Wednesday 27 January 2010

"huh, the irony..."

Ok, I admit that this is just confusing!

This week, I started reading 2 books;

The Culture of Fashion by Christopher Breward - which is actually part of the "Essential Reading" list that I got as a part of my new module, and...

Dematerializing: Taming the Power of Possessions by Jane Hamm
erslough - which I just got from my Dad (I asked him to bring it along when we met up in Holland).

Just to be clear, even before I held these books in my hands, I knew that I am interested in the subjects given by both books. BUT, what I didn't rea
lise until now is that each book contradicts the other. I realised that I am now living in a materialistic world, and I wont deny it that I can be very materialistic at times :p Thus, came my interest in reading a book to 'tame the power of possessions'; starting from my own. Before finished with the first book, I moved on to the second book - which the list I've just received recently. Laid out chronologically, this book brings the readers through the history of fashion throughout the centuries - including the external factors like the socio-cultural aspects. I started with the last chapter in the book, about the late-twentieth century; the present day. This chapter talks about how quickly the concept of fashion changes, and how the so-called contemporary fashion doesn't necessarily mean 'meeting the costumers' demands and needs'; even some are simply forms of aesthetics.

Reading these two books at around the same time, made me think; am I betraying my own values here? Not only as an observant, I am actually involved in the concept of "materialism". I am studying FASHION for God's sake! Even these 3 magazi
nes are becoming my most dominant periodical resource!
Yeah, so... I'm a little lost here...

Help

Monday 18 January 2010

pa.per |ˈpāpər|

Remember my entry entitled Papyrus? Well that was the beginning of my Papery project, and at 2 am this morning, I finally finished my developmental sketchbook for it and handed everything in 7 hours later.


This is what we ended up with; a whole outfit made out of paper...only paper






The whole outfit was inspired by Beatrix Potter's character; Peter Rabbit.
I worked on it with my talented friend, Ms. Meagan Wellman for weeks!
Lots of frustrations surfaced on the process, but, we're happy with the result :D

Wish us luck for the presentation tomorrow!

Saturday 9 January 2010

Pride

I'd like to thank my Mom for sending me magazines from Jakarta; because of course the content would be different to magazines in the UK.

"...one of them covers this year's Jakarta Fashion Week..."

That was mainly the reason why she sent them to me :)

As I was flicking through 'Femina, Edisi Tahunan 2010', I found a page that has images from a runway show. I realised that the models are wearing batik; and I thought that they must be from Jakarta Fashion Week. However, it seems that the photos are different from the images I saw from the Fashion Week the year before; starting from the make up on the models, the catwalk, even the style of photography. So I looked more closely and saw the designers' names; and it turned out that one of them is Dries Van Noten!

This Belgian designer included - not only tints of batik - but the whole fabric as the actual garments.



A blouse with big 'parang' pattern



Smaller 'parang' pattern on a dress

I was really proud when I saw this :)
But one question came to my mind,

If anything, I don't see that his designs are more special than any Indonesian designers who have been recycling batik as ready-to-wear fashion for years now; then how come they don't get that much recognition?