Hi everyone! Back in 2017 I finished my second year study at fashion school,
and before I start back at fashion school, which is at the end of February, I thought it might
be a good time to reflect back on what the past two years have been like and give an insight to anyone
who is interested in studying fashion. We will start this video with a small Q&A and then get more in-depth
by going through my school books and showing all the work that goes into it.
Before I begin, there is another reason for why I'm combining both the first and second year of fashion into one video,
I have been to two different schools for both of these years and have discovered that
depending on the Institute they will teach these things in either year.
So if you not taught all of these things in the first year, you're probably Just gonna pick it up in the second year.
While each school who teach the same degree have to follow the specific curriculum,
in my case that is for the Bachelor of design, specializing in fashion design.
There will be some different ways that they like to teach the degree. So while you may not be learning the
exact same stuff as I have, there will be some kind of interchangeable or similar way to it.
On my Instagram, I asked if anyone had any questions about what it was like to study fashion design, and here are your questions.
c_bynes asks: How hard is it to perfect your tailoring and cutting skills?
Usually the first year at fashion school is more focused towards the pattern cutting, drafting, sewing and other
tailoring techniques, more so than the designing itself. Which can be a bit of a downer for anyone
who is more interested in the creative and designing part of fashion.
But it is so important to get those technical skills up to speed. When entering fashion school,
you will meet people with all levels of cutting and tailoring experience
and it can be quite difficult to get into if you haven't done it before. But trust me it gets a lot easier as you practice, and you will have
plenty of opportunities to practice, I can assure you. I'm still far from perfect, but it's not as scary as one might think.
naystardoll asks: To be a stylist, do you have to know how to sew, and what is your favorite brand?
From what I know of, styling has different requirements than designing. You need to understand fashion of course, and fashion school definitely helps with that.
However, sewing isn't usually a significant requirement when it comes to styling in particular.
I have heard of styling courses at fashion schools overseas, which I think would be a great experience,
But we don't really have those kind of resources readily available in New Zealand just yet. There seems to be a lot of expectation around
self-directed education rather than formal education (even though fashion school would definitely help).
When styling, sewing just isn't really as important as other factors as branding, understanding your clients and business, as you're usually
sourcing the clothes and not necessarily making them yourself. My favourite brands are usually more small elusive street brands
particularly from Japan. These being HeiHei and NIIMI among others.
I usually get my fashion fix from following Tokyo Fashion, which feature many different street snaps of Tokyo street styles
which is where I get a lot of my favorite brands and designers from.
lolinha asks: How were the two years of studying fashion? How did you create a collection and how did you learn more about fashion?
These past two years have been a lot, as you will see. Unfortunately I can't show you all of my books
because some are still at school, but it has honestly been a couple of years
which I have learnt a lot from and really appreciate the experience.
I have greatly enjoyed these years (and have cried a lot more than I would like to admit!)
However, this is pretty much what it's gonna be like an any fast-paced learning environment.
While going through the good and the bad,
I feel as if I am growing and improving as both a designer and as an individual.
About how I made my recent collection, my previous video actually goes through the process on how that worked out
and the fashion show at the end of it. However that video didn't show everything that went into the assessment criteria, which I will show you
in a few minutes. The entire process to design and construct a collection takes place over weeks, if not months while at school.
and as the years go by a fashion school, you will slowly take on more responsibilities, and have to make more garments,
but I'm really excited to get into that. Anyway, now's a good time to start looking at my fashion school workbooks, so let's get started!
Before I begin, as I attended two different schools in each of the two years
Some work tends to cross-over which I think works great to show how
differently the same subject can be taught. Just so things are easy to understand,
I will refer to my first year work as 'School A' and my current fashion school as 'School B."
Already you can see there's a considerable difference in the height of these piles, but to be honest
I feel like the same amount of work has actually been done between both years,
It's just that this school really likes things being put into portfolios and looking nice,
which just makes it 'bigger.' Before we got to design anything ourselves
We were taught about the design elements and design principles. As you come to learn more about fashion, these things are incredibly important.
So the way that they were taught in 'School A,' there were actually two separate classes we learned this. And in 'School B'
There was just one class we learned about all this. So the way the assessment was broken up at 'School A', this one is called
'Material' and this one is called 'Dress'
The title of Dress class is a bit misleading because we're not making a dress, We're dress-ing someone
The criteria for this class was to select a partner from the class and then design and make a garment specifically for them.
