'What I would wear if I could...' - Winter florals style post!

This week I really want to get back into doing regular style posts. I feel a resolution coming on....As my New Years blogging resolution I will try and do at least 5 'What I would wear if I could afford to' posts each week and 1 chunkier more thought out entry. I feel like this year I need to get more organised with more of a routine to my life, maybe this will help...If I can manage to stick to it!

In the spirit of this, here is the first of many style posts!

Socks £5.00( ASOS), Bag £35.00 (Rokit vintage), Tights £2.99 (New Look), Chunky boots £95.00(Topshop), Tunic dress £70.00(Topshop), Knitted turban £12.00 (Topshop),Tarnished silver necklace £12.99 (Zara).

It seems that this week England has finally realised that it is actually winter and this means it needs to get colder. Ideally it needs to get cold enough to snow in time for my birthday. This means that it's time to crack out the boho knitted turbans and the tights and socks combo. Dark winter florals have been a huge trend this Autumn/Winter and I particularly love this Topshop boutique print with its rich orange and red tones. This garment is actually meant to be a tee, but one of the very few perks of being 5 ft absolutely 0 inches is that I can wear tee's as dresses.

I lvoe this outfit and would happily buy each and every item in a heartbeat if I had the funds. As a confessed jewellery hoarder I particularly love this Zara necklace, and at only £12.99 it's a steal- hopefully it will still be in the shops when my payday FINALLY arrives.

Figurative art trend SS14!

This is a delayed reaction to the Spring/Summer 2014 runway collections, but a day of visiting art galleries provoked me into re-evaluating the SS14 trends. 

With an outburst of colour, designers united for the coming season by using their garments as a canvas for abstract, deliberate, oversized brushstrokes in bold primary colours. Even Chanel, known for sticking to it's traditional look, branched out with carefully positioned multi-coloured painterly stripes.

Top row left to right: Roberto Musso, Yigal Azrouel, Cedric Charlier, Daniela Gregis
Bottom row left to right: Kenzo,Celine , Celine, Chanel.

Where digital prints have dominated the runway in recent years, the catwalk designers seem to have brought about a revival of the expressive art movements of the 1900's; cubism, surrealism and fauvism.

Left to right: Picasso(Cubism), Andre Derain(Fauvism) and Salvador Dali(Surrealism).

These painterly brush strokes have enabled a new style of prints to emerge-loose expressive figurative designs, all oversized in scale. An ode to surrealist and cubist paintings, these abstract portraits stretch the boundaries of printed fashion. Where, normally, print designers are restricted as to how experimental they can be with designs, the materialization of this print trend enables us to combine fine art with fashion. It also provides print designers with the opportunity to stylize their drawings, as abstract art doesn't need to be at all representational. 

Top row left to right: Ground Zero, Prada, Tata Naka, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Antonio Marras.
Bottom row left to right: Miu Miu, Claire Barrow, Giles, MSGM,  Jean- Charles de Castelbajac.

As a lover of art history, the emergence of this trend led me back to my art books and I thought it would be interesting to show the artist references for the prints we are seeing on the runway. 

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's childlike illustrations take obvious inspiration from Matisse's bold, fluid outlines and the cubist nature of Picasso's portraits with disjointed and disproportionate facial features.

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.

Pablo Picasso(1881-1973).

Henry Matisse(1869-1954).

 Marras, on the other hand,seems to make discreet references to the long, painted faces of Modigliani. Large almond shaped eyes, lengthened noses and slender necks being the 3 main characteristics of a Modigliani portrait are all found in the SS14 Marras collection.

Antonio Marras's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.

Amedeo Modigliani(1884-1920).

Egon Schiele is another 20th century painter who could have been used as inspiration for this trend. His scribble like portraits exude movement and character.

Egon Schiele(1890-1918).

Another unexpected print I came across in the SS14 catwalks was part of the Miu Miu collection. Tactful surrealism through a portrait made up of simple images including the outline of a bird and leaves. 

