Back to ....

Temperatures are going down, the cars are horning in the early morning while the kids are running down the pavement....here it is, back to school or other call it "La Rentrée"

Yes, unfortunately the summer holiday is over and it is time to start seriously setting up the business.
Already you might say, well, yes I know the summer was short, I don't know about yours, but mine was good.

It started about mid July with a nice and romantic trip to Croatia with my other half

then went back in childhood for a crazy weekend in a Casa Rural with friends

to later turn 30 and surprisingly celebrate it nicely in family and friends,


then later had to pay London a visit, and fortunately met with friends and shopping treats up there (still love London Fashion !!), visited places I have never been in the 6 years I lived there, like Hampstead Heath...

then finally enjoyed The Costa Brava and its Parks, Nature and fantastic beaches.....

Ahhhhh it was nice...now it is a little hard to set the mind in working mode, but no worries, bit by bit, I will get back to business

YOLO (You Only Live Once) !!

So What's up folks?! How have been your beginning of the year so far ?

Mine, I can say, it has been quite busy and strange. I have been having mixed feelings, excitement, frustration and surely exhaustion.

First, I am still juggling work and school classes, but from a different perspective. I started working from home last month. It is quite a change. I still need to adjust myself but I quite like the fact that I don't have people watching over my shoulders every 5 seconds to see what I am doing. It doesn't mean that I don't work..I do work, I actually work that fast that sometimes, I don't have anything else to do, so after looking for an hour another activity, I end up doing stuffs for the master. So it is quite good.

On the other hand, how is the master going?

Ummmm !! I start feeling a little disapointed by the lack of organisation of the whole course and the poor consistency of some of the classes we have to follow this trimester. It is quite frustrating as we tried to flag that up to the Course Coordinator, but it seems that they believe this is fine...Talking to a dead wall here :-S
Never mind, I believe that if they can't solve it out (or refuse to do so) then I will just take whatever I can from the class, learn whatever I can and hopefully get the Degree at the end.
Talking about the Degree, we finally got the dates of our last assignment/exam/presentation...or call it like you want and it will be right in a middle of July. So I am not looking forward to May and June as I will probably be working like crazy to get the project finished and dusted. Yes....long hours of work coming !!
But we do say "YOLO !! You Only Live Once "  (like my sister Le Blabla de Salsita told me the other day on whatsapp), so no regret on anything I have done so far, even if I feel very tired and quite exhausted right now (awake since 6 am). I am convinced that I am learning from every steps I have been taking and this is life: it is not meant to be easy.
So far, I have been doing quite a lot of work which I never thought I could be able to do and which I can be proud of. I have learned to use Illustrator, some parts of Photoshop, I have drawn my first digital mini-collection, and I started to go through the fundamental structure of a business....You may judge from yourself here.

Extract from Mini Collection 60´s

Moodboard Inspiration Mini Collection Stone Island

I am currently working on setting up my brand/business model, and that will probably be my next post, but for now, please leave me a comment, tell me anything my work makes you think of.

Ciao.

Ouuuuuufff !!! Happy New Year !!

Here we are, in January 2013.

Ouuuufffffff !!! I don't know about you, but I am quite happy that 2012 has finished. To be honest it has not been a very good year for me and I am so looking forward to see what changes 2013 has to offer.

So how did you guys spend the last few days of 2012?

Me, I first jungled between my work and the master like a crazy girl and I am so glad to say that I have resigned from my job as it was wayyyyyyy !!! tooooo !! muuuucccchhh !!!
A lot of sad events happened between the day I told my boss that I was resigning and my last day, which makes me so happy and released to be out of it. I am not going to clean my dirty clothes on this page, but let's just say, Oufff  again !! :-)
Anyway, between all this, I secured a new job in another company and since the 3rd of January, I work from home. I will talk about this in another post, but for now, let's go back to the end of 2012.

