Sunday 29 June 2014

Fire and water

IMG_8652e

IMG_8654-red

IMG_8643e

dress made by me out of fabric from India
belt and earrings also made by me
Converse
Urban Outfitters sunglasses
Topshop socks
backpack from Spain

This is the second dress out of three (my patchwork Grayson Perry dress is number one) that I've made to the same simple pattern just to show off the fabrics. Also it's a cute, easy but still funky thing to just throw on. Summer dressing can be a real task when a lot of your wardrobe favourites are made out of organza, PVC, fake fur etc etc, so this summer I'm trying to limit myself to nice patterned cottons. (This dress is green but I liked the red edits so posting them too.) :)

Friday 27 June 2014

Floral daze

IMG_8667e

IMG_8669e

IMG_8673e\

skirt made by me out of fabric from India
H&M top
Asos jacket
YRU shoes
Sekonda watch

I've just home from a trip to the Netherlands where I spent my days in the best way possible: wandering round the canals and visiting famous paintings in Amsterdam, and lazing on the beach in the Hague. I didn't realise when packing but almost all the clothes I took were ones I'd made myself…. I'm on a sewing roll at the moment! :)

Tuesday 24 June 2014

"Without obsession, life is nothing"

Here are some of my initial clothing sketches for my "Worship" project. These were rough ideas about sillohuette, inspired by the physical movements involved in ritual worships, religious dress and the clothing in religious art, particularly Medieval Christianity. Can you tell which two I chose to go on to make? :)

drawings-1

drawings-2

drawings-3

drawings-4

For more photos of this project, please click here.

All of these images were created from scratch by me (as are pretty much all the
images on my blog, but these ones are my actual work). Please, please do not repost
them without crediting me as they took many, many, many hours of hard work!

Ps. I made garments from the left and right sketches in the bottom set, although the final prints turned out differently.


Saturday 21 June 2014

Kitsch and awe

In the photos from my final photoshoot, some of the details of the clothes get lost so, here are some close-up pictures. Towards the end of the project, I went for a kitschy approach and used a lot of embellishment as well as print. I got my drawings digital printed onto fabric, then painted glitter over them and stuck on a whole of assortment of kitsch, including pom-poms, plastic gems, fake flowers, gold spray-painted Haribo sweets (yeah, seriously) and much more! :)

IMG_8089

IMG_8395

IMG_8075

IMG_8085

IMG_8071

IMG_8183

IMG_8077

IMG_8192

IMG_8088

IMG_8081

IMG_8080

For more photos of this project, please click here.

All of these images were created from scratch by me (as are pretty much all the
images on my blog, but these ones are my actual work). Please, please do not repost
them without crediting me as they took many, many, many hours of hard work!

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Holy talapus

My "Worship" project focussed on Hindu and Christian iconography and I did a series of drawings of gods, which I experimented and further developed, with the idea of using them as prints on fabric for clothing. In my final photoshoot, you can see that K is wearing a large Shiva print, which is the end section of a sari worn in the "fisherwoman's style". Here are some of the other prints I made before deciding to use the Shiva print (top).

shiva-square

mary-child-square

ganapthi-square

jesus-psychadelic-square

kali-square

mary-square

hanuman-square

jesus-sad-square

pastel-gods

For more photos of this project, please click here.

All of these images were created from scratch by me (as are pretty much all the
images on my blog, but these ones are my actual work). Please, please do not repost
them without crediting me as they took many, many, many hours of hard work!


Ps. Should any questions about cultural appropriation arise, I am ready to answer.

Monday 16 June 2014

Exhibition madness

IMG_8563-monsters

IMG_8580-monsters

IMG_8602e

IMG_8599e

IMG_8605-monsters

IMG_8588e

IMG_8600e

IMG_8582-monsters

IMG_8572-monsters

In my "Worship" project, I created a lot of print designs (a selection of which I will be posting on this blog soon) and I really wish I could make them all into clothing one day. For opening night, I didn't want to match my exhibition too closely, but I was/am still obsessed with the style of prints I've been making, so eventually I settled on the idea of making patches printed with my drawings and sewing them onto a sheer dress. It took me about a week of on-and-off work to make the pattern, the organza dress, the patches (using iron-on transfer paper for normal printers), and sew it all together and I only managed to finish it about an hour before I had to wear it! It doesn't seem like there are that many, but covering the whole dress took approximately 50 patches! My project was partly inspired by Grayson Perry's work and this dress was a little homage to Grayson as Claire, who is currently one of my style icons (more about this another time). Anyway I am absolutely thrilled with how this dress turned out and I love it to bits, as did a surprising number of adults at the exhibition. :)

Ps. The prints overlaid in these photos are also from my project!

Friday 13 June 2014

All That Glitters May Well Be Gold

Today is the day my end-of-year Foundation art exhibition opens! This marks the end of a fantastic year filled with crazy arty people, weird and wonderful moments and lots and lots (and lots) of hard work. "Work" sometimes meaning throwing glitter around and photographing it. My final major project is based on the idea of "worship" and the appropriation of religious iconography into meaningless kitsch. For my display, I put up theses pictures from my photoshoot, featuring my cousins wearing two outfits that I made: S in a flowing tunic with a spiked halo, and K in a printed sari and hooded top. I hope you love them as much as I do - this project has been incredibly fun to work on and I'm sad it's now at an end. :)

IMG_8366-inverse

IMG_8373-inverse

IMG_8362-inverse

IMG_8311-inverse

IMG_8322-inverse

IMG_8301-inverse

IMG_8384-inverse

Clothing, featuring hand-draw illustrative prints, by me
Make-up, styling, lighting and photography by me
Modelled by my gracious and willing cousins K and S

All of these images were created from scratch by me (as are pretty much all the
images on my blog, but these ones are my actual work). Please, please do not repost
them without crediting me as they took many, many, many hours of hard work!

Ps. Closer photos of the makeup here. For more photos of this project, please click here.
Ps. For the duration of the exhibition, I'll be posting other pictures of my work from this project here so stay tuned!

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Freak show

IMG_8534-flowers

IMG_8539-flowers

IMG_8545-flowers


dress from Kenya
Freak of nature leggings
fake fur scarf made by me

Hard to believe I've had these amazing leggings for about a year now but they're only just making it onto the blog. They are basically Tumblr in clothes form and that is a wonderful thing. :)

Saturday 7 June 2014

Flaming intervention

IMG_8500e-stars

IMG_8525e-stars

IMG_8524e-stars

skirt made by me from fabric from India
old denim jacket customised by me
random tshirt
River Island shoes

I made this skirt this morning and have been wearing it since because it's so damn floaty and freeing.
 As for this jacket, a couple of days before my deadline I suddenly had the idea to transform this jacket which has been through about 3 previous incarnations. (See here and here.) Obviously I had to do it immediately. After a couple of hours of thinking and googling/tumblring for inspiration I realised that I was bored of the denim blue and that what I actually wanted was to make structural changes so it looked like a cool-ass funky jacket rather than just a customised denim jacket. Inspired by Prada's SS13 Hot Rods (a particular favourite) I made some flames out of felt and white PVC, painted all the blue denim white, and got keen with a little hand embroidery (which you actually can't see in these photos). I've not decided yet if this jacket is finished - I'm considering a sprinkling of multicoloured gems - but I now love so much I'm even thinking about making a skirt with matching flames. :)

Ps. I also cut my hair a good 4 inches and can you believe it took 3 days before someone noticed?! In fact they didn't even notice; I had to tell them. Honestly.