Open Day

Melbourne School of Fashion had an open day today.

Since I never attended any open day before and since I wanted to do some work with my felt hat, I decided to go. It was also a good opportunity to see which works were selected.

Here are some photos.

JD Mannington's vintage eagle feather hat.

Arnavaz Lindsay's felt hat

Karen Jeffer's dress

Karen Jeffer's dress coat

Karen Jeffer's ball gown

Visual Merchandising

We went to Oswald Sealy and Mei+Picchi today. They have two names but they're in one place. Visual Merchandisers / Installation Artists apparently go to them to buy or rent items for shop windows and exhibitions.

Amazing stuff.  I didn't know they have different kinds of mannequins now, from the traditional to the fibre glass to size zero dynamic mannequins (they're from New York).

Then we went to RMIT's Visual Merchandising Department and I got depressed seeing how they had their own cutting studio and painting studio. They even get their own mentors and they work with different companies like Ray's and Country Road which gives students the opportunity to work with industry people while still studying.

Oh well. I'll just keep on working on my thing.

Flat Pattern Hat

Remember what I wrote about me not being artsy-crafty? Well, here's proof that I'm not. 

My first hat. It was such a disappointment even after I did several revisions. The skull cap wasn't the issue since I did a fairly good job of doing the patterns and toiled it a number of times. No, it was the actual petals that gave me the biggest disappointment. 

I thought that I could just use a hat stiffener to make the silk dupion stiff but after using quite a bit of it and letting it dry that the fabric barely got stiff. I experimented with hairs spray and wood glue but none worked. It was only on the day of submission that I realised I should have used wires to give the petals shape. But it was already too late since I've bagged out the petals and glued them together.

Lesson learned: Think everything through and don't assume reality would conform to imagination.