3/21: Introducing…Fashion 2.0 Columns

As promised, I’ve developed themes for my posts, a great suggestion from Danielle of Final Fashion. My aim is to post 5 times a week, in the order below. I think posting Monday-Friday may be pushing it a little for me, so whichever day doesn’t matter, as long as I get all 5 posts done. I spent a while thinking about the 3 pillars for what want to bring to fashion: imagination, analysis, and communication, and these 5 columns cover those well. Without further ado, they are:

Inspirational post showcasing coolness, aesthetic prowess, interesting design, and/or an inspirational thought, quote, or person. I wanted something fresh and new to start off the week, and this will force me to always keep my eyes out for inspiration and creativity going on in the world, mostly to do with fashion, but not limited to.

Discussion of discoveries I find of fashion intersecting with technology. This may sometimes become Fashion: Meet New Media, or Fashion: Meet the World of Business. We’ll see what strikes my fancy. I chose this to incorporate more of topics I am interested in learning about and finding connections with fashion.

This will be a post where I can theorize, analyze, daydream, or just to give a general update of what is going on in my life. I find this important because I still want to maintain a personal voice to my blog, after all, one of the reasons why I started to blog in the first place was to be able to see my personal growth. Expect to find a lot of musing in regards to my process for my grad collection here.

Image-heavy post sharing what projects I have been working on, as well as a place for me to share my growing skills in a visual way. This will keep me on top of developing my range and skill level in fashion, graphics, illustration, etc to help me fulfill one of my goals this summer and beyond. I’ll try my hardest to pump something out every week, and I expect most of it to be work-in-progress.

A weekly round-up of good reads and finds floating around on the internet on a plethora of topics I am interested in – fashion, entrepreneurship, new media, technology, arts, creativity, productivity, etc. Interesting stuff that I find worthy of sharing.

~

I also cleaned up my blog a little bit, changed the layout very slightly. I also cleaned up my Flickr account, edited my sets from 15 down to 4, and will try to integrate Flickr more into my blog (I realize that Fashion 2.0 is quite text-heavy.) So that’s it – my plan for this blog. I hope to be able to share more productively and effectively with this plan.

Earth Day Musings

We’ve all heard of the 100-mile diet. (I have this weird thing I do – basically for everything going on in the world, I like to find a connection to fashion, because well, usually they are staring at me right in the face.) We had mass globalization happen. And then we have the eco-movement, which has spawned all sorts of initiatives to make processes and activities more green, including the 100-mile diet (food), hybrid cars (transportation), eco-friendly homes and materials (shelter), and of course, the growing prominence of local designers as being trendy (fashion). Four of the necessities in life (maybe I should’ve used “clothing” instead of “fashion) are all experiencing change as a result of the eco-movement, but one thing I have been thinking about is creative services and whether they will be affected.

This is of particular interest to me as I figure out where I want to live and work, whether to stay in Vancouver or not, in a year when I graduate. Because of the increasingly connected nature of the world, people who require services can now get these services from anyone living anywhere. It is hardly a requirement to be located in the same vicinity, although I’m sure there are benefits (. This means that “talent” can manifest itself in companies everywhere, not necessarily in the fashion capitals of the world. And, ”talent” does not necessarily have to go to these fashion capitals to be successful or to make a living. Does this mean a major shift in the fashion industry? In 20 years, will we still even have fashion capitals, or will it be a fashion free-for-all?  

This weights heavily on my career and life decisions, as I, like most people, seek the best opportunities for what I do. Then again, it is not just about job opportunity, but also travel and experience, being able to see how the fashion industry works in different cities. So maybe its not that hard a decision.

P.S. Hope you all had a good earth day!

21 day blog-a-thon

Blogging has not become a habit for me. Today, I heard that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Maybe if I blog every single day for 21 days, it’ll become more of a habit for me. In order to do that, I’m going to have to wake up early on days that I know I won’t have the “time” to blog.

Can’t hurt to try. Well, I guess it could result in a bunch of posts about nothing. Or maybe it’ll force me to find something worth blogging about.

Today marks the start of my 21 day blog-a-thon!

