fully packed

fully packed, not much could be packed into a 20kg suit case.

Off to London, bye bye UK.

I'll keep updating this blog once I've settled and received my iMac through the post, but it might take a while.

Until then,
Bye for now.

Illustration No.7 The Stretch

<The Stretch>

-another entry of my Red&Blue collection

A little overslept,

Lifted straight form the winter to a bold summer.

With the spring missing,

Got just enough time for a stretch.

Are you ready?

睡久了那么一点点，

就从寒冬跳到盛夏。

错过了春天，

刚够伸一个懒腰的时间。

准备好了吗？

(click on the image for full view)

Illustration No. 6-Lost in the woods, where the trees will guide you home.

lost internet connection for a week, here's what I've been doing, and thinking about.

<Lost in the Woods>

run, 

till the end of the road, 

where there is light, 

and there is hope.

(click on the image for full view)

5th Illustration-red & blue

<Red & Blue>

There's always something worth hoping for.

(click on the image for full-view)

4th Illustration- Shhhh...

3rd Illustration- Lavender Girl

<Lavender Girl>

Come smell it, 

it's purple.

(click on the image for full-view)

2nd Fashion Illustration - Orange Escape

<Orange Escape>

I'm not blind,

I chose not to see,

so that I can feel.

(click on the image for full-view)

2011 Fall RTW-Vivienne Westwood and the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Remember in Fashion PR class my teacher used to say that, if you spot a neon wire decoration in major store window displays from more than three fashion cities, say, Milan, London, and Tokyo, at the same time, then there might be a trend in neon wire decorations going on for store window display decos.

A minute after I was fascinated by the look of White Sea, I discovered Vivienne Westwood's Fall 2011 RTW collection. If I spot a third scary halloween look make-up then I'd say there might be a trend of horror going on.....

White Sea: Mountaineer

When I first saw Vivienne's collection for this season, I dropped my cupcake not for the usual unusual cuts and prints, beads and pleats, but for the hair and make-up artists. I know they couldn't be Sweeney Todd, but, Gee, is that a hell of a make-up or what, make-up from hell?

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Don't get me wrong though, I quite like them, and although they're too scary for a pretty everyday look, they'd be quite pretty for a scary halloween look.

Normally when I look at an interesting designing or art work, my mind would automatically switch to a wild brain-storming mode trying to figure out what inspires the designer, who or what are their muses. And I think I've found the answers to the following ones:

Black Swan for this:

And Field Runners for the following:
( I bet Vivienne herself might have been playing Field Runners in between her meetings and designer's blocks :P)

*** ***
credit: Runway pictures from the collection: all from Style.com
other pictures from Google

Book-100 Years of Fashion Illustration

Cally Beackman - 100 Years of Fashion Illustration

Having discovered Cally Beackman's "100 Years of Fashion Illustration" is like stumbling up a museum of fashion and art. The title might suggest a in-depth study on fashion illustration, it is indeed a chronicle of fashion, using illustrations as examples of particular styles, designers, times, and trends, . Little is discussed on illustration techniques, nor can you expect to learn the use of wash and tips on rendering. Instead, trends of different times and the stories concealed behind are thoroughly investigated. The figure-concealing tubular dresses of the early 20s, the feminine yet natural (that is, compared to the painful hour-glass silhouettes of earlier times) silhouettes of the 30s... this book not only spots the trends and demonstrates them using fashion illustrations, it goes one step further into investigating the reasons behind every trend. Why is a hemline longer, why is focus being put on the shoulders... And the reasons demonstrated lie somewhere beyond beauty and fashion itself. Be it the war, a shortage of fabric, or other major cultural, economic and technological changes in the society... It makes me rethink fashion as not only about visionary beauty and personal taste, but also a means of recording a bigger picture, the evolution of human society and civilisation. To this extend, fashion illustration itself serves as the pencils and papers of that record, but just like literature, fashion illustration's nature brings with it eternal imagination, romance, exaggeration, and the pursuit of perfection, which are indeed the paramount beauty of this genre of art. Therefore, despite of being a little disappointed not learning anything about fashion illustration, it was indeed a delight to read this book. After all, what is fashion illustration without fashion?

Scanned some of my fav pages from the book, hope this doesn't break any law...

First Fashion Design/Illustration- Lady Bowie

I've been talking about fashion design for soooooo long, bought the Wacom Intuos 4 tablet for soooo long, and finally, today, got the courage to sit down and do some work. Took me a day to turn a white paper into this little piece. Always had a thing for bows, heart shapes, cupcakes....things that are cute and, well, a bit corny, in a way. But who doesn't?

So, my first design, a gift wrapped with a ribbon. Who'd like to put a ring on it?

:)

Lovely Day for a Photo Shoot-James

The weather has gone wild these days. You wake up with frosty windows, shower with soothing rain drops in the morning, surprised with playful bits of snow at noon and then, in the afternoon, it hits the u-turn: just when you're all tucked up for a lazy nap in a guilty-free rainy day like this, rays of crispy sunshine came out of the blue and make your skin sizzle like bacon. I might have been exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea: typical English weather, with its mind never made up and practical-jokes all prepped up ready to surprise you.

Having moaned about that, it is absolutely blessed that we had a sunny day today, all the way through, which made our second commercial photo shoot went as planned. Well I say it's commercial, but just like the last one at the studio, we were not getting paid, and played the role of "the guys with cameras and free helping hands all over their body". Yup, I guess that's always the case when you're not an established professional photographer and you don't have a website with your name on it and a price list.