Reminiscient of the Surrealist movement of the 1920's and the food portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo(1526-1593). I love how the Miu Miu collection introduces surrealism and the idea that an image isn't what it seems in such a diluted way that it could be commercially viable.

Aside from the runway collections, surrealism also seems to have been making an appearance in fashion photography. The idea of having drawn on facial features covering the models own features, creates a very surreal feel to the photographs. As well as being aesthetically disturbing in an appealing way, this photographic trend seems to have quite profound undertones, hinting at how society seems to mask reality with counterfeit.

Despite being extremely effective, all I can think of when looking at this new playful style of fashion photography, is the Pale monster from Pan's Labyrinth with eyes in his hands.

In the spirit of the figurative art them to this blog post, next week I intend to create a range of portraits using what seems to be becoming my trademark OTT pattern style. I will write another entry towards the end of the week showing the sketches...if there are any! x

Style post regeneration

I have decided to try and get back into doing daily style posts, I might not manage the daily part but I need to encourage myself to get into some kind of blogging routine!I'm not gonna lie, the main reason I want to start this up again is because I keep seeing amazing clothes that I just can't afford. One day....one day I will be able to shop on impulse!

So for today's outfit I have chosen to go for a casual look that can take you from the office to post work drinks. The loose sequin trousers from Topshop are the item in this outfit that demand the most attention! Comfortable enough to wear around the office but versatile enough to carry you through to post work/ Friday feeling drinks, whats not to love

I have teemed this with a top I found while browsing on Topshop's t-shirt section of their website. I'm a sucker for a loose fitting top and I just love the print combination of this one. It manages to combine feminine Hawaiian style florals with abstract brushstroke stripes- a perfect way to incorporate the painterly trend which was all over the SS14 catwalks into the British high street.

I am definitely keen on buying this top......maybe I will treat myself after work tomorrow!

In terms of accessories I have kept this outfit quite simple with silver midi rings, a silver statement necklace(I always make room for a statement necklace as we all know), an oversized bag and a pair of amazingly comfortable chunky heel gladiator sandal style boots. I think my enthusiasm for these shoes is generated by the fact that, for once, I actually purchased something I posted about on my blog....and now I feel like I have to justify this purchase!

Top £18.00(Topshop), Rings £12.50(Topshop), Shoes £38.00(Topshop), Sequin trousers £85.00(Topshop), Necklace £18.00(Urban Outfitters), Oversized bag £80.00(American Apparel).

So this is what I would wear today if I could....with the New Year coming up and my ensuing promise to tackle the gym looming, with any luck this time next year I will be posting about outfits I have actually purchased and worn to work...Here's hoping!

Despite that rather disheartening start, focussing, once again, on me wanting to live outside of my means, I'm actually extremely happy at the moment! I've just been offered a permanent contract as a print designer for knitwear in a well known fashion supply company in London- finally my future feels a bit more secure both professionally and financially!

In other news, I visited a warehouse in Stratford today to get my Christmas presents printed. I won't say who they're for, as that kind of defeats the point of a surprise, but here are the placement designs for them!Both are hand illustrated, and can be ordered at https://www.facebook.com/atoblondon

Boycott Angora!!!

It is quite rare that I feel extremely riled up about cases regarding animal welfare, not because I have no sensitivity towards the issues surrounding animal cruelty, it has just never been put directly in my path. The new expose on angora fur farming, however, has definitely caught my attention.

I work full-time in the design department of a notable knitwear supplier based in London. Since taking this position, Angora has become part of my day to day vocabulary and until now it has never crossed my mind to question where it is sourced. Judging by the office's reaction to the Angora expose over the past week, it hadn't crossed theirs either. In the fashion supply industry it seems that we get so caught up in meeting a competitive price range that we forget to question whether things are ethically sourced.

So, a little background on Angora for those of you who aren't familiar with it...Angora is the fibre from the soft coat of an angora rabbit. Not to be mistaken with cashmere and mohair which both come from goats.Fluffy and silky to the touch it is more lightweight than wool but equally warm, it is these qualities that have lead to its popularity in knitwear. Angora is generally used in a wool yarn blend with only 30-35% angora, more would cause serious jumper malting.

