Day 2

We had access to the fantastic library collection of St. Martin's so I decided, for a change, to make good use of the resources available to me. I went there to get to know my way around the bookshelves and all the amazing collections of books. As I read through the beautiful books about fashion history I found out that Marie Antoinette had a Minister of Fashion (Rose Bertin) and that the first designer "couturierre" was Charles Frederick Worth, an Englishmen who moved to Paris and in the 1850s was the first to start putting labels with his name on the dresses he made. His studio was on 7, Rue de la Paix. I came accross an interesting definition by Poiret, who said that "the designer puts him/herself into everything she does". I am no more able of looking at the simples plastic bag without thinking about the person who put something of themselves by elongating the handles just this much longer or who made the print that went on it...

Class started and Ian said we are going down to the library and were going to spend the next hours on the second stage of our design process, putting together a "visual palette". This contains images, colours, textures, details that we associate with the theme we are working with. For this purpose, designers have these massive books for "visual stimulation" which contain anything from pictures of nature, art, sculpture, woodcarvings, photography, anything that helps you visualise what you connect with the theme. This is the first stage of fashion research and it continues throughout. At this stage it is important to NOT start with ready products (that is why we are not looking at fashion yet) in order to build a more abstract tone, which would make a more unique and inspiring fashion story. You should go through this process with as open mind as possible, keeping traits and images, not discarding anything at this stage because "it does not fit with the rest". We started taking pictures as well, to try and keep as much record of the work done, as it is very useful to be able to go back in the design process.