Trip to London

Today we went on a college trip to London. We first went to the V&A to go to the Alexander McQueen exhibition Savage Beauty, which was really good. I liked how the rooms were displayed with the wild kingdom having bones all over the wall and the Cabinet of Curiosity being displayed like shelves, though that room it was very hard to see all the outfits as they were so high up...I loved all his outfits, they were out-there, not ordinary clothes, more for people not afraid to stand out, which I want my collection to be like...I absolutely love his shoes and think they are very unusual and want to do shoes also by customizing a plain pair to make interesting like his ones...When we got out we had time to look around the V&A, but I've looked around the museum loads of times already and knew I wouldn't find any inspiration for this project there, so we just wandered.

Then we went to the Tate Modern museum to see Sonia Delaunay's exhibition. I thought all her paintings looked the same and didn't get any inspiration from that exhibition, it only took 5 minutes to look around, so was disappointed. The only things that were slightly interesting were the photos, fashion illustrations and costumes. When we got out it was very boring and long...The day could of been better if we had less waiting around and went to more interesting places as well as what we did, like fabric shops or other museums.

First Week

This week I have been gathering inspiration by looking at different artists and drawing from primary sources. I think I have done lots in my book over the course of the week. I have looked at loads of artists which have inspired me for looking at prints and pattern cutting techniques. I've experimented with making my book look as interesting as possible, as I don't want to leave a blank page as a background. My favourite primary drawing this week is my teapot and teacup which I did out of felt, I really like this idea and will develop it more. I have got to go over my pages and analyse all my drawings and pictures, as this is my weak point and I always leave it till I've done everything else. I didn't reach my goal of doing one primary drawing each day, and will try to catch up with this the following week. Last Saturday I went to Quaint Queer Weird Wedding fair in Chatham, I thought it would be interesting as it was alternative clothes like fairies, steampunk and burlesque, I was hoping their would be lots of costumes for inspiration and maybe Japanese inspired. However their wasn't much of anything, and only two stalls had dresses on, so I was quite disappointed and didn't get any inspiration for this project from it. On Sunday I went to Pets At Home and it was a very short visit, but I managed to take loads of photos of the bunny rabbits. They were so cute and I wanted to take one home with me to keep as a pet. For next week I am going to draw or do some type of textile based picture of the rabbit, which I think will come useful as either a print on my garment or the shape of my coat, which could have bunny ears.

Finding inspiration

Over this week, I have went to Canterbury and London, and found inspiration for print, I've taken photos of confectionery foods, like sweets and cakes. Which I will then draw in different mediums in my sketchbook.

I also went to Whitstable where I found gorgeous pastel colours painted on houses and beach huts, and had to take photos of them, as I think these colours are what I want to have on my garment.

Cinderella Exhibition

Today I went to London with my friend to go to London Dungeons and go shopping in Oxford Street, but when I heard that there was a Cinderella Exhibition, I knew for certain I wanted to go there and needed to squeeze it in my day somewhere. I thought we could term up in Leicester Square Gardens and go in, straight after we got off the coach at 10:20am. However we turned up and went to the box office and was told the next available tickets (which were free, all the ones online had gone, so we could not purchase them until the day you show up) was not till 5pm, which was hours away. At 4pm we had tickets for London Dungeons and I thought that would go on for a couple of hours, so I asked for tickets for 6pm, which was cutting it tight as our coach was leaving London Victoria at 7:30pm.

After we got out of the London Dungeons it was one crazy rush to Leicester Square, we didn't get there till about 6:15pm, and my friend wondered if our tickets would still be valid as we was a little late. When we saw the long queue I began to panic and think I would never get to go in, but after asking a employee who was selling booklets, she informed us that people with tickets go to a much smaller queue, and that the longer queue was for people with no tickets that are willing to wait for a very long time to get in, if I knew this earlier I might of waited in that long queue first thing...

Before going in I bought a brochure with photos and information inside of the exhibition. When we finally got in, we discovered that in every room there was a person that gave an explanation for each room, like a guided tour. I thought at first oh it's going to take forever to go all the way around, but we went around in about 15 to 20 minutes, I would of liked to stay longer to read all the information about the costumes and to examine everything more closely, but we was running out of time, and if I had stayed 10 minutes longer we would have missed our coach.

I took photos of all the costumes, I absolutely love them, and these kind of outfits are what I want to create. I have always loved fantasy/fairy-tale costumes from movies like Mirror Mirror, Hunger Games and now Cinderella, I would like to go into a career designing and making fantasy period inspired costumes. I like that Sandy Powell mixed different periods into her fantasy designs, like she said "the Once Upon A Time period is a mixture of 19th century and 18th century, with a bit of 1940s and 50s thrown in." All the costumes are different and I love that. The fabrics are beautiful and the Swarovski jewels in the fairy godmothers dress are so pretty.

My favourite characters costumes are the Ugly sisters dresses, though I wouldn't call them ugly as they are beautiful! I like the 50s inspired flowery dresses in yellow and pink, and their ball gowns in pink and green, with the print and 3d flowers sewn on are amazing.

Originally for my Final Project I thought I could have the theme as Fantasy Fairy-tale costumes, and I still love that idea, but I chose to do Japanese Fashion. I would like to make my Lolita Japanese Fashion also influenced by the fairy-tale period, maybe with a mix of both themes, so it's still Japanese influenced but is big and flamboyant just like these costumes. I will look at Sandy Powell as a costume designer as well as other fantasy costume designers and put their work in my sketchbook, to also go with the Japanese fashion artists I have in their.

I love Sandy Powell's costume illustrations and when I get that far with my project I might do one in the style of hers. There was a costume design competition on Tumblr for designing a Cinderella dress to then be made, and I entered it with three designs, which are bellow, I loved drawing these designs, however I didn't win as I didn't get enough votes to get into the top 10 to be considered.

Third Day - Paris

We got up a little earlier today, to first go to a small museum called Musee Cognacq-jay. I was inspired by the draped fabric on the four poster bed, and could see this fabric design draped on a skirt. There was a room that was pink and had childlike object, I thought this was cool, and very sweet Lolita like with the Barbie doll and the colours. I also loved some of the historical costumes and thought they were very flamboyant, which I hope my garment will be.

We then had a quick stop into town, where it was very hard to find food and then we got lost coming back to the meeting point as it was such a big area and we was only given an hour there... I felt our trip to Paris was very jam packed, some times rushed, I think it would of been better to stay longer and spread out all the activities and see more of Paris.

The last trip we made was to the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the building looked good with all the angles and glass. However the inside wasn't what I was expecting, I though we was going to see a collection of clothes, but no it was different famous people's art, I didn't get any inspiration from what was displayed.

On the way back we saw a cute cake shop, where we stopped and I took some photos, I thought this was inspirational for a print. Later on the Eurostar home I got my sketchbook out and drew some of these in felt tip pen.