1. Topshop knitted jumper- £46.00 7%Angora, New Look jumper-£19.99 30%Angora, 3. Zara knitted jumper- £59.99 8%Angora, 4. Meadham Kirchoff for Topshop- £95.00 48% Angora!!!

At some point in our lives, the majority of us will have held/stroked a rabbit, usually on a mandatory school trip to a local farm/petting zoo. Imagine how soft the coat of the rabbit was and you can start to get an understanding of why angora fur is so popular.

Growing up, we never had a cat or dog, bunnies were the pet of choice in my family and I have very fond memories of watching them hop playfully around the garden. Naturally placid and carefree animals they make an ideal pet for a family with young children.This is why the news of the angora rabbit torture has struck a chord with me!

The PETA(People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has recently uncovered the reality behind angora rabbit farming in China. China is responsible for producing 90% of the worlds Angora. A country which has no limitations in regards to animal welfare and no penalty for animal cruelty. This is the outcome...

Angora rabbits are enclosed in tiny wire cages in darkened rooms. They are taken out at 3 month intervals when their fur is ripped out of their skin. This process is repeated for 2-5 years when the rabbit is then skinned, killed and sold for meat. The video below is quite disturbing to watch but demonstrates the torture these animals are enduring in the name of fashion.

This expose has recently been brought to the attention of the general public in Sara Malm's article for the Daily Mail(20/11/13)entitled "Cruel truths of the angora fur trade revealed in shocking footage which shows rabbits having hair PULLED out... because the traders make more money" see full article here:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2510641/Cruel-truths-angora-fur-trade-revealed-shocking-video.html

The title of this article highlights an issue in the fashion industry which seems to constantly lead to questionable ethics. The drive of money. Are we so desperate to produce "cost-effective" clothes with competitive prices that we neglect to question why the prices are so favorable?Aparrently so.

Beth Hale from the Daily Mail has also gone into further detail in her Daily Mail article

"Thinking of buying an angora sweater for Christmas? Read this chilling investigation... Agony of the rabbits plucked alive for your fluffy jumpers"where the majority of the images on this blog post are sourced: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512072/Agony-rabbits-plucked-alive-fluffy-jumpers.html

In response to the expose of this cruelty high street chains like H&M are halting their angora production. In a recent press release, H&M said:

 “[We] will immediately stop the production of all angora products until we have secured that our strict Product Policy is being followed. H&M doesn’t accept that animals are treated badly. We only allow products made of angora hair from farms with good animal husbandry.”

How long H&M's production ban will continue is unknown, hopefully until Chinese fur farmers alter their fur harvesting methods.


With modern technology and the constant improving of synthetic fibres, we have man made replacements for natural fibres like Angora. Although some people like to feel like their social status is elevated because they are wearing a "real angora sweater", the majority of consumers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an angora and a synthetic yarn. 

Maybe we should start to look a little closer at the care labels of our knitwear and question where our garments are actually sourced!As nice as angora feels, I am not ready to forfeit my morality for the sake of fashion!I would like to get dressed in the morning knowing that no living creature was tortured in order to provide me with a luxuriously soft cardigan.

I employ you all to stop buying Angora jumpers/hats/scarves and any other angora products until this brutal method of fur farming is stopped. Customer demand drives angora production, if we boycott angora we can bring this cruelty to an end.

New York, London, Milan, Paris- Overall trend reports!

After getting a little bit sick of making these boards on photoshop and spending hours on end erasing the backgrounds from behind catwalk models(not great for self esteem...or eyesight!)I decided to speed the process up a bit and instead of doing a set of boards for each fashion week I have made an overall collection of trend boards featuring designers from London, Milan, Paris and New York.

The first board is animal prints. A catwalk staple, regardless of season and location, this also means it can be quite difficult to produce a new take on the animal print. Generally leopard is the default animal print, but for SS14 designers seem to be leaning more towards zebra, giraffe and snake prints.

