We all need a Joseph

Special thanks to my Momma who took my place at my studio table for a few days - not sure I would have finished without you! x

The Final Cut

June 1st 2011 brought with it the bitter sweet experience of Show Selection, something every student wants to succeed in (despite protesting otherwise)! There is no doubt that the very many 'all nighters', tears, sweat and endless to-do lists leave you feeling vulnerable and exhausted come selection day. And there is no doubt in my mind that when you've spent 9 months resolving a creative vision, you want to be able to show it off and show it off good!

Above you can see the mini studio I set up with a fellow fashionista at uni, complete with industrial machine, button hole domestic and that's my bed behind the machine - the window ledge. Honestly.

As you can see by the carnage on my table it was a fraught time!

And so we kicked off the selection process at 10am with industry personnel including Guy Hipwell @ Fashion 156, Helen Palmer @ WGSN, Catherine and Rob @ Teatum|Jones and Louise Gray. A mad hour and a half backstage equated to 1 minute in front of a silent judging panel, we were like a dressing team on speed that day!

After pulling together to get everybody's collections out it was truly bitter sweet to receive confirmation of my selection. Seeing peoples aspirations trampled on was tough and there were more than a few tears. Nonetheless, I had to move forward and make sure the rest of the collection was finished in time for show day. Will never know how I would have felt had I been one of the unlucky ones.

Stamping Feet

Feet stamping, quite literally was what I had to do to convince my tutor that I wanted flat, masculine shoes to style with my collection. Now don't get me wrong, I was never going to budge on this one and I believe it is important to stand up for your creative vision when you feel passionate about something. Nonetheless I wanted him to realise that I was right after all.

So I spent weeks lusting after a pair of white studded Louboutin bad boys (Roller Girl, you've almost definitely seen them and craved them if your a flats girl like me). I asked Mr. Louboutin's PR very nicely if I could borrow 8 pairs for my show, queue a polite no. Fast forward to a week before the holy grail that is Show Selection and shoe panic commenced. As I sat with my finger poised to purchase some River Island bargains my good friend and menswear designer Kit Neale jumped on Ebay and found me the perfect beauties. So thanks go to Mr. Neale and also online store Jungle Surplus Army Clothing for accommodating my bizarre request for 8 pairs of genuine German Navy Deck shoes!

P.S Sadly Jungle's Covent Garden store is no longer in existence but an insider told me that Princess Di was once a customer!

Technical Quilting

Following my discovery of Lana at Bewitching Stitching (and possibly more importantly her husband Rod), May became the month of quilting mania. Initially I had to 'digitise' my design work so that it could be programmed into Lana's fabulous IntelliQuilter. This in itself was a challenge as I had been working small scale, producing hard copies of the artworks and then stitching them directly on the fabric through paper. This was one of the main reasons I needed to work with somebody who could complete the process mechanically - the finish wasn't luxurious by the time I'd finished picked out the paper across 10m of fabric!

Once I had produced a Illustrator file of the design (I had never used the program before and this was the mother of all crash courses), I sent it over for Rod to convert into a special quilting file. I know from the late night phone calls and references to wine consumed that this was an exceptionally challenging task, one which neither of us had realised, sorry Rod! Thanks to both Lana and Rod's perseverance I arrived at the workshop to see these fabulous test pieces emerging.

Expect incredible multi layered, technical fabric quilted garments.

Upping the knit ante

I worked on the knitwear for the collection with Susana Bettencourt, an accomplished knitwear designer in her own right with celebrity fans including Lady Gaga and Sarah Harding! You can see more of her work here.

It was so exciting to take her some of the woven samples I had created along with a few cones of yarn and hear her endless possibilities! What had initially been a couple of key knitwear basics (cardigans, slouchy sweaters) became about developing a successful translation of my constructed story into knit.

I should probably take this opportunity to say I have been working in the luxury knitwear sector for nearly two years, hence my love of the technique. But as all of our sampling and production is completed in Italy, I have little understanding about the processes involved when considering my own work. This has been such an exciting learning curve and I will save the final reveal of the chosen technique for a little later!

Long awaited reveal of collection.....

I've been very naughty over the last couple of months, failing to post updates of the collection as it develops - all I can say is IT TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE! But I will back track along the process as much as possible so you can see how it developed into the final presentation.

A little taste of Cerebellum A|W 12