Portland Fashion Week and Stuff

Hello again dear readers! Last night I had the pleasure of attending, with a friend, the final show of Portland Fashion Week. Well, I say pleasure. And it was fun- we sat in the audience and took apart everything we liked and didn't like about each garment. But it was a bit of a disappointment, all in all. The show was DREAM LUXE, supposedly featuring luxury and avant-garde looks from various "edgier" designers*. It struck me, however, as decidedly alongside the Garde, rather than Avant it. In the words of my gentleman companion, regarding one look, "I think I saw someone wear that to a junior high dance."

The general tone of the show was, I suppose, unusual to those who aren't plugged in to what's going on in the more unusual areas of fashion, but to anyone who is at all aware of the various influential street fashion scenes worldwide, it was downright prosaic. I saw a lot of details, particularly graduated hems, that I've been seeing for a while all over the place. It was frustrating. Designers should design what they want, and if that means doing exactly what everyone else is doing then so be it I suppose, but that's not the kind of fashion design I want to do.

At work prior to the show, I had read an article one of my co-workers had posted on her cubicle. It was a piece written by John Waters about the sack dress and the idea of fashion making people angry. After the show, I re-read the article and was struck by how well it aligned with how I think about the role of fashion designers in society. He talks about how fascinated he was with the idea that an article of clothing could be so divisive, could make people so angry.

I guess it got me thinking- I don't want to make fashion that's "safe". I understand why people do, especially designers who are making their living off of their work, but I want to question things. I don't know if I want to make people angry, though. What I want to do is make things that people didn't know they needed until I made them. I want to design clothes that break all the rules of fashion, written and unwritten. I'm unsure if this is a viable business plan, but goddammit I'm going to try. My hope is that if I get good enough at what I do, and put my work out there, people will want it.

*I really, really hate the word edgy.

I Swear I'm Alive!

Many apologies for the radio silence, gentle readers (such as you are- shoutout to James who reads this :3). I've been desperately looking for a job and the time has rather gotten away from me. I've got a couple big posts in the works, but I wanted to do a quick inspiration dump of all the fashion things that have been on my mind recently.

Japanese Street Fashion
I don't pretend to understand anything about Japanese culture, but from religiously reading Tokyo Fashion and following the Twitters and Tumblrs of a few people involved in the scene, I've learned that there's something brilliant and amazing going on in Japanese street fashion. A lot of really creative people are all creating amazing stuff and, while trying to comprehend the cultural meaning of it all makes me feel like Cleetus the slack-jawed yokel, I do love looking at pretty pictures of creative outfits. My latest obsession in the field of Japanese street fashion is Cult Party Kei. I came for the vintage Gunne Sax gowns, but I stayed for the gorgeous ivory lace and frills.

Manyapon, a Cult Party style icon. You can find Manyapon's blog here. Source: violetmoonbeams.blogspot.com

As anyone who knows me could tell you, I adore floor-length skirts, so this look struck me immediately. It's the sort of princess silhouette I adore, with lots of layers and ruffles. Perfect.

I'm not totally clear on what distinguishes Hipsterloli from Dolly Kei or other styles that, to my untrained Western eye, look similar, but I'm madly in love with this look, which ohyeahcultparty calls Hipsterloli.

Source: ohyeahcultparty.tumblr.com

I especially love the details at the hem of the skirt.

Fairy Kei seems to be about rediscovering the joys of childhood- if by childhood we mean mid-eighties toys, pastel colours, and legwarmers. Whatever, it's adorable and gives me great miniskirt/minidress inspiration, even if I lean more to the black side of the colour spectrum.

Moco, a Japanese indie designer. You can find her  blog here. Source: tokyofashion.com

The above look is one of my favourites.

Dolly Kei also uses vintage fashion and you end up looking like a princess, so I'm sold. This picture expresses my soul:

Using teddy bears as accessories! Platform sneakers and a long skirt! Perfection. Source: dollykei.tumblr.com

Bloomers and Other Stuff That Looks Vaugely Like Victorian Underwear

I've pretty much given up on jeans. Over the last year, I gained weight (as a result of something other than growing) for the first time in my life- long story. This means that my already oddly skinny-curvy figure is even harder to fit. Instead, I've been wearing bloomers. They're much more visually interesting than jeans, they're comfier, and I can show off my collection of knee socks. Here's some bloomer inspiration.

Source: reenacat.etsy.com

Clown pants, circa 1860. Source: worthpoint.com

Source: kathleencrowley.etsy.com

So that's what's been on my mind recently: fanciful Japanese fashion and pants that make me look like a Victorian prostitute/circus performer. As always, you can see more inspirational images on my tumblr.