On the bright side, I'm still 100% grateful of these opportunities, hoping that one day, not accidentally, but as the result of a painful process named evolution, I could create something outrageously stunning and astonishing as a masterpiece. Plus, if that day will never come, just a couple of friends hanging around taking photos recording songs baking muffins is still not a bad idea for some fun, and what more could you ask? it's all free!

Today's photo shoot is for a friend's boyfriend, and oh man aren't they great~!















































then, two interesting behind-the-scenes shots:



*Cute lovers*



*Lenses on me*




And finally, some shots taken using film camera:










Oops, here's one of me holding the camera:

Mary Katrantzou -Fall 2011 RTW

If it's not a message form above then Mary K and I must have sth in common. It's a long story and it has little to do with her until the very end. So go make yourself a nice cup of coffee or tea:)




The rationale dates back from yesterday, when I was reading the book“Issey Miyake”and was inspired by his take on bringing the traditional one-piece japanese farm wear into something utterly unconventional and mind-blowing.


Can you believe this is one simple piece of cloth? Well it's definitely one piece, and definitely anything but simple:)


I couldn't help thinking about my field trip to an aboriginal village at China's deepest backstage of the Guizhou Province. It was about 5 years ago, with my mom, and that province is my hometown. Although that village is only about 4 hours drive from my home town where the glittering nightlife starts at 3 am, it is definitely one of those Narnia moments the minute we hit the village. It feels less than a blink of an eye that the first minute you're trapped inside of a maze featuring giant glass cubes, steel blocks and carbon-dioxide, the next minute your eyes are out of focus trying to reach the horizon line with nothing in front of you but a vast carpet of greenness. It was down at the very end of the carpet where we found the hidden treasure, a village where there is no electricity and running water, which I consider a positive thing - who needs all that fuss when you are living in pure paradise?

People living there are a minority ethnic named Shui (literally means water) (there are 56 different ethnics in China), which have a very romantic nature in its history and tales. (Maybe it's just me cuz most of their stories I heard are about love... Or could it simply be because of the fact that I'm a helpless romantic and those love stories were the only ones I remembered? Well, either way, the place is about love, at least in my head.) In the village they have two small hills called the match hills, where young men and women gather annually, singing love songs out loud in turns. If a man on one hill successfully attracts a woman from the other hill to sing along with him, then they get to run down to the valley to meet each other, where they would get married by vowing in front of two giant rocks naturally shaped like a loving couple. That's not the only thing romantic about this village. In the village there grow a special kind of tree with heart-shaped leaves; the symbol of the village looks like a man and a woman standing together... These stories are not what I wanted to talk about here though. The one story that really gets me and received a reservation in the velvet soft chest in my heart is the one about women's bridal dress. Ever since Shui girls are old enough to operate the wooden weaving machine, they are taught by their mothers to do one thing, and one thing only: making their own bridal dresses. The dress takes years to make, cuz they make everything from scratch. And by scratch, I mean, not "if you wanna make anything from scratch you'd have to create the universe" kinda geeky scratch, nor the "buy the brownie mix, add water and pop it in the oven" kinda lazy scratch. It's the proper scratch taken one step further: they do everything from growing the plants for the fibers and color dyes, to making the threads, weaving the fabrics, dyeing the clothes, embroidering the patterns, sewing the garment. When the dress is done, the whole thing is coated by egg for a million times for a set and stunning finish..… And their embroidering is the most ancient craft of embroidering named the "Ma Wei Xiu", where a hair from the horse's tail is tightly intwined by dyed colored pure silk, and used as thread to embroider.





As if the dress and the story behind it are not strong and bold enough, the Shui girls have to wear a set of silver jewelry. It's not our average earring+necklace+bracelet+ring kind of set, it's not even the Queen's set where you add a tiara onto the list. It's a set of jewelry so luxury that it almost covers the entire top of the girl. And man did I mention they are heavy?



The whole process takes years of hard work, patience, as we as expectations of love that grows in the heart of a girl and turns her into a fine woman. Isn't this single piece of garment the precise definition of fashion? Something that keeps her memories, stories, dreams, hopes and fantasies?

So, cut out from the flashback to yesterday after reading Issey Miyake's story, how he is Japanese but moved along to the US, UK and France… Although I've been all over the place over the years, I always wanted to find my niche, and use my works to tell the story of who I am, where I've been and what I've been thinking and believing in, no matter it's a piece of drawing or a film script or a fashion design collection. I want an ID that reaches deep down to my roots: to China and to Guizhou, the place hardly known to the outside world, but at the same time, an ID that reaches beyond, covering all the tiny bits of my life around the world, and more importantly, all the sparkles and lightbulbs in my head. I guess finding your own niche is a life-long process really, and it takes years to grow and blossom, just like the Shui bridal dress, or a fine piece of pearl, or a fine line of wrinkle. So, talking about having roots through my fashion design collection, I had the idea of a collection inspired by the Shui girls' bridal dress, featuring complicated yet delicate details of oriental patterns, mainly floral and lace-like, and the hour-glass silhouette that highlights the feminine and romantic background story. But since the Ma Wei Xiu is so complicated to make and it's such a traditional thing, I recon I could twist it a bit by printing the embroidered patterns in a really 3D way to give the ancient craft a modern avant-garde vibe.

And today I saw Mary K's oriental prints, it's like, BANG! that's what I was thinking!!!! That's what I'm talking about, you READ MY MIND!!!!









Click here on style.com to view Mary K's fall 2011 rtw full collection.