GlobalCool: 'Turn up the Style, Turn Down the Heat'

So this tuesday evening I was invited to the lovely GlobalCool, 'Turn Up the Style, Turn Down the Heat' event in leeds, at the Remade in Leeds studio, right by Hyde Park.

The night was fun, full of yumminess and plenty of gorgeous sweaters and fab fashion trimmings.

I took my seamstress/designer friend, Ewa, with me incase I needed a little help with my sewing technique- which I did because I think I chose one of the hardest fashion trims to attach to a gorgeous merino wool, navy in colour, sweater, provided by the yummy vintage shop- Blue Rinse, in leeds.

We walked into a warm,cosy room full of amazing fashion pieces from Antiform, designed by Lizzie. I was greeted by Rochelle, a lovely, down to earth woman who helped in organising the event- she showed us where the cupcakes were so we became best friends :) ...myself and Ewa had a yummy coffee from the cute, vintage cups and saucers, in an amazing room: it was surrounded by materials,fabrics and fab vintage table cloths.

After we were warmed up with good coffee, and unbelievable cupcakes (provided by The Marvellous Tea Dance Company) we walked through into the workshop studio (through a fab room, absolutely covered in manuscript paper).

There was en excitable creative atmosphere in the room, I was really excited about refashioning my chosen sweater...so with the camera's rolling, GlobalCool introduced themselves, as did Lizzie and then we became our own fashion designers and began to redesign our knitwear.

I chose a plain, v-neck navy merino wool sweater to refashion and make into something a little more stylish rather than very classic and chic. I was drawn to this type of knit because...oh my...so soft! Also, I have this type of knit in my wardrobe but I don't think I would ever pick it out of my wardrobe and start sewing, cutting and adding trimming to it, just because I would feel a little anxious to work on this amazing fabric, but with this event, it gave me the confidence to get on with it and start redesigning the sweater. I knew I wanted to add a collar-like piece to the knit, to emphasis the neckline, so I chose a gorgeous vintage looking doily to attach around the neckline: the big flower shapes and lacing added real excitement to the simple navy knit, the sweater looked fab once finished: I'm going to wear my new design to university, to show my fashion friends and without a doubt this sweater will be on my back for a long time, if i could wear it in the shower, I would- the soft knit, the colour and that little extra detailing is just gorgeous and very me.


Ewa, picked an army printed sweater and wanted to make it look a little sexier- she added black lace right done the centre and a cute sequinned bow tie at the neckline- it looked fab!







The event was brilliant, i'm very grateful for the invite: the music was fab, the people were friendly and very helpful, the cupcakes were incredible, the sweaters were amazing, even more so when we each got our fashion hands onto them.....

GlobalCool has another event in Brighton on the 25th January: all my Southern readers if you can get yourself to the event- you will definitely enjoy yourselves- if you love to customise clothes, if you have always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, and you would like to save money (lets not forget the reason of the event- to turn down the heat and grab your sweater, and save on heating bills) this event is for you!

Thank you GlobalCool for inspiring me to go through my wardrobe and do some amazing customising to some of my clothing, for helping me with giving me great ideas to save cash, and for the fab evening.

Loved it.

'Extreme Taste' Photoshoot

You guys have absolutely waited long enough for these images.

Again apologies for the lateness I have been so busy with 3rd year uni projects, volunteering, starting my new job as a visual merchandiser for UKGreetings and being a dresser at the leeds fashion show...anyway this is my first photoshoot for the year.

My brief derived from a quote we were given where we had to re-interpret the quote into a couture photoshoot, based on the trends for Fall10.

The title for the brief was 'Extreme Taste'.











Photographer Charys Ellmer
Stylist Myself
Model Francesca Brooke-Fenton

Fashion styling

In ‘The Home is where the Heart is’ issue of I.D magazine I came across a photo shoot that really reminded me of our matchbox photoshoot..

The fashion story is about a traveller, globe trotting around the world, and the fashion shoot showcases her clothing. Although the photoshoot wasn’t portraiture as our photoshoot became, the reference to the idea was uncanny. The styling and the make up choices were very similar to ours. The stylist, Havana Laffitte chose a customised headpiece for the photoshoot and the make up artist, Tyron, had applied what looks like white paint to the models face again to reiterate the look of a tribe. The styling kinda gives the model a warrior look, and with this the poses help to get this image across, in our photoshoot we only had to play with the head and neck of our model so as stylists we had more of a challenge as to try and portray a specific mood through very little, physically of the model, but I think we achieved this with our direction, make up and simple but effective styling.

The headpiece in both shoots, ours and I.D’s, I believe to be very striking and aids our concept further adding a ‘helmet’ almost, showcases this tribal/warrior sense derived from the four elements we were thinking about: earth, air, water and fire.

