No not doomsday, not by far. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
So yes, our critic, Bonnie Young, was arriving to make her critique of our finalized garments. The aura was mixed, some anxious, some aloof, some indifferent (like me).
Speaking for myself, I only submitted one garment for review, and that was my Baroque inspired dress. The jacket will no longer accompany it as I believe I stated before, and instead will go for my Cotton Inc. look, which even still I am not submitting for the contest. Personal choice. I’m treating it now as a no pressure final garment for grading.
Helen’s accessory page. Highly professional presentation don’t you agree?
Anywho, we all prepped with high hopes and star glazed eyes (overly dramatic wording alert), pining gleefully at the opportunity that lie ahead (told you).
Prof. Seggio informed us to come prepared with printouts and ideas for how we will accessorize our looks, as well as the design sketch and swatches. (I opted to do a CAD drawing from my own sketch actually.)
Lining up! And admiration by Helen and Jihaeng.
Thai doing some final pressing.
Helen in preparation mode.
Neutral to color splash! Helen, Janine, Poorum.
Earth Tones. Student Showcase III of these garments and more coming in the next post.
Near complete lineup. I can’t wait to show you all the detail shots. We’re an awesome group! I’m proud of everyone and myself included.
When Bonnie arrived, we greeted her. She was immediately shocked at how much we’d accomplished since she last visited. It was tough though, since her time with us was so limited, unfortunately that if we had any flaws or needed tweaks, at this stage it was already too late to make any major changes. I think if we had maybe one more visit at the stages of early construction, this could have been avoided. But overall, the results and feedback were okay, it varied from person to person, I won’t get too specific, but yea we survived it.
I will be showcasing everyones individual garments in the upcoming post. Later, look out for a report on the Judging Day (or should I say “Judgement Day”) happenings and our class Critic Award Winner.
No matter what happens, we all know we worked hard in the 1 1/2 years we’ve been doing Children’s Wear at FIT, gaining the skills we will use for our career lifetimes. It doesn’t end here!
So this past Wednesday, our critic Bonnie Young visited to make her picks and make tweaks for what she wanted to be sent down for judging. But hold on a minute, what exactly happened before that?
So what exactly goes into prepping for the Critic’s visit?
Running around like a beheaded chicken. No, I’m just joking. Basically you just want to show your best work possible, bottom line. For some that brings more stress than others. I think my fellow Children’s Wear gals handled everything pretty well, and there were many who really exceeded expectations, at least in my opinion.
Contrary to popular belief, Children’s Wear is NOT the “easy specialization”. It’s not the one you chose just because you want an easy time. Proportions are important. You have to think in a totally different way from Women’s Wear. It’s extremely technical as well (excellent pattern making skills are KEY.) One huge plus side to Children’s Wear though is yay less fabric yardage! But don’t get me wrong, it is less stressful. If you’re considering Children’s Wear, go for it!
Now for photos! Let’s see some more of what everyone was up to in the weeks leading to the critic’s visit as well as some garments you may have never seen…
(You can click on the photos to make them larger by the way!)
Jihaeng’s skirt and leggings. Sparkles and grommets!
Made a bow for my dress! Was a hair accessory, but now it’s actually going on my dress, haha.
Casey’s surrealist jacket and pants set. There’s also a cute matching top and pant set under there! Casey isn’t afraid to push the boundaries of style for Children, innovation is very important in this industry.
The amount of student work I have to share is limitless! Stay tuned, in my next post I will be showcasing something different, Boys fashion! You thought it was girls girls girls? Nope, we do have a few boys garments over here in C706, *Hint: Get a teeny preview of that back over at the Fitting Post here!
Fashion Show judging is actually this week (yikes, hell week!), but I’ll have full coverage of that a bit later on, so look out for that too, but for now, shameless plugs for the Children’s Wear family! We’ve worked hard and everyone will be sure to see.
Last Monday was a stressful day! After spending the night finishing to knit my collar, I had a 45 minutes nap before getting in a cab and heading to school. We all put our our outfits on dress forms and waited for our critic Reiko to pre-judge our looks. We left the classroom for an hour, the time she needed to carefully look at every-one’s work and choose a critic award winner, and eventually deselect some looks for the judging day.
We all came back, dead tired, waiting to quickly pack up our things and have a little nap.
Reiko said she was very impressed with our class and our designs. We went much further than the expected. She would have liked to give many of us an award and added that it was very hard to pick a single one.
The winner was announced, and to a big surprise, it was me! So kudos for that. I am very happy to be the winner – as I have never won any fashion prize or award before. She added that the reason she picked me was that everytime I met her, I had developed my ideas. Also, I seriously listened to all her advices, stepping back from my original ideas and design, looking at my work from an objective point of view, and changing what needed to be changed. Indeed, at the beginning of the process, I was experimenting with plastic very much. I wanted to “glue” plastic bags directly onto my fabrics with latex. The idea was interesting, but not looking as attractive as it may sound. I had many ideas, but eventually, they were all over the place. A few weeks before I started knitting the final fabrics, I decided to change the colors and leave behind anything that looked too “crafty”. I still used the plastic, but knitting black garbage bags.
