Blog post 4 -As well as going to Italy, doing a placement at Fat Face and many days of relaxing and not really doing much, I tried to keep the creative part of my brain stimulated this summer by visiting museums and galleries, including some really interesting exhibitions that I’d like to talk about. The first exhibition I went to was called Fashion & Freedom at the Manchester City Art gallery, which was all about the changes that the First World War caused in women’s fashion. It displayed pieces by the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Jackie JS Lee and Holly Fulton, as well as upcoming designers from different universities, who brought together contemporary fashion design with historic dress. This garment was designed by Rebecca Lawton from the University of Salford in 2016. It represents the acceptance of exposing new parts of the body and female rebellion as well as using the feminine practice of embroidery. I love the shape of this dress designed by Roksanda in 2016. The brave women whose skin turned yellow after working so closely with toxic chemicals inspired the colour. My Mum and I went to London for the day in August and along with the V&A and Natural History Museum, we visited the Missoni Art Colour exhibition at The Fashion and Textiles Museum. This was amazing and incredibly inspirational to me as a knit student. It showcased some modern art pieces that influenced Missoni’s designs, as well as some close up samples and an impressive (yet slightly scary) display of mannequins. I love the signature stripes and zigzags that Missoni design and I’m going to use my pictures from the exhibition to influence my project on Italian buildings (considering Missoni is Italian, I think this fits quite well). The Mannequin display! Some close up samples by Missoni. The most recent exhibition I went to was Vogue 100: A Century of Style at Manchester City Art Gallery. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any pictures here, as it was a display of photographs taken for British vogue over the last 100 years, but this is probably my favourite exhibition I have ever been to. It was so interesting to see how the style of Vogue has changed and developed over the years and it allows us to celebrate the success of one of the most influential fashion magazines in the world. This is on until the end of October so I recommend it to everyone! by Grace
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Blog Post 3 -During my second year of university, I did a live group project for Fat Face (you can see some pictures under Projects - Botanical Explorer, or see below.) We designed our samples for girls, Autumn/Winter 2016/17 and drew inspiration from nature, particularly focusing on feminine colours in contrast to organic greens, which we thought would be fitting for the Fat Face brand. Although our group didn’t win overall, I was chosen from my group to do a two-week work placement at their headquarters, by the sea in Portsmouth. Two of my final knit samples from the project I went with a girl from my course that had also won a placement and Fat Face kindly booked us to stay in a 4 star hotel, only 10 minutes away from the office - including a buffet breakfast every day. We arrived on the Monday morning to an office with a chilled-out surfing vibe, filled with beach decor and an outdoor area called “Narnia”, with tables for eating and a campervan surrounded by bunting. We were both eager (and still very full from breakfast) to dive in to whatever jobs they gave us, which included researching new trends, making mood boards, and - as we expected - general tidying of the office, stapling swatches onto forms and (a whole lot of) spray mounting. After the two weeks were over, I felt like I gained a great deal of knowledge about the fashion industry and how quickly each season is researched, designed and put into stores, considering this was the first work experience I’d had. I also met some nice people who I intend to keep in contact with in the future! Havant, Portsmouth Outside the Fat Face office!
by Grace Blog post 2 -At the beginning of my summer holidays, I visited the Italian lakes with my family. We began with Lake Garda, staying in a place called Sirmione, known as “the pearl of the islands and peninsulas”, where thousands of visitors flood in each day to see the pretty and historical town, surrounded by the waters of this beautiful lake. From there we drove to Verona to see the statue of Juliet beneath her balcony, where we all had a go at holding her boob (apparently this was supposed to be good luck - we just copied everyone else). Views from the medieval Scaliger castle in Sirmione. Juliet’s balcony in Verona - showing the crowds of tourists awaiting their chance to hold her boob. Me on top of the Grottoes of Catullus - Roman ruins in Sirmione. The second place we stayed in was a town called Mennagio on Lake Como (unfortunately we didn’t bump into George Clooney). Surrounded by lake and mountains and just a 40-minute drive from Switzerland, Mennagio is a scenic town of ancient origins with pastel coloured buildings that I couldn’t stop taking pictures of. We also caught the ferry to Varenna just across the lake, where the buildings were even more beautifully coloured and inspirational to me as a textile student, giving me ideas for my third year project. Blue sky over Mennagio, Lake Como. Photographing the flat pastel colours and contrasting textures of the buildings in Varenna. Very inspirational for potential knit samples!
By Grace Blog post 1 - Last February, I was lucky enough to visit Paris again with my textiles course and along with doing all of the usual tourist-y stuff, we had the opportunity to visit Premiere Vision, the Louis Vuitton Foundation and the Louvre (where I saw the Mona Lisa for the first time - who is way smaller than I expected), all of which were very inspiring and influential. The small but mighty Mona Lisa! For those of you who don’t know, Premiere Vision is a global event for fashion professionals, exhibiting hundreds of designers from all around the world. Because we were students who weren’t there to buy any of the designs, we were slightly restricted to what we could look at, but this didn’t stop us from seeing all of the exciting new designers and fabrics; particularly I enjoyed the yarn and Knitwear Solutions sections. We also paid a visit to the Nottingham Trent stall that included many third year designs, some of which were sold! The only picture I was allowed to take at Premiere Vision. Probably my favourite part of the trip (a side from nearly freezing to death at the top of the Eiffel Tower at night), was visiting the Louis Vuitton Foundation. I didn’t really know what to expect going into this, as I assumed it would be a gallery/museum about Louis Vuitton, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a modern art gallery with amazing architecture and very interesting (yet slightly strange) modern art pieces and performances. The photo that almost cost me my fingers. The exterior of the Louis Vuitton Foundation! On the way back from Paris we stopped off at the Calais Lace Museum where we had a tour guide who explained the whole process of making lace. This was actually way more interesting than I expected; he showed us all the machinery and the extremely lengthy design process that goes into making the lace, and he told us the story about how the machines were invented during the Industrial Revolution (in Nottingham!) and illegally smuggled into France by boat. One of the very busy machinery rooms in the Calais Lace Museum. Overall I had an amazing and very worthwhile trip in terms of my own design work and I will definitely be returning to Paris again in the near future!
by Grace |