This was a really fun challenge because I usually make women's fashion,
but I was partnered with a guy and his design tastes are very different to mine,
and that was really fun to see fashion from a different perspective. So here's different artists, seeing if I can interpret some sort of colour
combination with it and applying it to the body. So one thing we both really liked were patches.
While my patches are more colourful and rainbow, his patches are a bit more personalised, screen-printed and very one-colour.
It was really cool trying to experiment with that, and seeing how embroidery and different things can change
how the garment looks. I got really into making these drippy paint prints,
so I was trying to experiment that with sweatshirts and very loose garments,
seeing how that would look. I don't think this turned out that great, but it was very good to just experiment with it
anyway, and even if it didn't work, I know that it didn't work, and I can go on to something else.
So here's my first lineup development. Very loose clothing, lots of patches, lots of straps.
There's also quite a few rips and things. Something I remember from when we talked, is that he quite liked the journey
of fashion; how things can degrade over time, how your journeys and experiences can affect the clothing you wear. So from there,
I started to look into putting personalised images onto patches to show his own personal journey on the clothing he is wearing.
From my final lineup, I decided that I would place patches,
but I would show them flowing down the garment, or flowing across the body as a way to show that as the journey continues,
more and more patches will fill up the garment. I decided to make the little sweatshirt here,
so I was just showing how the patches were gonna be placed on the shirt. The final design,
which I might have drawn up the night before the hand-in, so it's a little bit rough,
but I did a painting as well as showing the process of how I made the final garment.
Here are the patches. It's from a year ago, so it's starting to fall apart.
But, it just shows the different symbols of things around the city, places where he grew or had experiences.
So the criteria for this class was that we had to use the different design elements and principles to create a new material.
And I don't mean material as in a fabric, it could be anything.
So for our secondary research, looking online or looking through books at different pictures, and then throughout the city
I looked at different craft stores and looked at different kinds of textured items, purchased them and seeing how
I can manipulate them to become something different.
Showing different ways to weave things, different threads and their pros and cons of using it.
And began to look at some things that were a bit different, such as not even using thread or fabric at all,
but actually using paint and different mediums to see how they can be combined with something else.
Weaving paper and other materials on a weaving loom as well as trying origami and paper folding techniques.
Things got a little bit weird by weaving wire in with gel medium, so it can be bent around,
gluing eyes onto things. Honestly, the weirder the better I think with this class.
Kinda got a bit too carried away here with the googly eyes and other
materials like that. This is where things really started to come together, so instead of just using the googly eyes on their own
I actually cut the backs out of them and used them as windows.
Then we had to make a final sample which was about A3 size.
Because I didn't have a big weaving loom or anything to tie it to, I ended up getting a chair and
laying the legs back and using that as a weaving loom. The final sample is made from a rainbow wool base, the blue around here is
a combination of blue paint, blue glitter and lots of glue. The glitter doesn't flake off or anything and it's actually quite squishy
so it's really fun to play around with. All the samples that were shown in this book have been stuck into my big portfolio.
It's much nicer to see them in real life and see how they sparkle,
as well as the texture and how different it is. This was one of the weirder classes that I took,
But it was really fun to just go a bit loose and a bit crazy on things so yeah!
This class is called creative process,
and we had to put a portfolio called 'Ways of Seeing', which is just us demonstrating our understanding of the different design elements and principles.
So we had to build different sections, title pages, showing primary and secondary research.
We took little field trips going around the city, taking photos, which is our primary research.
Then looking online and in books from other artists and designers,
and that worked as our secondary research. And from our research we had to make a couple of exercises showing our understanding, so here I
did things like using tracing paper over images to create a print.
I won't show all of it, but I'll just browse through and show you a couple pages.
So for Shape and Form, we used paper cutouts and other 3D objects
to apply it to the model, and then traced over to see how it manipulated the body
I think tracing paper works well to make everything look a little bit more professional.
Especially considering that I was using my phone camera to take all these photos.
For Texture, we went around the city and took rubbings of things like the concrete or grates, anything that had an interesting texture to it.
And then we applied it to models here, to once again create some form of print.
My favorite section is colour, because we took our primary research and made colour palettes out of them.
And from there, we created different tints and tones and messed with some very basic prints
to see how they would change depending on the color used. Pressed some flowers to see how the color changes over time.
Just more drawing images and overlays, and I always have to put something holographic in here somewhere..
so that's my contribution. I love this water marbling, I cannot recommend it enough. It is
really good and an easy way to put colour into something. A class you will definitely learn within the first year is patternmaking/drafting.