Current Obsession: Dark Knights and Caped Crusaders

I love comics. Transmetropolitan quite literally changed my entire outlook on life when I read it my freshman year of college, and to shy teenage me Tank Girl was a blinding revelation. I firmly believe Sandman is one of the great pieces of modern literature and art. I've read indie comics, webcomics, manga, and weird dystopian fantasies. But until a few weeks ago, I had never really read superhero comics. The closest I'd come was Hellboy. I've been tearing through issues and trades like there's no tomorrow, DC and Marvel alike, and consuming other forms of superhero media just as voraciously. I've become a little bit obsessed.
It's not the stories that get me, though. For the most part it's not even the characters (though I have a serious soft spot for the Avengers' Hawkeye). It's the clothes. I'm completely captivated by the logic- or lack thereof- of superhero/supervillain costumes. I spent an engrossing couple of hours the other day browsing Wikipedia's entries on Marvel and DC characters, during which I learned that Superman's outfit, upon which many other such costumes were based, was modeled on that of a circus strongman.

I don't know what he thinks he's doing here but I'm sure he's got a good reason for it. Source: Comicbookdaily.com.

The thing that really gets me about these costumes is that they're patently ridiculous- I mean, he's wearing red underwear and a blue unitard, for crissakes. He's got a cape.

Edna Mode, my fashion fairy godmother.

And look at Batman! Okay, yeah, he's hella intimidating, but he's a grown-ass man dressing up as a bat. And don't even get me started on the villains. Look at Marvel's extraordinarily weird contingent of aliens, terrorists, Nazis, and giant floating heads, not to mention all the fashion disasters Batman fights.
...Oh, who am I kidding. I love it all. I love it because these characters' designers got to just go to town. My training is in theatrical costume design, where the focus is mostly on realism and period accuracy. I always wanted to let loose and do something totally crazy like that. The thing is, though, that they're not just crazy- they really work. I'm going to talk about a few of my favourite superhero and supervillain costumes, and why I love them.

Mockingbird

Source: marvel.wikia.com.

I'm totally in love with Mockingbird's costume. I don't really know the character, as the only place I've encountered her is briefly in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but she's got great style. The look is elegant, clean, and simple. The bell sleeves are a nice and unique touch too, and combined with the foldover boots make a balanced silhouette.
The Joker

The Joker in Detective Comics #475. Source: rocketllama.com.

Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Source: batman.wikia.com

The Joker might be my favourite comic-book villain (he's tied with Harley Quinn, see below). I was fascinated with him well before I got into comics. He's just got such fabulous and original style, no matter what incarnation of him you look at. Purple and green is a really fun colour combination.
Harley Quinn

 

Source: batman.wikia.com

It would have been so easy for whoever designed Harley Quinn's costume for Joker's Favor (the Batman: TAS episode in which she first appeared) to make her look like a female version of the Joker, but they didn't. Instead, she has a related but totally original look that I'm sure contributed to her taking off as a villain in her own right. I'm a huge fan of bodysuits and pixie boots. Both her costume and the Joker's help make their actions even more sinister and their characters more terrifying: they're not serious, cold-blooded killers, they're silly, fun-loving people who just happen to have a total disregard for human life.

Hawkeye (Movieverse/New Hawkeye)

Hawkeye in Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon. Source: conventionscene.com

I love Hawkeye's new look about as much as I dislike his old one (I don't have any particular reason for disliking his traditional costume, I just think it looks kind of silly). His costume in The Avengers and in the new Hawkeye comics is simple and functional, which seem to fit Clint's personality pretty well. I'm a sucker for really well-done minimalism, and that's what David Aja and Javier Pulido have done in My Life As A Weapon. And I mean come on- tight black t-shirt, black jeans, black combat boots? The look just screams badass.

Hawkeye (Kate Bishop)

David Aja's sketch of Kate Bishop from Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon. Source: lavvyan.tumblr.com

More Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon. It's just such a stylish comic. I love this version of Kate Bishop. Bodysuits, pocket belts, thigh pockets- it's practical, cool, and gives off this great air of don't fuck with me. If I was a superhero, I'd want to look like her.

I'm going to start setting myself weekly (or biweekly) design challenges, based around a couple of themes. The first few will just be in black and white, as I foolishly packed my coloured pencils and they are now in storage until July. The first themes will be superhero/supervillain, in honour of my current obsession, and the music of the Pillows, this awesome Japanese punk band I'm also currently obsessed with. They're probably best known for doing the soundtrack to FLCL.

