The Launch: The Unfinished Conversation: John Akomfrah

Today was very fun and educating, I am really happy that I went to the event. It gave me a personal insight on Stuart Hall’s life in Jamaica and then his life in England; I loved this, as my project is about combining both cultures together. I also enjoyed the way the video was presented. They had three large T.V screens side by side. As Stuart Hall was talking (voice over) the screen was showing two different things. At first it was a bit overwhelming because, you wanted to see everything that was happening. At times you could only focus on one screen, so I had to watch it twice to really capture everything that was happening.

At the event there were a lot of people from all different parts of the arts, which was interesting.

At 7 pm there was an hour seminar with the man himself John Akomfrah: he is an artist, film director, screen writer and founding member of black Audio Film collective. So as you can see, he is well established in his field.

Watching John talk about his work and his interest in the black culture, made me think about my own work and the reasons behind my project.

I loved his video that he showed us, it was so good. It was raw and had so much meaning to it. If I do decided to go ahead with the mini commercial/video idea, because of his talk, I have a few new ideas.

Here is a video from his talk. Hope you enjoy!!

4http://vimeo.com/59479574

Dance the night away!!!!!!

I love this image of Denzel Washington (Malcolm X) and spike Lee (Director of Malcolm x), in their zoot suits in the film Malcolm X. I love how over the top they look and the fabric colours and pattern of their suits, this is the kind of idea I have for my collection, I want to try to have the same fun and excitement within all my garments.

This is the Lindy Hop swing dance scene from Malcolm X, I love the energy and everyone looks like they are having fun. This is the kind of of energy I want in my collection.

Live In Colour!

I have been in love with this image; originally I could only find it in black and white. Finally I have found the coloured version and to my surprise my colour palette is very similar to their garments in the picture!!

WHOOP WHOOP!!

LOL Good old Days

I really like this video because of the energy and also how symbolic it is for the Mask (Jim Carey) to be wearing the Zoot suit.

Have Fun watching the video!!

watch her style dough!

One person who I think their style truly represents their personality is Kelis, I Love her style and attitude and the clothes that she wears, looks and feels like her.

I am infatuated at the moment with these two Music videos of hers because of her attitude and the songs. The songs have a cool vibe and each song reflects different aspect of herself. As an audience, you can straight away identify that this is Kelis no matter how different each song sounds.

This is what I want to create with my brand, everything I do I want it to reflect ‘Delores’. Adding my own spices and flavour to my work, I want you to look at it straight away and know it’s me. I want my brand to reflect who I am……DELORES!!

Enjoy!

Finding Where You Fit In

Ahh anit nothing like being back home! But still no rest, I have to get so much work done.

Today I went to Selfridges to do some Market Research and thank God I managed to get my little brother to go with me (with a great amount of begging), so it could look like he was shopping for himself. This also benefited me because when I liked something, I gave it to him to try on. This helped me understand how different yarns felt on the skin; also it helped me to see different silhouettes and the fit.

Shockingly going through Selfridges, there was nothing there that was similar to what I am trying to achieve with my collection. Most of the colours there was so dull, but they did have some interesting things but just not what I was trying to do (which is a good thing for me).

We went to all saints, which was interesting because of some of their silhouettes. They had some cool shapes (which are kind of similar to what I wanted to do) and their concepts were similar to mine too. They too were playing with the string vest and transparency idea using knit. Which was really cool, but there was no life with their colours. But I really like their quality of their garments.

I don’t think All Saints would be my competitors but we are very similar with some of our ideas, so I will probably put them down as well.

The price they were charging for their jumpers were decent, I think I would charge just  a bit more as my garments will be a bit less generic and have a twist to them

Here are a few pictures that we took. 

Maggot Day

Today I had a CAD knitting session with Simon and I was ecstatic at the results.

After clearing  my mind and choosing elements of my work to concentrate on and push the idea to its limit, I decided that today will be maggot day. I know that sounds pretty weird and to some extent ridiculous, but today was literally maggot day. No it does not involve real maggots but the whole CAD session was aimed at  trying to recreate the appearance of Maggots using knitted fabric. Looking back at my previous samples, I realised that I needed a much heavier weight fabric, this might make it look more masculine and also more cosy for winter.

I managed to Google maggots and without throwing up or continuously itching myself, looked at their shapes and sizes (just thinking about them makes me cringe). After seeing this, I drew my own interpretation of them on the CAD machine to knit as a jacquard blister, once this was stored in the program we began to knit away .

We tried different tensions, yarns and elastic - each sample gave a different effect which was interesting. Also, some came out good while others didn’t quite hit the mark.

I am going to continue exploring this maggot idea trying different yarns to see what I can achieve. I think out of my knit samples, the maggots are my favourite because of the textures I get, and depending what yarns I use they look so real at times.

 

Here are a few of the samples