Last thursday came around and we had decided to go back down to my Dad's for a long weekend in Port Aransas. We set off around lunch on the thursday, yet to find out that this would be a nightmare trip...

Setting off, everything was fine. We stopped for food and quickly got on the road as it is a 7 hour trip so we didn't want to be setting off much later.
We hadn't been on the road any longer than an hour and we broke down :( and sitting in a carpark with no air conditioning in 90 degree heat is not good.

3 hours and a tow truck later we were all fixed and back on the road! Arriving in Port Aransas at around 11pm, a little later than we expected to say the least!

Friday came along and I had been feeling ill for a few days with a really sore throat, but friday it felt awful! So we went to the 'urgent care centre' which definitely wasn't very urgent it was SO slow. We were waiting for about two hours and we found out that some of the staff had to leave because there was a rumour of a storm so they had closed the school so the staff were going to pick up their kids. I have always found it funny here with even a slight chance that there will be bad weather and the schools get closed automatically.
We finally got seen and the doctor told me I had strep throat and that it was too swollen to do a swab test (minging). One injection of steroids, one of anti-biotics and also anti-biotics tablets later and I was all set to go home!

Oh, but not without these gorgeous plasters!!

HA.

Last week at work!

Lots of different things have been happening throughout my internship. I have been set all different kinds of tasks and assisted with different fittings. 

I find it really interesting even just being in the studio seeing how everything works and who comes and goes from day to day. All the people that I have met have been so friendly and have all had different stories to tell. 

Last weekend was Dallas Flea which is where they open all the shops on the same strip in the building on a saturday and let in the public to walk around all the studios and buy anything if they want too. This is a really good way for all the small companies and designers to get new customers because and other times most of them would work to appointment only. So all that week at work was just getting the studio really for the flea really. Making sure everything is neatly in order, making sure everything has labels in so I would check and sew any in that didn't have them and also making sure everything has a price tag and re-arranging the studio with spring items on all the mannequins.

Okay, so I haven't blogged in nearly 2 weeks. What have I been doing?!

Today is Thursday, soooo...
Not the weekend just gone but the one before... this was when I went to the world aquarium which I wrote about in my last post.
Well I definitely had a geek filled weekend then because I also went to Fort Worth Zoo! It was amazing! I have never seen anything like it really, I loved it.

We only had about 3 hours to walk round because we decided to go quite late, and this really wasn't long enough to see everything, that place is huge.

There was probably nearly every animal you could think of and more. I got quite a lot of photos so here is some of them...

Fort Worth is about a 40 minute drive from Dallas, so after the Zoo we decided to go into the centre of Fort Worth because I had never been before. 

The two cities are joined but they are SO different, it's amazing really. Dallas is a huge modern city, big for fashion, shopping and food. It is very well off and lets just say a little bit 'snobby'. Everyone seems to have a crazy amount of money here and everything in Dallas is flashy! It's really interesting to see all the different parts! 

And then there's Fort Worth, and it is amazing there, it's actually like going back in time, it's a Cowboy town, and we visited the old stockyards which has now been turned into a little tourists place with gift shops, restaurants and bars. The stockyards have kept as they were and it is like walking into a different world going there its crazy! 

It is mostly cobbled streets and like something out of an old cowboy/western film. 

He will kill me for this but my Dad insisted that we went to Cattlemen's Steakhouse. I felt sick!!!

I am really strange when it comes to meat, I don't really eat red meat at all and to have photos of cows and steaks in a cabinet staring at you is not the best environment to be in when you are funny with meat like me! 

This trip has just made me completely clear that I HATE anything to do with steak.. bleugh. 

Almost everywhere in Texas is a steak restaurant too, think I am in the wrong place? It is basically forced on you, and me speaking to my Dad about me easily being a vegetarian didn't go down too well in that place. It was like I had stood up and swore right in the middle of the restaurant. Crazy people!!!

So yeah that is Fort Worth, a very strange and interesting place. Definitely somewhere everyone needs to visit!! 