On Tuesday night, we set up all of our pre-selected outfits in the great hall at school. They were judged for the fashion show (May 4th) and a cotton award was chosen for each specialization track. My roomie and friend Elin got the knitwear cotton award with her amazing cotton paper handknit jacket.
Now it’s spring break and we are looking forward for some chill time! Take care and enjoy the pictures!
The critics eliminations were this week, and both of my garments made it past the first round!!! I have quite a few things to do to make sure they are perfect this weekend. Wednesday is judging for the actual fashion show and I couldn’t be more nervous! I made another video this week, woohoo! (Take a look at the entire classes garments!!!)
So, a few weeks ago I delted facebook because I found myself being distracted by the nothingness that happens on the site. In this video, you will hear my roommates ridiculous reasoning to why I should still be on the site. Feel free to laugh. You will also see my dying process for the cotton dress….and my distractions in between. Feel free to laugh, again. Finally, you can see kids “dancin’ for change”, the work of my classmates, my skype date, my very “lived-in” room and one of the subways that I depend on every single day! Oh, btw this is one of my favorite songs —U2~ “It’s a Beautiful Day” <3
So this week has been an especially crazy one, I must say. On Monday, knowing that our final critic meeting was on the coming Wednesday, I asked my internship if I could leave a few hours early and tack those hours onto Friday instead. (I intern at Opening Ceremony, btw since for whatever reason I haven’t mentioned that before? It’s totally awesome, though, and I wish I could own absolutely everything in their SS10 collection!) I went to midtown, picked up some last minute supplies (organza in the burgundy colour of my top to use as trim and some thread for my orange leather). I went home and basically worked all night on finishing up what I could. On Tuesday I mostly spent my time working on Cotton Inc though I really didn’t have much to show for it on Wednesday.
Wednesday was our critic critique and it was a little rough, I have to say. The following is a video of the beginning and end my my critique (there’s a large middle section missing).
So needless to say, I was not left feeling extremely excited after my review. There were a lot of things that Jean said that I thought were truly valid and insightful, but she also made some comments that I didn’t entirely agree with. Now I know that this is not unusual and of course I did not expect for her to love everything, but I found it difficult to debate my point of view; firstly because I was running on very little sleep, but I also I thought it unnecessary because in the end, I truly am free to make my own decisions so I might as well not cause a fuss out of it.
Things to point out:
1. I do agree that something is wrong with the shapes. I personally think that the proportions work, with the high waisted pant and the cropped jacket and top (I’m fully aware that this look is not for everyone!) but perhaps the under top is missing something. Maybe that it’s just that the cut isn’t doing much for it? But I wonder if my chunky/statement necklace will fix that?
2. One frustrating portion of the critique was how Jean mentioned that the top seemed too short and that a longer under piece might have made more sense proportionally. In my initial design, this was longer but I was advised to shorten it. Ha… go figure.
3. I also was a little confused because I thought that making a statement or standing out was important because this garment was for a Fashion Show. I took this to heart and decided to use vinyl in my garment to play off of the lighting of the runway. Also, by my use of colour, which is my “thing” (I’ve always said that rainbow is my favourite colour!) and I honestly didn’t think I was even doing anything outrageous in my colour story. Yes, unusual, but not CRAZY. When I had already determined my colour story and designs, amongst others I saw both Balenciaga and Marni Fall 2010 shows and I became pretty confident in my colour choices. I understand that not everyone will wear those colours together, but I am not designing for everyone.
4. Lastly, I certainly understand what she is saying about working for someone else. Not everyone will understand my vision, and not everything is going to sell, so sometimes I will need to conform or redesign. However, the way I see my career at FIT is that this is my chance to really explore who I am as a designer, because I’m not designing for any other mold. This is my time to get to the raw of who I am as an artist — I’ll have plenty of time to follow molds for the rest of my life! No, I won’t necessarily get into the show, but as my mom told me in an inspirational voice mail that I received while I was in my next class, how would I feel if I conformed to my critic’s or professor’s opinions, when I didn’t agree with them, and I didn’t get into the show anyhow? I’d be left without a garment my soul was in, and I wouldn’t be in the show. And she’s right! I’d rather not get into the show but at least know that what I created, was something I’m super proud of! Thanks, momma! Sidenote, I also take my parents opinions especially strongly as together they own a chain of clothing stores, where 50% of the merchandise is in-house designed and produced mostly locally (it’s called, Plum, and it’s just on the west coast of Canada) – so they too are informed critics!
Overall, the experience with Jean was extremely valuable. I’m sure I will come across many more “tough critics” in the future of my career, and this was a great trial run. Thankfully, Jean expressed that she was impressed with my conviction and articulation of my ideas which I think was a great compliment because it was important to me to portray the confidence that I had in my design.
Back to the garments… here’s my current progress on Cotton Inc!
crazy pointelle graph - knitting a sample of it on the Brother machine. every pointelle hole has been hand transferred!
very preliminery stages of bodysuit (that red is just waste yarn and will be removed).