Summer Internship: Day 32

Today was all about switching gears from machine to paper.  A fashion designer creates sketches of ideas before product or in this case, garments, are physically made three-dimensional.  I have worked a little backwards from this process which has actually made it make a lot more sense for me.  Now that I have taken materials and sewn and manipulated them, I know better how they are are going to react on a body.  

Just to give you guys some background information before I proceed, I want to explain why this experience is so important for me right now.  I will be going into my senior year in college come the end of August.  My major is apparel merchandising and my minors will be in business and dance.  I have danced since I was in first grade putting me at 15 years of experience.  This minor makes sense and I use it to teach as a side job.  Fashion has also been a great passion of mine; however, the program I am studying focuses very much on the business side of the industry.  As vital as this is, I live for creativity, so design is a facet I wish to pursue further come time graduation from South Dakota State University.  I am looking at programs to attend once my four-year education is finished so I can really zoom in on my interest.  I have a broad spectrum of what everything is about, but after having worked for Christopher so far this summer, my path feels even more solidified in what I want my future to become.

Long story short, I have not actually gotten to take the design course yet offered by SDSU; this comes for me in the spring of 2014.  I knew I had to get my foot in the door with design before then so that is why I was so persistent in finding a fashion designer to work for.  I can say proudly that it paid off not to give up or settle for less in the circumstances.  I have learned more than I could have ever imagined so far this summer and I still have six weeks left of learning to do. 

So as I said earlier, today's lessons were on sketching, something that has not yet been taught to me before.  I have always loved drawing; however, my sketches I attempted in fashion garments have been too detailed for what is needed to portray.  Christopher helped me understand this today.  He went through and showed me his own process and how to really simplify what I had previously been doing.

We started out with a body.

         
Again, this is super simple!  I have always been under the impression that details were needed everywhere!

Christopher then gave me instruction that this particular girl would be wearing a party dress so I began drawing a silhouette that hugged tight on the torso and flared out at the waist.

I started polishing it up by doing small details such as the face, hair and material lines.  Then I went through with pen over the pencil.

I came up with this little sketch in the end and in comparison to my past drawings, is minimal but still gives all of the necessary details.  

Here are some other little sketches made today with directions from Christopher:

This one was meant to reflect my first dress I made.

This was the transformation to the maxi dress.

At this point Christopher decided to give me a little bit of a challenge.  We pretended that he was the client and I was the designer and he was going to describe to me what he wanted.  It needed to be a full-length dress, mermaid, plunging-V, thin belt, strapless, and exaggerated flower at the hip.

The next challenge was to create separates; which in the fashion world means essentially separate pieces such as tops and bottoms.  

My last challenge was to pick an object.  I was a little taken back by this request but I went to my purse and tried to find an appealing object.  My Marc Jacobs perfume was the first thing that popped out at me so I brought that out.  Christopher told me to write a list of its qualities.

Well it is long/tubular in shape, shiny on the cap, floral print, sheer bottom, smooth, and colored in pink, yellow and gold.  

"Now take these qualities; it does not have to be all of them in one outfit, just a few" Christopher said.  

I really liked the idea that this tube was so slender and sleek looking.  I used that as my foundation and went from there.

I wanted to portray this floral area on the bottom of the evening dress with physical material gathered to resemble flowers.  The dress hugged the body in a very slimming affect just like the perfume bottle and it would contain the gold and soft pink for coloration.  

So what was the purpose of this assignment???  You can basically find inspiration for design from anything around you.  Christopher did the same assignment with me and had used a coin as his base.  It was absolutely amazing to have this experience.  My eyes are opening more and more to what is truly around me.