This is what I learned from 'School A' and this is what I learned from 'School B'.
From both schools, we did all of our planning on paper,
so it's a lot easier to understand and you can just carry it with you whenever. Patternmaking is very focused around mathematics
as well as visualizing (before drafting it up to a bigger size),
so if you're like me and not very good at math, don't worry! Just use a calculator, it's saved me quite a few times.
We start off with very simple things, drafting blocks as well as doing things like t-shirt dresses and gathering.
The interesting part of patternmaking is that we learnt how to draft the patterns up in two different ways. The first way is that you
can use normal paper, a very large sheet that you are able to get very hands-on and draft it up.
The other way to draft patterns is that you can do it on the computer, using a digital patternmaking system.
And that is what I did here, I just took screenshots off the pattern and just wrote up the measurements on top so I can use them whenever.
And here is where we get into my collection patternmaking so this is from the mini-collection
I made at the end of last year. Not only did we have to show the technical drawing,
but our mock-ups and the process we took to draft the pattern. So these pages are
dedicated towards the two t-shirts that I had. They were both very simple patterns
So they weren't that hard to do. This is for the bomber jacket,
Which was probably the more complicated garment to make because it had a full lining. The hoodie dress, which I
really love and I'm going to keep this pattern and use it in the future. And on the digital patternmaking system
I drafted up both the denim skirt, as well as the jeans. One thing that also helped me, when drafting a lot of the garments use the same
same templates and symbols. So what we did is that we made little cutouts of the blocks that we did
And just trace around them. It made everything so much faster.
Considering we learnt this all in a very short amount of time, I am very happy with how everything turned out and everything fitted very well.
So, thank goodness. Patternmaking for 'School A' was actually one class, but I ended up putting it into two books.
This course us mostly just a basic introductory
To patternmaking. We never actually make any garments. Instead, we made paper toiles which is a downright pain when you had to tape
The clothing to the model, otherwise everything went pretty well I think.
This class mostly focused only around dresses and skirts, very basic forms.
We had to make six individual concepts, and with each concept we had to show how we made the pattern from the block.
So, showing how we cut into the pattern and manipulated it to look completely different.
It really helps colour-coding these things, because I would have been completely lost if I didn't. The final design was expected to be the most complex one,
and then showing the development and how it was done.
Lots of research here, we had to show our process of the class exercises we did.
The dresses here weren't very complicated at all. They were very basic, fitted or only slightly loose garments.
We weren't really taught that much beyond it, so this is why I think this is the most basic
introductory course you could get on this subject. I think this class was really good for anyone who hasn't done fashion before,
because it can be quite daunting starting off. So doing something a bit more simpler can really make a difference.
This book is so full that it's starting to fall apart!
But it is a combination between 'School A' and 'School B', and this class is Construction class.
We're expected to build a portfolio around all the techniques we had learned. There is also a bit of patternmaking in here as well.
If you haven't studied fashion before it's really good, because it starts with the basics like seams. And as you go through you start
learning other techniques, like different pockets. It's also really handy to keep construction notes on how to put them together because I
instantly forget it as soon as we've learnt something like this. So to keep notes or at least take photos of it really helps.
We learnt about zippers, pant flies,
Waistbands.. so even if you're not very good at doing some of the more complicated techniques,
there are the simple ones that you can master very easily. What I did find interesting because this is a page from 'School B',
we only let this in one week, which is about the panel lines and dart manipulation. Whereas this took us six months at 'School A'.
It doesn't necessarily mean that one school did it better than the other. It just shows that there are differences to how they like
to teach and what different schools like to focus on. There's a lot of work here, I can't really show it all. Once you get into fashion school you learn all these things yourself,
It's not as daunting as one might think. And it's really helpful to keep this around, or keep it in a cupboard somewhere, so you don't lose it.
This book is from both the patternmaking and construction class.
At fashion school, you would definitely be building these spec sheets, but they will probably look quite different to this.
So for each garment we made or were expected to make,
we had to build these spec sheets showing our fabric samples, any techniques we were going to use as well as any trims
that we needed to get before then. Some of these I've done at home on my own of garments that I've already made,
but I want to remember the different techniques I did so if I wanted to make it again, I could.
This is a spec sheet for the bomber jacket that I finished recently, so it was really handy to have this on hold
so I can use it anytime I wanted. And these are a couple of the spec sheets that I had for the mini-collection,
the rest of them are at school unfortunately. So this book in particular is very heavy. A lot of work has gone into it and the class for it is Textiles.