It is like the olden days, everyone was staring at me like I am from another planet, people don't have much sense of style in Fort Worth at all!! Unless it's cowboy wear of course! There is actually quite a wide range of styles in Dallas because it's a big city. But definitely not in Fort Worth! 

I am a bad blogger...

Well, the title of this post says it all.
I haven't written a post for a few days now and I have done quite a lot. Nothing that I am going to talk about in this post is about my placement, it is all about the weekend.

So, here it goes.

Saturday came around and I was with my Dad, we decided that we would actually go into Dallas and be tourists, we originally were going to Dallas Zoo but there was extreme weather warnings on the news. All it was, was a bit of wind...
But anyway we decided to go to The Dallas World Aquarium instead because it's mostly in doors!

My Dad had been there before so he knew what it was like but I had no idea how good it was going to be other than what he had told me, and with it being all in doors it's strange really, you don't expect much at all!
We got there and it didn't look that big from the outside but when you go in it's amazing! You go in and are shown up the stairs, because the way it is laid out is so that you start at the top and work your way down. I took quite a lot of pictures but most of them are blurry (my brilliant photography skills).

Also, because of the name of the place you just expect fish and sharks or whatever, but there's loads of different animals.

I would just like to add that ^ he is the cutest little thing!

After the aquarium we went into Downtown Dallas for some food, and decided to sit outside TGI Friday's because it turned out to be such a nice day! 

We saw some funny sights being downtown. Because I have never been to Dallas before I was amazed seeing it all. It was hilarious seeing the different things. 

As we were walking to the restaurant we passed this hilarious place that has been shut down now but you could just make out what the signs said.. 'The Heart Attack Grill' 

So, yeah, the title of the place says it all really... I HAD to take some photos of it...

 'Home of the double bypass burger'

'Over 350 lbs? Eat for free!'

How crazy is that? It's disgusting! No wonder it has closed down, I was laughing because they have clearly tried to colour the name of it out and it just hasn't worked. 

But yeah, that is the lovely 'Heart Attack Grill'.

Another sight that we saw while we was down there is the men selling flowers on the streets, surprisingly they sold a lot of them too. I guess I spoke to soon when I was laughing at them giving girls flowers. They would approach anyone and I thought I had got away with them not coming to me, but yeah, I spoke too soon. 

He came over to us and said 'give the lady a kiss and buy her flowers' which was quite embarrassing because we were just like 'we are father and daughter' and the guys face dropped and he just gave me the flowers. And look they are nearly dead and he was selling those for $20 each!!

FUNNY.

There is also different things to do around downtown, such as horse and carriage rides. Very cheesy but a good way of being shown around Dallas i suppose! 

And this is just a car that drove past us that I loved! 

I have loads more to write about from the weekend but I am going to bed! I will carry on writing tomorrow because I talk too much so have too much to write about. 

Night night! 

Well, it's Saturday, the end of my first week being an intern and I have A LOT to talk about.
I'll start with yesterday, which was amazing.

It was 'career day' and I didn't really know what to expect because I had never heard of anything like it. But to cut the explanation short, it is run by the 'Fashion Group International' and it is all the Fashion colleges and Universities in the Southern States so, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana etc...
So hundreds of students come and people from industry.

In the first half of the day it is all different talks and presentations by different people in the industry. So fashion journalists, buyers, trend forcasters and so on...

The first part was for Elizabeth to do her talk, 'creative fashion design' and hundreds of students came to watch it was really good. Elizabeth did two, two hours sessions where she spoke about her background and family and then her work so her experience, where she has studied, all about her techniques, her inspiration and everything else. It was really good to listen to what she was saying because it gave me a broader idea of what she likes and doesn't like, and I enjoyed listening to her favourite designers are. Which are: Rick Owens and Comme Des Garcon

So the two sessions went by really fast. Then at the end of each one, Elizabeth asked the students if they had any questions and also if they wanted to go up and look at her garments and feel the fabrics. There was a huge amount of good feedback, and I knew that Elizabeth was successful here, but until yesterday I didn't really know to the extent just how popular she was! All the students were following around, taking pictures of her, asking for their picture with her, acting like they were starstruck it was surreal really. 

