This week I have been at Central St Martins doing a course in swimwear and lingerie design. It has felt like slowly coming alive again. Perhaps there is just more caffeine in the coffee in Soho than Canary Wharf, but I doubt it....
On Monday, walking into St Martins it could not have been more different from walking on to the trading floor. We are at the Charring Cross campus and they are just about to move to the new one in Kings Cross. The whole building is dilapidated in the most wonderful way, it feels a bit like a junior school with less money and more anarchy. Everything is a little bit grubby and worn around the edges, scuffed and rubbed. It reminds me a little of the poem the Velveteen rabbit as you can really feel how well loved the building has been. The other huge contrast is everyone is cheerful. The teachers, the porters, the other staff, and they all talk to each other. There isn't that hierarchical vow of silence that seems to permeate the city where people being friendly and human to one another is the exception rather than the rule.
I love it. I wish I could do an MA. We have been making blocks and patterns and toiles (the draft fabric version of your finished product, which you then tweak to make it perfect). Seam allowance, grain lines, maximum stretch, salvage. These words are my currency now. It's a science. Physics on paper or in 3D and the ultimate lesson in cause and effect, and you learn by doing it.
On the first day we made a large, vaguely swimsuit shaped body cover and were told to put it on, draw on it in chalk and CUT. If it didn't work out, it didn't work out. No drama. The hiss and snip of the scissors and the FREEDOM of making the choice where you make that cut was amazing. I am typing this and realise it probably sounds slightly ridiculous, but just having the freedom to create what you want is so liberating. It felt a little bit like cutting your barbies hair off as a child with out the subsequent regret. It makes you feel, in a small way, omnipotent.
So on Monday, I made a plunging halter neck swimsuit and yesterday I made bras!!! Today, I make another bra, learnt how to make a corset, and made a killah pair of bikini bottoms. LOVE IT. Tomorrow, I want to try to make a corset pattern and do some more work on my bottoms - oooooo and please, can I try to make a negligee?
I am travelling around London with a camera now. Things that beforehand I wouldn't have noticed are now sparking my attention and curiosity. I went shopping for fabric yesterday, amazing store, "The Cloth Shop" on Berwick Street. I fell in love. The Indian printed silks. Hand printed, jewel coloured, and the kind of fabric that once you wash it becomes so light and soft its like a butterfly's kiss against your skin. I want to go back and find the printed cottons to make some bras and panties and nighties with. The owner's wife is a yoga teacher too. The back of the shop houses a collection of Ganesh statues, antique buttons and braids and some wonderful Japanese notebooks. The notebooks I loved. They are bound in traditional indigo and white patterns, very similar to those used for cotton kimonos in japan, but all the patterns are slightly different. I want to go back and lay them all out in a mosaic. I think that would look amazing.
I have also spoken to a designer friend this week who was full of amazing, invaluable advice. I feel very lucky. I am thinking of moving this blog to tumblr or at least using that for images etc and I think I probably need to jump on the twitter band wagon. I want a sewing machine. I am a bit sad I don't have one here to play with at night. I have so many ideas and things I want to do. Mexico is starting to feel like it might get a bit in the way..... (I know -mental and it's much needed)... but I am excited. REALLY EXCITED.
I wish I knew how to post a lot of pictures on this. I don't. Grrr. I am becoming more visual, or allowing myself to be more visual, and also in a small way, I realised my everyday omnipotence with my designs will filter out to the rest of my life and enable me to be more powerful in everything I do. Now where the hell did I put those metaphorical scissors? Barbie, where are you....?
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