It's probably not that interesting to just look at, you really need to read through it and there's just too much of it to show.
The class was focused around showing understanding of different fibre types as well as different fabric weaves.
Here's a lot.. a lot of stuff that we had to do. Just showing our
understanding as well as building a resource that we can use later on.
So we've got our protein fibers, cellulosic fibers and synthetic fibers..
Just a lot of stuff here. Doing things like burnt tests, so we know how to identify different fibres.
Different kinds of twists and yarns. If this is stuff that seems unfamiliar to you, don't worry.
You're gonna learn all of this within the first year,
It's exactly what you go to the school for. My favourite part was more about the dyeing process,
so seeing color fastness,
How dfferent processes can affect how much color stays in or the color itself. Tea dyeing,
so with different types of tea. Most of this is just writing, so it is a difficult thing to put into a video.
These are both from 'School B' and are both garment assessment workbooks.
We're expected to both design and make a garment. This is from the end-of-year mini collection,
And then this is from a shirt assessment we did earlier on. It was originally in a book, but the folder broke recently,
so we're just gonna have to make do. The assessment criteria for this was to design and make a shirt with specific construction techniques.
Everything else like the inspiration and style was up to us.
So my concept was "To design a shirt which appears to combine both the real world and the digital realm."
Compulsory research, looking at the history of shirts and designers that I found quite interesting
and I thought were relevant for my design development. I quite liked this part because involved colour and photo manipulation.
So I took a couple of photos around the city and pixelated them,
and then turn them into some sort of fabric print to see how that affected the body.
Then continuing from this, I used paper and cut out various shapes
and stuck them onto models. Some worked out better than others.
One thing i've noticed about fashion school is that they really love when you experiment with different techniques and processes.
So this is something very digital, then back to traditional, and digital again, but in a different way.
Quick design development. There were specific techniques and processes we had to put into our final garment,
so I was trying to play with that to see how I could also make that work with my concept. A little bit more
experimentation with pixelating the body and seeing how that affects things. Going from the pixel art I did earlier,
I ended up starting to make some stencils that I would apply to the fabric.
Starting to think about ideas like if the fabric wasn't meant to look like this, it's broken like a broken texture in a video game.
I ended up finding this really cool patched denim fabric and made it into this cool
pixelated broken-image-thing, and that ended up being the main fabric for my final garment.
So once the final design was made, we had to do this thing called a 'storyboard.'
This is mostly just to show the final designs; front and back view, swatches, what it's about as well as a bit of the inspiration behind it.
Here's a little bit about it, "The technology behind the shirt dress has been created from has
malfunctioned and distorted from the original design as a result. The shell of the garment is still intact,
but visually it seems corrupt and fragmented."
So here's the final garment. The denim patch fabric actually came patched as it is, but these little blue squares
I had to cut out and sew in individually.
This is a fun little extra. When I have concept designs or drawings that don't really fit any of my portfolios
I make them into a little scrapbook which I can use later and keep a hold of them.
This is all from 'School A', little concept jacket designs and other little space inspired garments.
Concepts from the end of year collection that just never made it into the workbook.
Here's something, we had to do a technical drawing assessment,
so instead of doing the technical drawings on the computer, we had to do them on pen and paper, and show the details of different garments.
Different garment details on shirts, pants and other things. This book here is from the mini collection,
which I made only a few months ago. I've already shown this book on my channel,
so feel free to check out my previous video to see how it all went as well as how I made the final garments.
I will show you all a few pages anyway,
this is the design that I wanted to print on the back of the shirt. As I keep going and as I keep
designing I actually wanted to make two final designs. Much of this collection was based around space and the infinity of it,
so there's a lot of space symbolism and stars.
These two were the final proposed designs to be screen-printed onto the shirts,
and here are one of the shirts to show what they look like.
This is the back of the shirt. The print itself is about A3 size,
and then on the front of the shirt there's a much smaller and similar design.
Not only did I design t-shirts, but there was also a bomber jacket, a hoodie dress, denim skirt..
All together there were about six garments.
So here was the final design of the bomber jacket, the denim skirt as well as the t-shirt you just saw. And here is the final bomber jacket star.
So yeah!, That's pretty much all that there is to show so far.
I hope this has helped anyone interested in studying fashion design,
and given some sort of insight to what it's like. If you have any further questions,
feel free to ask them below or contact me on social media. I hope you all have a wonderful day,
thank you for watching, and I'll see you later!
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