Temperley(shown below), however, decided to stick with the trusty leopard print. By combining the animal print with painterly orchids and merging the leopard and orchid spots, Temperley managed to produce a leopard floral hybrid, while retaining an overriding sense of class(as I'm sure we are all aware, leopard print doesn't always have associations with classy people).

The Linear trend I identified in the Paris trend reports, proved to be a strong trend across the board.I am really looking forward to using thin delicate lines such as these to add detail to my personal drawing work.

Onto the florals. Florals seem to dominate the Spring/Summer collections every yearand the SS14 collections were no different. Despite my general lack of enthusiasm for floral prints, I actually really loved the stencil and linear florals that seemed to feature in the majority of designers collections. Cutout, blocked in floral shapes featured in the collections of Marc Jacobs, Desigual, Dries Van Noten and Vivienne Westwood and strong graphic linear florals took centre stage at Jonathan Saunders, Peter Pilotto and Tracy Reese. Gone are the weak ditsy Cath Kidston-esque florals, the new floral for SS14 is strong, graphic and not to be ignored.

One of my favourite collections from London fashion week, and from all the fashion weeks combined in fact, was that of Christopher Kane. Championing the new stencil floral, Kane also provides us with a biology class through a fashion context, with colourful labelled flower cross sections featuring on his dresses and jumpers. Such a new fresh take on the traditional flora, I don't remember ever having seen floral cross sections as a catwalk print. This is definitely something I will be looking into for my own work.

Apologies for the circles around bits on this board, I've been using them at work to decide what prints to focus on....but I forgot to save the board so had to scan it back in. Ignoring that, the painterly floral trend is a great commercial way of introducing the abstract painterly trend!Although all the below designs are equally beautiful, I particularly like the Dries Van Noten dress which layers cutout florals and the background the flowers have been cut from on top of each other to create an interesting cut-out painted effect.

Below is my favourite trend of the season by far!Fashion turns to art for inspiration using purposeful brushstrokes to produce an array of colourful, childlike and expressive designs. I love the illustrative faces used in the Prada and Antonio Marras collections and the Gauguin-esque paintings used on the dresses in the collection for Aquilano Rimondi. Such an inspirational trend, it's so nice to finally see paintings gaining some recognition through fashion. It almost seems to signify a return to more traditional design as opposed to the digital designs we are becoming so used to.

Novelty is always the most interesting aspect of the catwalks, I always love to see what novelty trends are emerging,particularly when it comes to animal imagery, and for SS14 I have identified 3 main ones. 

Firstly, championed by Kenzo and Holly Fulton, was the usage of fish. As mentioned in my Paris fashion week trend post (http://textilecandy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/paris-fashion-week-trend-report.html), there was a strong seaside/marine theme to the SS14 catwalks and the usage of fish imagery is an offshoot of this. Although fish are generally thought of as slimy creatures, definitely not generally associated with fashion, I think there are so many ways fish prints can be made more feminine by careful colour choices and by adding more detail to the scales. 

A second novelty trend is insects and butterflies. Butterflies are always present in Spring/Summer fashion and are a particular high street favourite, but designers such as Matthew Williamson, Nina Ricci and Beccaria all featured them in their SS14 collections.

Birds were also popular with a variety of designers featuring ravens, parrots, hummingbirds and storks. The final image trend I think is worth a mention is the zebra. Increasing in popularity in animal prints, the zebra as a whole has now worked it's way onto the catwalk in the collections of Suno, Orla Kiely and Marani, amongst others.

So there you have it- an overall trend report on New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion weeks!Hope you have enjoyed looking at them, I'll post again soon with some updates about what's going on in my life design wise and hopefully I'll find something inspirational to write a more intellectual blog post on soon :)

x

Paris fashion week trend report!

So I am finally getting round to posting about the fashion weeks and the amazing trends that have emerged. I may have taken my time blogging about them but I have made some pretty little trend boards for you all to break down the trends a bit!

