Pressure All Year Round

If it's one thing I have learned from this year at college it's that my life will always be stressful. However, because I can accept that now I can handle the stress and the hectic chaotic life the fashion industry offers me. Bring it on, if it's a "one day you're in and the next day you're out" kind of world I can just roll with the punches and tackle any challenge I get thrown at me. I feel that I will never slow down, so this summer I will be trying to do anything and everything to make next year just a little easier. Whether it's sewing by hand to perfect my stitching techniques, cutting and draping, reading about everything related to the fashion industry, getting my textbooks early and reading them before classes, buying zillions of magazines, working on my blog, or just sketching.

I will not be just lounging around and relaxing. First step is to get a retail job. I want to start gaining retail experience now, before I go on my retail internship. I would like to have a variety of skills pertaining to the retail side of the fashion industry so when I can secure a retail internship for school credit I will not just be folding shirts and working the register. I want to know how everything works in a store.

I would also like to start working on ideas for my sophomore year looks for the fashion show and what I could potentially submit to be in the art gallery. And seeing how I will be taking another drawing class in the fall I would like to practice sketching everything from trees to people to works of art. 

I have so many plans and about 3 months to make magic happen. Sometimes I am stressed about thinking about how stressful each up and coming year of college will cause me, then just imagining how my future career could be....yet I am still in love and will hold my dreams close to my heart because I want to be here, i want to be a designer, and I want to be successful. So for right now the stress and the pressure to succeed is high, but I think in the end it will all be worth it. I'm doing what I love and I don't think anything should make me stop and give up.

Trying New Dos

Every now and then I come across a hairstyle I just have to try. Earlier this year I discovered the instructions for how to style your hair so it looks as though your hair is a bow.

Here are a few pictures of my first ever attempt:

A little crooked but cute

My bow is a little uneven but it looks like a bow :)

I look forward to trying new things with my hair, especially because I have long hair so I have a lot of options.

Chanel's For the First Time

Hope everyone is enjoying April. Here in Indiana the weather is so unpredictable it's as if mother nature wakes up, can't decide on one type of weather, and decides to just draw little pieces of paper out of a hat every hour to pick what we should go through.
I figured one of my first posts to get me back into the swings of writing regularly should be about something I love and can say a lot about. Thus, my topic for this post is about Chanel, though more specifically the "For the First Time" advertisement video.
I first saw this video last semester in my Introduction to the Apparel Industry class. I loved every single bit of it. So much so i shared it with all of my friends, even the ones in engineering that could care less about fashion. Then when I was in my art class last semester, Design 1, we had to talk about ourselves as artists for around 10 minutes. I am not a very talented artist in the way the other students in my class are. Therefore, I discussed how I get my inspiration and how that guides me as a designer to think of a garment, the fabric, and so forth. I shared this video in my class, many people looked bored, but my art TA loved the design and graphics the video possesses. There is something about this video that makes me love Chanel more than I already did. 
This semester in my English class we had to analyze a work, so I chose this video. My teacher loved that I picked a topic where I can show my knowledge and passion. I am now using the paper I created to participate in Purdue's Spring Writing Showcase. I will be creating a display board, a timeline, and more to put on display for others. I will post more about this at a different time, after the Showcase has happened.
Back to the video, there is history, pictures, clips, and more, providing something pleasing for everyone.
I promise this is not a waste of four minutes of your life, you never know you may walk away with new ideas and a new outlook on something. I could talk about Chanel forever, but instead I will end my post with a quote from Chanel that illustrates how Fashion is not just in clothes but in everything around us, "Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."
 

"For the First Time"

If the video does not work, simply use a search engine and search "For the First Time Chanel"

Chaos at College

Hey Everybody!

As the title says, there is chaos at college for me. It has been crazy hectic and busy. With all my classes and preparing for the fashion show and everything else I have been involved in, I haven't had time to post. I've written a lot but nothing made it out of it's first draft stage. Hopefully as the semester unwinds I will be able to post more often, if not then I will be making time. This is an important outlet for me and I enjoy sharing what I have to say even if no one is reading it. Prepare yourselves for some great posts on clothing, the design process, Purdue's Spring Fashion Show, and of course more posts about Chanel. Pictures and videos and interviews and more are to come!

Just some Lovely Ladies & Me (the blonde) in Design

First Few Months Away

Hello again, it's been forever. Life here at college is everything I thought it would be and more. I'm loving my classes and I have great friends, from multiple majors too, not just in apparel design. My friends in apparel design however, are amazing and all of us are so different it's awesome. Each of our styles are unique and we each bring something different to the table, it's wonderful how easily we all mesh though.
Out of my 7 classes this semester, 3 were specific to my major: Intro to CSR (Consumer Sciences & Retailing), Apparel Equipment, and Intro the Apparel Industry. In the first one we mainly talked about our major, how to survive freshman year, and how to make sure we feel we're where we're supposed to be. In the second one we were taught how to thread a surger, use the various sewing machines (button making, zig zag, etc.), and make sure we know the rules of the lab. In the last one we learned everything from the past 100 years of fashion history, to designers (old & new), to trends, to how to think like a designer, to textiles (over 125 too!), to colors, to the importance of knowing types of hats, parts of a men's suits, ant the cuts for stones for jewelry. This semester has been amazing and I can't believe I had this much fun.
Next semester I have to buckle down and stay organised and motivated. On top of taking 6 classes (18 credit hours) the fashion show is in April! I'm taking Showcase, which is for the fashion show, and I'm taking Apparel Assembly, which is a sewing class & lab. Luckily I have one of best friends as my model for the show & we live in the same dorm so I can bug her anytime I want to work on my design. Though, to be honest, I have no idea what I'm going to make for the fashion yet. I have to figure it out over Winter break though because I need to buy fabric and materials. As soon as I figure out what I'm doing I will be posting sketches and rough drafts with details. I am excited and nervous all at the same time. I can not wait til April, the show will be amazing.

Crazy College Collage

I have been at college for a week now and amongst all the thousands of freshmen and now upperclassmen arriving on campus one thing remains unsettled-is there a so called style for college? There is the obvious ensemble for working out: athletic shorts and a t-shirt and gym shoes. But for an everyday schedule—wake up, eat, go to class, rush to another class, have a little bit of downtime, eat, go to work, work out, eat, study, sleep—there appears to be no one fashion fab taking over here at Purdue. This, in my opinion, is excellent! I love that everyone seems to be unique and separate amid the crowds of people shuffling between the rings of the bell tower. I love that fashion stereotypes don’t necessarily hold true at college. Not all nerdy kids wear graphic tees & jeans, a lot of the girls in engineering have a great sense of style. The girls I’ve met this past week are all different, from the type of engineering they’re planning on studying to their hair color. They all have a different view on fashion. I love it! I like that Purdue breaks stereotypes and lets anyone let their nerd flag fly, or in this case, let their tastes in fashion be expressed.