About Fashion

I have always loved dressing up, and have always been fascinated by big and strange costumes (particularly period dresses)

I never learned much how to sew, except from my Mother,(she was a very good and very traditionnal sewing teacher-seamstress)who desperatly tried to teach me how to sew buttons and make seams properly, but never managed...I was not interested!
It is only since 2 or 3 years ago, around 2002, that I tried making a dress, then a cloak (which was so awful looking my Mother had to redo it) and then just before she left I suddenly felt inspired,thinking about garments and making things by hand,but by then it was too late to learn with her....

At that point, two wonderful friends offered me an industrial sewing machine which allowed me to create and realize my first collection, the Fall 03 collection. It was an amazing achievement,
for someone who had never really sewn.

This first collection, soon followed by a few more, was photographed by top photographer Neil Anderson, from Wildblanket, and placed on this website that I now do on my own.
This was the beguinning of my home experimentation, thinking about garments, making really unwearable great costumes, out of cutting up, sewing, adding accessories...

I had not studied fashion till september 04 (see results in winter Collection 04) but I suddenly felt the urge to register for a short course, in Central St Martins, for professional sewing. I learned a lot from Arly Torcelino,a great teacher,and also learned how to make garments from bought patterns. With her I made my second corset!

After that, I thought I needed to learn how to make patterns and registered for a course at the "Fashion College".
The teacher, Jeff, was wondeful but very perfectionnist, trying to teach the ignorant pegans we were, how to make a block from "standard" measurements and customise it to our own measurements. From that pattern aparently we could cut our own clothes, however complicated the pattern for them were,and they would always fit.(...)I am not sure how much I actually learned from that course.

???
I didn't quite understand it...

Well, pattern cutting is very nice, but it s just more fun to cut up a piece of fabric which vaguely looks like a top, chop up some oval shape which vaguely looks like sleeves, and sew all that together,isn't it!
Without having to worry about "ease", "acuracy" and pins in corners of paper.
But looking back at it, there is something I want to achieve: a profesional finish to the garments,and learning alone is still not good enough.
Next year I am embarking on a full time course in fashion and design... Let's hope this time I will understand what Jeff meant about his ease and acuracy.
Getting better is not such a bad thing, after all...

And it will do my English a lot of good too!!!

xx

Claude