First up for Paris is the Linear trend of which I am a huge fan. Abstract agate lines dominated the New York catwalks and this delicate linear trend seems to be the Parisienne interpretation. Thin scratchy/scribbly lines layered on top of each other contributed to the hand drawn, illustrative looked that seemed to dominate every catwalk this season. Supported by Kenzo, Akris, Guy Laroche and Agnes B, this trend was extremely popular  but I feel like the designers who worked this trend best were Andrew GN with his delicate line work and Luis Buchinho's layered scribble prints. 

Paris also turned out some amazing novelty pieces this season!Galliano's beetle is a particular favourite of mine and I have already started working on my own interpretation of this print.I also really loved Miu Miu's abstract painterly faces which were hidden amongst other images and I am looking forward to using this idea to inspire some of my own work.

Seaside/swimming related imagery seemed to be incredibly popular for Paris's novelty prints this season. As a general rule I think we can now say that any trend that is backed by Kenzo is going to be a huge high street fad. After their recent takeover of the brand, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim(the design duo behind Opening Ceremony)have taken the fashion world by storm. Firstly with their Kenzo tiger design in SS13 and more recently with their all seeing eye in AW13, Kenzo's novelty pieces seem destined to become high streets fad's. Set against scribbly linear designs and wavy alabaster lines, Kenzo introduced koi carp prints which fit in perfectly with the seaside theme. Repeat prints of swimmers also featured strongly in the collections of Agnes B, Olympia Le Tan and Tsumori Chisato.

As a whole, this season's catwalk designers seem to have drawn inspiration from art and so every fashion week has had a very painterly/illustrative feel. As I come from a fine art  background, with a geekish fascination for art history, I could not love this trend more. I think it's great that fashion has turned to art for inspiration and, as a direct result of this, this season feels very colourful and expressive. I am so enamored by this trend that I intend to do an entirely separate post dedicated to it, but for now here is a trend board on the best painterly picks from Paris.

Florals are a staple catwalk trend for Spring/Summer but this year the painterly trend mentioned above has brought about a new floral development. Bright florals with purposeful brushstrokes featured alongside delicate illustrative linear florals causing designers to finally let go of the predictable ditsy floral prints.Expressive and often child like, this new floral is all about being playful. I'm very intrigued to see how this is interpreted for the high street and how much it gets diluted down!

Although it doesn't fit in with any of the above trends at Paris fashion week, one of my favourite collections was Valentino. Combining heavy colourful embroidery and folk art motifs, Valentino's SS14 collection was oozing with opulence. I love how Valentino has introduced this traditionally Autumnal aesthetic into Spring by layering the thick embroidery over sheer fabrics and using pops of blues/pinks to freshen up the collection. Another aspect of the collection that I am keen to see work it's way to the high street is the subtle introduction of the zodiac into the prints and through the necklaces. After researching future trends on Stylesight and WGSN, I am aware that obscure symbols such as the zodiac is set to become a major trend over the next year so it's really interesting to see how it is being introduced already. It also substantiates my belief that the majority of print/graphic related fashion trends are first introduced through accessories.

Here's a quick accessories overview showing some of the figures/shapes I found interesting. As you can see from this board there are a lot of bug and butterfly themed accessories over a variety of different catwalks/fashion weeks. Stars and celestial imagery is also becoming increasingly popular which I suppose is where Valentino's zodiac amulets tie in.

So that's Paris!I've been finding all these trend boards quite time consuming and so instead of doing a group of boards for each fashion week, as I have done with New York and Paris, I have decided to make some trend boards picking out my favourite collections from each fashion week and identifying trends across all countries.

Thank you :)

A big 'Hi' to all my followers/visitors!Sorry I have been so silent recently, I have had a heck of a lot going on but all will be revealed shortly!Just wanted to do a really quick blog to say thank you to everyone who has visited my page over the past 6 months, I have finally reached 10,000 visitors!YAY!

More posts will be coming shortly as I have a lot of things to update you all on! x