Victoria and Albert museum

Today I visited the Victoria and Albert museum. I saw the Yohji Yamamoto exhibition. He was born in 1943 in Tokyo and won two awards after studying in Japan which enabled him to travel to Europe. His mother was a seamstress and Yamamoto worked with her for a few years. He then went on to set up his first women's ready to wear label Y's. Yohi Yamamoto's work is unusual, unique and exquisite. From what I saw, his dresses were extremely complicated with ruffles and intricate designs.  Lots of Yamato's clothing is oversized and it looks slightly unfinished. His clothing is mostly black and he deals with ideas of gender.

Although, I found looking at Yamamoto’s clothing and videos of his catwalks interesting, I am not sure if it will inspire my own clothing range. He uses fabrics that are not normally used for making clothing. For example he uses felt. I am not experienced enough to use the same fabrics that Yamamoto uses as I am not sure it had the mass market appeal.  It has opened my eyes to all the endless possibilities I have for my clothing range. In the exhibition some of his origional sketches were shown so this may help me later on to start off my own ideas. This was the way Yamato went about planing and collateing his thoughts and ideas. I will now need to decide how many items i will make and what they will be.

Time line amendments:

I was originally going to finish my research by the 16/06/2011 but this has not happened. One of the reasons for this is because I went to Italy for a week which slowed down my research in London. However, I did find some valuable and useful information about fashion in Italy which will help me to make my clothing range. The main reason why I have not completed my research is because I did not realise or take in to consideration while making my timeline how much time I would need to carry out a sufficient amount of research. I still have quite a few things to be looking in to, so I have re- done my timetable:  

Tasks	Start Date	Duration (days)	End date
Research	28/05/2011	36	2/07/2011
Away for D.O. E expedition	3/07/2011	5	7/07/2011
Ideas and planning	8/07/2011	10	17/07/2011
Design clothing	18/07/2011	7	24/07/2011
On holiday	25/07/2011	17	10/08/2011
Buy equipment needed	11/08/2011	5	14/08/2011
On holiday	15/08/2011	8	22/08/2011
Make items	23/08/2011	44	5/10/2011
evaluate	6/10/2011	26	31/10/2011
prepare for presentation	01/11/2011	18	18/11/2011
Further evaluation	19/11/2011	12	30/11/2011
Get ready to submit complete project	1/12/2011	9	09/12/2011

Knitting ...

This afternoon I went to a sewing shop bought some wool and knitting needles and then went on to see my grandma and she taught me to knit. I still can not cast on but I can vaguely do a line of knitting. I need a lot more practice! Never the less my grandma was very proud and said with a bit more work I could make a scarf. So I could potentially knit one of the items in my clothing range.

The Italian market

I stayed in a place called Servigliano in Italy for a week. While I was there I visited various places from which I gained an insight into the fashion in Italy. However, I only stayed in a small area within Italy and cannot make an assumption regarding the whole of Italy's fashion market from this. So I will have to look on the internet and in Italian magazines. I focused on women’s fashion.

In Servigliano there was a market on Monday morning. From looking around the stalls I saw lots of dresses being sold. There were strapless, small, striped dresses being sold for 10 Euros. This stripe trend is running through both Italy and England. Also on another stall long maxi dresses were being sold. There were a range of coloured maxis selling for around 15 Euros. Floral leggings were also being sold in the market - they were similar to the ones sold in H&M at the moment.

While in Italy, I visited a school and saw what types of clothing the teenagers were wearing. The girls wore a t-shirt, jeans, trainers and a big rucksack. There were very few who wore something different, and only a couple of students wore leggings.  While I was wearing a skirt for the summer, they were wearing clothing suited for colder weather.

When I went out to dinner and night time attractions, the women were dressed in a very sophisticated way. Most wore very high heels or wedges with either a smart dress or white jeans and a nice top.

I visited Italian boutique clothing shops which were cheaper than London shops which sold little dresses and vest tops. Some of the things sold could not be bought in London. For example there was a white vest top with the back laced.  However there were a few shops which were starting to copy the trends that are seen in H&M and other chain stores found in London.

Although I thought the clothing would be different due to the weather differences, this was not the case.  In Italy, the locals do not seem to dress down for the heat. So while the English go for short sleeves etc, the Italians still wear jackets and blazers – just like everyone in London.  I think there were less differences in clothing and more similarities in both Italy and London. Globalisation is causing the world to shrink and fashion in different countries is becoming similar and much less unique.

Italy

Tomorrow I am going out to Italy for a week. While I am there I will carry on looking in fashion magazines but will also look at the fashion out there. I will compare prices of clothing and the styles. I presume that due to the climate difference the fashion here and there will vary. For example, there may not be any jackets being sold on the market in Italy but there are light trendy coats here. However there may be similar trends and designs that appear in both markets and are universally fashionable in both European countries. So I will look out for those similarities.  

Knitting research

I visited the residential home this afternoon where my grandmother lives to discuss knitting with the residents. They were shocked I could not knit as when they were young it was what every body did. They told me about casting off and fair isle knitting. However, apparently it would take me a while to be able to get the hang of knitting and a long time until I could make any clothing items. I would need to start off with an easy pattern and large knitting needles around size 9 as the small sizes would take forever to make anything. They explained a pattern to be an instruction book and a guide to how much wool would be needed. They were surprised to find out I did not even know the terminology they were using. I have a lot to learn. Next time I visit my grandmother will teach me how to knit she is a very skilled at knitting and will hopefully remember all the techniques involved.

How to go about making clothing.

I have been looking at youtube videos that demonstrate various methods of making clothes here are some:

This one is for summer dress making:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsSZTHyCLyU

This one is for a blouse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO9m2YQ1UNQ

Ruffled skirt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ntDIHHz6E

I can use these demonstrations as an outline for making my clothing range although I am aiming to make something original so will try to make different designs. Most methods I have seen involve sewing machines.