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!
No comments:
Post a Comment