practices at all stages of the creative process- from research and experimentation, to design and prototyping. you will be required to further explore your personal design practice and working methods.'





'the principles and building blocks of design: you will need to respond to this through the development of a research journal. your journal will need to include a design concept, research and creative development in response to design principles and ideas, design theory/ history, and experimentation working with these ideas to develop new creative processes and approaches.'






• a thoroughly researched concept
• research and experimentation that demonstrates a consistently evolving and well considered response to the ideas explored in class of 'design building blocks' and diverse creative approaches
• experimentation and/or prototyping to test the design approaches and ideas explored in your journal work (this may include sketching, diagrams, paper models, fabric experiments, collages, photographs and more)'



XXXXXXXX
some facts about Scott Schuman that i enjoyed:
'1 – he’s like Victoria Beckham. super funny and totally self-deprecating in real life (it’s the ONE thing that i’m most drawn to in others), but he never smiles in photos. the reason? he can’t fake smile. so if a photographer asks him to smile in a photo, he asks the photographer to tell him something funny. and that works about..zero percent of the time.
3 – he seems grumpy. i always crack up when i run into him on the street (yes, it happens often enough because he’s always walking around) because he always seems so upset with his furrowed brow. the truth? he can’t see very well. and his glasses mess him up when he’s taking photos so he doesn’t wear them. so he’s always furrowing his brow and looking upset.
4 – he’s a real blond.
6 – his dream for when he gets older and can’t take pictures anymore is to open a little bookshop just for art and photos books, hidden from the street with a secret address where he could talk about books with anyone who walks in the door. not necessarily sell them anything as parting with any of them would hurt his heart each and every time.
8 – he once sewed a dress right onto my body. it was 3 minutes before an important evening and the zipper broke. i was crying out hysterically, we’re talking Bridesmaids style here, not knowing that i had a secret weapon: Scott can sew perfectly well. he studied fashion – and costume construction: he wanted to be a designer. (he then came to understand he didn’t have the talent for it so he went out looking for something he did..)
9 – he’s very straightforward. when you ask him a question, he responds. he’s not the type to have canned answers for interviews. he doesn’t hesitate to call things like he sees them. sometimes, he’s right, sometimes wrong. you get what you see and he’s got nothing to hide. sometimes it comes back to bite him and you can see it hurts him deep down.
10 – he loves sports. he listens to ESPN and loves all the commentators’ heated conversations. it inspires him to create conversations on his blog.
12 – he’s a visionary. he’s able to hear through the noise of life. he sees the emotion involved, in the people, in all things. he translates that in his pictures. he saw right away the emotion they created on the internet. he understood where it could go. he’s always thinking of the future and how he wants to be remembered.
it gives incredible strength to his work.'