Goals for 4th year

Goal setting is a tool I use that is really helpful in allowing me to see the pathway from where I am to where I will be, and to achieve that sense of accomplishment from reaching a goal. With this productivity movement, it seems that people are setting goals more than ever. I think creatives should make use of goal-setting to be the logical side of all their airy-fairy fantasies. It’s my experiment in mixing right brain and left brain tendencies to make the optimum use of my time and efforts. It definitely works in bringing clarity to an otherwise cluttered mind.

Before I even finalize the niche market I will be working on, I want to get down some goals of what I would like to achieve in 2 respects: 4th year in general and with my final collection.

Goals for 4th year:
- not go into debt
- in fact, I’m going to push it here: save enough money to ______
- blog more regularly
- have my online portfolio finished and ready to view by January 2010
- be happy with my education and where it has brought me
- be ready to start the next phase of my life with excitement and passion
- not look like a regular college student anymore
- become more knowledgeable and skilled in my areas of interest and expertise

Goals for final collection:
- incorporate my strength in graphics somehow
- showcase my point of view as a designer
- wearable, meaning could translate readily into production and sales
- unlike any other previous Kwantlen collection
- incorporate some form of collaboration
- forward moving, not inspired by the past
- push my own design boundaries
- make the people in my life around me proud of what I have created

Although, I think I need to clarify these a little later on, perhaps come back to them in September?

Speaking of goals, my short term goal for the end of this month is to finish and hand in my internship journal, as well as get to submitting my designs for several contests I am entering. I haven’t really entered something wholeheartedly and not won or been a finalist, and I have for some time floundered in self-doubt at where my skills are. I realized there is no better time than now to start putting my work out there, because with each time, my work will get better (unless I am somehow doing it all wrong).

2010 and fashion

I am in a lucky position to be able to witness the effects of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games on the fashion industry and Vancouver’s tourism and economy.

Plum came out with a t-shirt design contest for Qolo, a new line that celebrates Vancouver just in time for the tourism boom to generate a whole new set of customers.

Aritzia has created a line, Park Life, in a licensing deal, as have numerous other companies.

And I’m sure that as the time comes nearer, even more fashion companies will try to take advantage of this onslaught of people coming into town as well as residents who feel the urge to celebrate living in Vancouver.

This makes me think of tourism-themed apparel as a selling point. Back in fall semester when I had Textile Design, I was first introduced to this idea by my instructor, who said it was a very lucrative business because the people who buy are usually big corporations giving away gifts that are unique to the city. Think: Hawaiian screen-printed shirts, I Love New York tshirts.

Will Vancouver be fashionable enough for people to want to wear items that scream “Vancouver!”? And with that comes the question, what is Vancouver? I think it is time to rethink and reinvent the wheel, because a lot of the traditional Vancouver images and icons are out of date and tacky, and Vancouver to me is a very young and fresh city full of a mood I like to think of as relaxed vibrancy.

I think a city becomes fashionable to wear when it is considered world-class, and world-class is gauged in my eyes when the biggest luxury companies and top fashion retailers have flagships within these cities. Vancouver is definitely heading this direction with a whole new wave of stores popping up around the city now and in the near future (Sephora!).

I think this a great time for someone to run with this idea in creating tourism-themed apparel in a fresh and youthful way that is trendy and fashion-forward. $$!

School has ended, now what?

I’ve been interested in wearable technology for a little over a year now, and have always relied on internet articles for information. Slowly, I am seeing more options for research and resources within Vancouver.

Emily Carr University of Art and Design has a wearable and interactive products studio within their industrial design department. I guess industrial design would be something I would be interested in, except that I certainly was not educated on what exactly industrial design was when I was trying to make a decision about post-secondary education options. Fashion design, of course, was a pretty straightforward choice.

Because I believe in collaboration, I wonder if this could become a possibility for my grad collection.

I have this week off because my internship supervisor is in Mexico for the week. I decided to use this time to do a complete rehaul of my studio space to work more creatively and productively.

A suggestion by a 4th year graduating student: “Do something you normally wouldn’t do this summer.” My plans already include pumping up my creativity and skill level this summer, something I have previously planned on but never got around to. I would also definitely like to go on a trip, but again, 4th year is expensive, and I am trying very hard to get my personal finances in tip top shape before I graduate. It was also suggested that I incorporate my graphic design skills into a career in fashion, but that just opens a whole other set of doors, not to say that it isn’t a very interesting prospect.

Why oh why are there so many possibilities?