Thursday, March 06, 2008

finally a few pictures




so this is my broken hearted dress. its all a silk georgette that has a small bit of lycra to it, so i basically did away with the back zipper. as you can see, its super short. i started playing with some texture, just something that was not a princess seam dress. i hand dyed all the colors into it to make it look like an actual heart. i was just insensed the day i made it for various reasons that have....somewhat smoothed out, but i'm really proud of the dress. there's a jacket and a slip that go with it, but i'm displaying it in the columbia honors competition so not everyone was going to get it if i put all the components together. i doubt it'll win, but it'll be awesome just to have in a gallery out of the like 500 fashion design students
and this would be my sweater i made on the knitting machine. i made basically 10 yards of fabric and cut it into rectangles and then started pleating them like crazy (its really hard to see untill you get like 2 feet from it). nothing ends up being even and it looks a little sloppy but somehow really well put together. i'm in love with it, i think really because the sleeves sort of come out of the back waist, which is totally not how they were when i started out with just the 4 rectangles

a total mindfuck

so my boss lynda invited me and chad to acompany the Contemporary Fashion class on a visit to the SAIC's study collection. we both agreed we were embarassed to say we were from columbia. the instant we got off the elevator we were greeted with a display case with about 10 manequins, the first i laid eyes on had the same weaving texture as my broken hearted dress i've been working on/leaving out for everyone to come up and stroke my ego. all the seniors were like, hey kelly its your dress, do you know that designer? i got really defensive but it was just me and chad who seemed genuinely interested in what we were seeing. the other students that were actually from the class seemed bored by it all. it blew my mind, some of the stuff i saw. the head of the collections really made me feel ashamed to even call myself a designer, i'm just a manufacturer. how disgusting....so i went back to school and made my knit top for my theory and practice class that i was going to just piece together some rectangles of fabric i made off the knitting machine, instead i spent about 5 hours hand stitching in curved pleats into this thing. it fits like a mother fucking glove its amazing. sarah pointed out that i've begun to usurp the dress forms and my designs have started breeding, but if i can't put it up in the display case that HAS NOTHING IN IT FOR THE PAST YEAR i might as well have it up in the biggest lab.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

i can finally wear my contacts again....

pardon me for not exactly being coherent, i just walked 8 miles in a skirt and 2" heeled boots. but it was well worth the vitamin D and meditative time. i went and walked south on the lake shore path to mcCormick place and back. i didn't wear any tights and probably about 3" of skin was showing between the tops of my boots and the hem of my skirt, but you would have thought i was wearing fuck me heels and a leather miniskirt the way that i was getting whistled at. chad's been saying at school that people are so used to long sleeves and high necklines that even a little bit of skin seems so risque that its pornographic. i went to walgreens on my way home and picked up some of that lotion that has the sunless tanner in it so by the time its shorts weather, i won't look awkward when i try to go outside
so on my walk to the red line, which i then discovered was rerouted to the elevated tracks for god knows why (i heard a red line caught on fire in the subway a few weeks ago), i discovered this at the southwest corner of van buren and plymouth court. there was an obvious seam on the underside which isn't as entertaining as the people who knit these things with dpns but still to actually find one gave me a bit of a kick.

i went up to the vogue in evanston, which is by far my favorite fabric store in the city. there was a big sale so it was a home crafty clusterfuck in there. i was the only person under 35 in there i think. everyone else was moms and grandmas making easter outfits for their kids or mother of the bride outfits or bad vogue "designer" patterns from 1998. having been looking at all the fall 08 collections coming up online and knowing that i'm in for six months of straight black clothing (seriously, black is the new black, and the new every other color in the spectrum, although black technically isn't a color, its a shade, just like white, but no white this winter) come octoberish, i kinda went nuts in the oposite direction

so i ended up buying just a whole big range of stuff, which i'm off to go drape right now