In the same issue of I.D and literally immediately after the shoot just mentioned, the magazine has looked at ‘The Eco warrior’ in a much more ‘fashiony’ way than that from ‘The Global Traveller’ shoot. The model’s look is much more pretty and more ‘clichéd’. Also the shoot is on location so it immediately adds a different sense to that of a studio shoot. The styling has a much more ‘hippy’ feel to it rather than a strong, natural sense. If I had to describe this shoot in comparison to the last; this one is ‘air’ and the first shoot would definitely be ‘fire’. The lighting is also much softer than the Global traveller shoot.

Above Magazine

Today me and Marie discussed ideas for styling for our group matchbox photo shoot. Marie had found some beautiful imagery in Above magazine: a fashion story based around the idea of eco friendly concern. The styling in the images took me straight back to my idea of looking at the four elements-earth, air, fire and water. From this shoot me and Marie spoke about our concept and maybe using the eco styling as an ironic hit at consumerism and commercial styling and fashion.

We decided that we would make natural twig headpieces as in the found imagery, the model wore an amazing and very striking headpiece which we wanted to try and recreate. In terms of linking this with the mannequin idea, Moira had the idea of superimposing the mannequin (acting as the consumer society) over the model styled with natural ‘products’ (our ironic hit towards consumerism). In the shoot from Above magazine, the model had been styled with very little clothing: just some simple jersey stretch leggings, some jewellery and customised headpieces, both myself and Marie liked the look of the jewellery in the shoot, the contrast of the metal circular shapes against the naturally formed headpiece is interesting so we also thought about bringing in jewellery into the shoot but mostly natural jewellery.

Final 4, Final photoshoot

Wow, what a busy week.

I finally did the photo shoot for the still life brief and I'm quite pleased with the images. Using the Cove to take the photos did prove a little problematic however; after all my hard work customising the hat for the shoot, I really wanted to emphasise the rouched material, and with adding lighting and some post production, on the MAC screen the images looked OK, but once printed some of them were quite dark, so in future I will be using the studio for whatever size work I am producing.

Other than the lighting in the images, as said I'm pleased, I believe I have shown the trend well. I aimed the images at RUSSH magazine (an Australian fashion magazine) as I think the images could look really well alongside the stories and articles they have in the publication. Also, a bonus, I checked out the RUSSH website to have a wonder at its current issue and the issue had a double page spread on the 'prim and proper' look of the Prada fall10 show alongside imagery of 50's women, style icons, and products so I think overall my images and my photo shoot story fit the magazine and its target audience.

Hats at the ready!!

My design background isn't amazing, I made a simple pillow case in my G.C.S.E Design and Technology, textiles and recently I added a black collar to a white shirt, obviously not your next Vivienne Westwood, but I needed to do a little customising to some pieces I bought for the still life styling photo-shoot, to make them reference more the looks on the catwalks.

Firstly I needed to tackle the hat seen at Dolce and Gabanna, I had in my mind using a shower cap (as it seemed to have some structure with the small elastic that ran around the seam of the cap) and adding to the cap some navy blue material and kinda using the cap as a base- I literally used pins, some bull dogs clips and at times some elbow grease, to create a ruched/flower like effect for the hat. At first I really didn't know where to start, and I haven't really got the patience of a saint, but after around an hour of playing around I think I kinda cracked it, it obviously doesn't look exactly like Dolce and Gabbana, those guys have been designing for years and like I said I have only really made a pillow case, so I think I have moved on a little with my design/sewing/pinning expertise.

Here is my creation, (and a few work in progress images) what do you guys think????

Lucinda Chambers: Stylist

When considering the styling of the shoot, we were thinking of using materials/ garments and changing their purposes, I.e. using a pair of trousers as a hat or gloves as a pair of socks. Marie came across an image from the new Rankin Solo show named 'Eat Me Naked' where the stylist had used a piece of chiffon material in hot red, and this immediately reminded her of the idea of fire. I looked at her blog and saw said image and it just looks stunning. The lighting in the image isn't really what we want for our shoot, its a little too clear and white but the idea of using clothing to change its purpose and role, I like.

The stylist, Lucinda Chambers is a stylist I have come across many times, she is fashion director at Vogue magazine and is seen to be one of the most established stylists in the industry. Chambers started out working for the fashion industry in 1980 and still works in the industry today. Chambers seems to always customise pieces for a shoot, as this is part of a stylists job, but she does this really creatively and successfully (given that she is a textile fanatic will help this:) ). I will again look through my inspirational file to scan some images of Chambers and her work. I read an article on Chambers for The Observer newspaper and it stated

'It's important to Chambers that she is given room to play. She admits to not being a very good businesswoman. She is far more interested in creative freedom'.

When you look at some of the shoots she styles and her choice of garments and how she uses them you are able to understand this further. Chambers is an inspiring stylist: whoever she is working for and whatever she is working on (whether it be editorial, consultancy, commercial, advertising) her personality radiates through.