Expect the first challenge post within the week!

Adventures in CAD

My dad is... well, technically I guess he's an inventor, but most recently he's an industrial designer. He does a lot of work with CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs, and is pretty active on the internet in CAD circles. As such, he's recently gotten involved with a company called AutoDesk, which has a new program, Fusion360, in beta. They wanted his input and wined and dined him in Portland and San Francisco, and as it turns out they're really looking for new ideas regarding CAD work and what their program could be used for. I've been curious for a long time about designing patterns on the computer- pattern drafting by hand is a wonderful skill, but it takes a long time and I can't help thinking that there has to be a better way to do things. I've signed up for the Fusion360 beta, and I'm currently going through the tutorials and stuff. What I'm proposing to do- that is, using a 3D-modeling program to create 2D patterns- is pushing the boundaries of what this software is intended to do, but I think it could be really great.
One of the wonderful things about sewing for me is that it's been much the same for decades. Various advances in sewing machine technology have brought about some changes, and certainly the invention of the serger was pretty radical, but even so, the process of drafting the pattern, cutting the fabric, and putting it together isn't that much different. It's an ancient technology. At the same time, I firmly believe that we as a society need to move with the times. New tech isn't going to go anywhere just because we like old tech better, so we might as well get used to it and make it work like we want. Just like cars supplanted horse-drawn carriages, and like cell phones are gradually replacing landlines, I think the art of drafting patterns by hand is going to die out. The eternal problem with clothing design is making clothes fit. Before ready-to-wear clothing, pretty much everyone made their own clothes, or had someone make them. Clothing was, by and large, custom (at least if you were wealthy enough- I am making generalizations here, I know, but it's in service of making a point). With the advent of ready-to-wear clothing, suddenly there came a problem: people come in lots and lots of different shapes and sizes, and it's practically impossible to generalize what a person looks like. The various sizing systems that have developed to cope with this do not work. I started making my own clothes because I was so frustrated with never being able to find anything to fit me. The future of the garment industry is in a return to custom-fitted clothing, but using the new tech that we have available. When my dad was at AutoDesk's San Francisco offices, they had a machine that could create a 3D scan of your body. From a scan like that, a pattern could be produced for clothing that would be fitted exactly to you. Part of the expense of custom-made clothing, or of haute couture for that matter, is in creating a custom pattern. If that process could be automated, I believe that custom clothing could be made much more cheaply.
Having clothes that fit is really great for your self-esteem. I used to hate my body because I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong because nothing ever fit me. I'm very short and relatively thin, but I'm also quite curvy and a definite pear shape. In most things I wear a 0-2, but the body shape for which size 0-2 clothes are designed is the slim, androgynous body of a runway model. My hips were always too big, my waist and chest too small. Nothing ever fit right, and I put the blame on myself, when instead I should have put it on the clothes I was wearing. Making clothes for myself was a way to own my body shape and become comfortable with it. I'm lucky, though. I can at least find clothes in roughly my size. The whole area of plus-size fashion is something I can't really talk too much about, as I've never been plus-size, but I can imagine that easier and cheaper access to custom clothing could only be a good thing.
So. That turned into a bit of a rant. Anyway, I'll post about how Fusion360 works out.

Hello and Welcome! A Manifesto?

I just graduated from Reed College, with a degree in theatre. I specialized in costume design. Now that I've got a fancy degree, though, I'm faced with the terrible problem of What To Do Next. I want to be a fashion designer. I've been sewing pretty much my whole life and making my own clothes since high school. I eat, sleep, and breathe clothes, and always have. I've tried to hide it at various points in my life, under the misapprehension that I should strive to be a teacher, or an academic, or a diplomat- something "more important" than a mere fashion designer. Once I started college, though, and started having to think about clothing in an academic way, I realized that being a fashion designer is, in its own way, every bit as important as any of those other things. Clothing helps shape the way we think and feel about ourselves. Clothing is vitally important. The world right now needs designers who are willing to think about clothing in new ways, designers who are willing to think about the role technology is going to play in fashion, about gender and sexuality as they relate to fashion, and the world needs designers who are willing to stop designing for supermodels and instead take into account the myriad of different body types there are in the world. I would like to be one of those designers.

So here I am. I graduated from college exactly six days ago. I'll be living in Portland, looking for a job, and trying to make it big (or at least make it) in the world of independent fashion design. I'll be writing about my experiences here. You can also expect to see outfit posts and the occasional craft or sewing tutorial. I keep a tumblr of inspirational images here.

The title, for the curious, comes from a P.G. Woodehouse story.