So my last day at my hell job came and it was really like hell. I was supposed to leave work at 6 pm to get to the University at 6:30 pm, to do a presentation (about Choolips sustainable fashion label) that I work on every nights for 7 days, and unfortunately did not managed to do it as I left work at 8 pm...Absolutley gutted ! But my teacher, very nice and comprehensive, understood my situation and accepted my apologies to just review my presentation which I had printed out for him. Oufff again !!
The next day at about 11 am, I was already in the airplane direction Paris, where I went back to spend Christmas with my family. This quick break was so refreshing and very nice, without saying that I ate like a pig, normal at Christmas. ;-)
I took the opportunity of being in the capital of Fashion to go walking on the pavements of the "Grands Magasins", to see the famous animated windows of Paris. I have to say I was a little bit disapointed. I think previous years have been a lot better and showed a lot more creativity. This year, everything was only based on Louis Vuitton and Dior.
Here I got some pictures for you to see and judge from yourself.

Then after this few days, I came back in Barcelona to spend also very nice time with friends celebrating the new year, around a Raclette, a traditionelle French dish stolen to the Swiss.

And that's it, we jump into 2013 !

Happy New Year everyone, may your wishes come true and may you get an even better year than before!! 
:-)

Long awaiting update

I know you all be waiting for that....well I hope in a way :-)).
I have been very long in coming back on that page and write a piece of my story, I know, but that what we call "being busy" and surely I was.

Well so what happened? 
Do you remember in my last post, I was talking about a secret project??? Well now I can reveal it. My dearly boyfriend turned 30 on the 21st of October, so I was not gonna let that special occasion just go in the air, I organised with the great help of his friends and family a mega surprise party.
It was hell of a job, I can now say, 2 months of very hard work !! But, well,  now it is done, vereything went fine and he was very happy and greatfull for the surprise.

Now that this event took most of my energy, I can say that it was also very hard to juggle between the master of fashion design and work and the travels that come with that work.
Only 1 thing keeps me going: I absolutely LOVE the master !! :-)

It is so good, I am learning a lot. I can also tell where in my previous company we went wrong and what we could have done better, so it is quite nice to see these things and be able to say, "next time I do it better".

What is the master about? 
Basically there are 2 parts: First part is dedicated to the fashion design, with history of fsahion, how to draw our designs in illustrators, how to use differents computerized programs nowadays, how to make your own patterns from a design...And the second part, is about marketing, how to build your business, how to promote yourself, where you need to be to master your business etc...
It is so interesting, there is so much to learn there. Sometimes when I come home after 3 hours of intensive learning, I feel that my head is about to burst but that's great. I am very content because my brain is working, I am THINKING I am being STIMULATED...This is an awesomely feeling that I was desperately looking for, in vain, in my now lost the point current professional career in sciences. Knowing this, there is no way back there for me, I am definately not made for this world where I am only meant to work like a robot and not think.
I only hope I will keep the excitement and the need to learn all the way through my fashion adventure.

Enough of the deep words, I wanted to talk to you about some of the great works I had to make so far for the class. 
First I started by making a mood board or collage that would represent the great era of the 40's and 50's. So I search the internet about some of the greatest designers like Dior or Balenciaga, and what was the fashion at that time and in which context this played a role and blah blah blah and I ended up pulling up this:

I am quite proud of myself. I think it work out well. :-)


Then I had to customize a jacket...I know what everyone think about customization, but well in this case just forget it. The teacher went crazy the first day we all came with the idea of cutting out the jacket in pieces and add this and that, blah blah....we were all wrong he said. "That is not customization but transformation, which will be your next project". Huuuuuuuuuuuuhhhh !!! iiiiiiyyyyyyyeeeaaaahhh !! Well, I had to go back to the drawing board and think about something else an quick. So I start by making this other moodboard:

I don't know if you get the idea or no?













And this is the jacket in question that I need to customise.

And.....













               



                      this is what I did of it :-))))
 

What do you think?

                                                             Crazy !? No ?


Please do not hesitate to leave your comment. I have not submitted it yet to the teacher, so I don't know if he will like it or not. That is the risk.

oh shoooo !! I did not check the time and now I have to go. I leave you guys to reflect on this and hopefully will be back in there soon.

Cheers.
LV