They also wanted to speak to me, asking me questions about working with Elizabeth, about life in England and all strangely saying how much they wanted to visit there. The amount of times in one day that I heard 'i love your accent' was unreal. 

Elizabeth also asked what I wanted to wear on the day, she allowed me to wear one of her pieces and said I could choose what I wanted so this was really good! Everyone was complimenting the outfit so it was good to see Elizabeth's work being recognised throughout the day too. 

Me and Elizabeth had a lot of fun throughout the day, I don't think I laughed that much in a long time. 

After all the talks, I was introduced to a man called David Wolfe, who is a Fashion Trend Forcaster in New York who had flown over for the day to be a guest speaker. I felt kind of silly really not knowing who he was, he seemed to be the celebrity of the event. I got speaking to him and he was talking to me about England mentioning that he lived there for 20 years, so this gave us a lot to talk about. 

He walked with us to the room where we had set up Elizabeth's outfits, he was really eager to see them. So we got them out and started showing him them all and he was gobsmacked, saying that he hasn't seen anything as wonderful in so long. He compared Elizabeth's work to Zandra Rhodes so she was a very happy lady after this. 

He then invited us to watch his talk which was amazing to sit in really. He spoke all about next years trends and how everything in Fashion in boring him. To my surprise he was 71 years old, he looked about 50 I was amazed. I have never met someone that knew as much and was as passionate about fashion as him and I was really lucky to get the chance to meet him. 

He spoke about groundbreaking design in architecture, and different design areas, and came onto fashion and just said it has been 42 years since he has seen anything amazing. 

This was a really great opportunity and I am so glad that I met him and went to listen to his talk. He spoke about designers such as Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Iris Van Herpen, and I was surprised because I could tell that not many people in the audience knew who these designers were. 

Because I am a huge geek, I Googled his name when I got home and so much stuff came up!

A very successful half a day so far! 

The second part of the day was the best part, there was a fashion show. And Elizabeth had warned me that it will be nothing like Fashion Week or anything like that. But I was pleasantly surprised really. It was really good. 

All the colleges and universities competed it and was the best students/garments that got entered. It was like graduate fashion week but all on one stage, a shrunken down version. 

I didn't know what to expect with this either really, because I always thought that America, well especially Texas was a bit behind with Fashion, but I was surprised at how much of the show I liked. There was a lot of garments that I loved! 

I will add some of the photos on here, and the rest I am putting on Flickr, so for anyone who would like to see the rest can click the link to see them. 

I did think that most of the garments would be very commercial, which is not something that I like, but I was really surprised in the creative designs that came down the catwalk. 

I didn't really understand just how big the Dallas fashion scene is, I was also shocked at this as there were a lot of industry in the audience. I got a little excited as we were on the front row in the VIP section so I got to meet a lot of interesting people. (it was like I had never been let out the house)

I have picked my favourite photos from the show... 

The dress above is made out of ring pulls off cans

This is my favourite dress, theres is the back view on the Flickr photos!

Overall, an amazing day! 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77219186@N02/

This is the link to see the rest of the photos. 

The show was split up into catagories such as 'Circus' 'The 1950's' 'Recycled Materials' and so on..

At the end of the show there was a winner for the best piece in each catagory. 

There was really good prizes for the winners such as industrial and domestic sewing machines, overlockers.

There was two big overall prizes, one of the prize of $10,000 to start a first collection with the help of an extremely talented male designer in Dallas who was responsible for starting Rick Owens off as a designer. I was told that tuition off this man was like gold. 

And the other prize was to study at a Fashion school in Paris for one month, all expenses paid, the winner shown in the photograph below. 

I think that it's really good that they have this show, because it gives the students even more of a reason to really work for what they want. 

The winner was from the local Fashion School 'El Centro' so everyone was cheering so loud when he won.

Elizabeth also won this prize when she attended El Centro and was able to study in London for a semester. 

Such a good day!!!

Most of the models from this show are from Wallflower modelling agency in Dallas where I am also going to be interning with while I am here. Their models work, London/New York Fashion week and many other big events. This is really exciting also! 

Anyway..

Bye for now!