Fashion Illustrators

Cassandra Rhodin - fashion illustrator
(google image search) 

Cassandra Rhodin - Swedish fashion illustrator. Love the big eyes that have a moodiness to them. The faces are what attracts me to them. Love the sultry look and the awkward bodies.

Laura Laine - Fashion illustrations
(google image search http://www.lauralaine.net/)

Laura Laine - Finnish fashion illustrator, i love these illustrations, they look so strange and different and yet to me even though they are strange and different the clothes are still the focus. Her illustrations have been used for big names such as YSL, Tommy Hilfigure, H&M and Zara.

Fashion, Art and Culture

After the first Fashion, Art and Culture lecture dating from 1850s-1930s there were two subjects which interested me the most; The Gibson Girl and Flappers. The Gibson Girl because, although she started off as just an illustrated character, she was still very influential to women and that puts me in mind of the magazines today and how I sometimes feel women can be so fickle and self conscious, this had clearly always been the case. However, I also liked The Gibson Girl for the glamour that she had and the independance she was seen to have, although created by a man. http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Gibson_girl

The Flappers I liked because they were all about having fun and at the time they were shocking, it gave women independance, and although the fashions were glamourous and in p art feminine, they also lost their femininity by flattening the bust and dropping the waist line which to me proved that a women could be sexy without being obvious. I love that the flapper was seen as rebellious and mischevious. http://byricardomarcenaroi.blogspot.com/2010/02/20s-quickstep-charleston-yiddisher.html

After the lecture we were put into groups and asked to make mood boards, mine was about The Gibson Girl. The group split up two stayed in college doing book/internet research and drawings from this whilst the other four first of all went to leeds market to source fabrics which represented the colours and materials that were used and then went to Leeds City Museum to source further information and found a series of postcards of The Gibson Girl. We then met back as a group and collaberated all our information, arranging it onto the mood board and then presented it to the group. I liked that we could go out and find different things and weren't just confined to one room and I also felt that the group worked well together.

Subjects from the other two lectures on Fashion, Art and Culture were; Make do and mend. I liked the idea of re-using clothing and re-using things which have a story behind them, I felt I could relate to it as I like the things which I own to have a story and am reluctant to throw away my own things so that I can pass on a story in a way.=] I was also interested in how resourceful it was and when we were put into groups to have a go at make do and mend ourselves I really enjoyed it.

Swinging 60's - Youth! Accessible to the masses! It interested me how fun it was, it was more a lifestyle than just the fashions.

Loved Punk, brought working class values to the masses.

Kind of a twist on Make do and mend, but for the young.

Had a message of anarchy which I took and related to the politics of today for my final piece.

Nottingham discoveries

In the first week of starting uni we went on a trip to a surprise location.....Nottingham!!!
I went in search for inspiration and tried to relate it to the research I've been doing on the swinging 60's and Mary Quant.

In the Nottingham Contemporary (http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/)  I really liked the work of Diane Arbus, b. 1923, New York, photographer, mainly street photography although she did some for Vogue and Glamour magazine. Her main interests were gender and identity and it's that which interests me. Her work dipicts a time in the 60s when people were discovering their identity and fashion was used to express this. To me her photos have a sense of nostalgia about them as well as highlighting issues which would have been seen as very controversial and at times a little disturbing. Arbus commited suicide in 1971.  
http://diane-arbus-photography.com/

I then discovered another photographer at the Castle Gallery (http://www.castlegalleries.com/contact/details.asp?id=43), Eve Arnold, b. April 21 1912. Arnold began photographing in 1946 in N.Y. Her most famous photos are of Marilyn Monroe and it was these which caught my attention in the gallery, to me they captured just what Marilyn was, glamourous, seen as perfection to many. The photos have an almost dream-like quality, as if to cover the real Marilyn behind the photo. http://www.castlegalleries.com/artists/eve_arnold/