Cooper Hewitt

Last Friday I met two of my girlfriends from school and we visited the Cooper Hewitt museum for Design Week ie: free admission. (Plus they're open late on Friday nights.)
Anyway there was an interesting exhibit on Piranesi. I must admit that I didn't know anything about him or his work. But hiss etchings and drawings were amazing. What a great architect and designer. The details on his sketching was ridiculous! One of the pieces was a marble chimney piece from 1769. Seriously amazing.
I am so lucky to live in New York to see all of these amazing museums with cool artifacts and being able to enjoy these different parts of history!

I wish...

On Monday I was heading home from the library and was about to get on the subway when this sir was trying to get my attention...Miss...MISS...
So, finally I turn around.
sir: "You have hypnotized me under your spell, Your wish is my command. What do you wish for me to do?"
Me: "I wish you would go away." I turned and was beginning to walk away when I hear
Sir: "But you still have 2 more wishes..."
hahaha
I have to give him 1 point for creativity, however, he was still really annoying.

The Pockets

Here is the inside of the jacket I am working on for tailoring. Notice my handiwork!

I was originally going to make it for Dereck, but then my lovely professor said I couldn't. He only had patterns for women. However, "the concepts are exactly the same."

It is such a pain.

There a million steps. Even though this first one won't be perfect, I will have the skills when I am done to create beautiful tailored jackets for him or her. There is so much that goes into tailored clothing. They are worth every expense.

Notice, on the lips of the pocket I have the fabric facing backward. When he asked me why I did this I told him that I thought it might look cool.

Bet you can't guess which one he did and which ones I did?

His response, dead serious. "We don't do that here, there is no creativity in this class. You must do exactly as I say. Right..."

You might expect that if you were studying in a non-liberal arts school. But I never thought I would hear those words at Parsons.

Live and learn I guess!

Project

Near the beginning of the summer a friend of mine hired me to design and make a bridesmaid dress for her. She didn't particularly like the one the bride chose and she wanted something a bit more modest. So, I vowed to finish it before school started. Well, let's just say I finished it after school started and just in the nick of time!

What is the matter with me? Why do I procrastinate so much? That's probably a whole 'nother topic.

Anyway, I wasn't 100% happy with the way it turned out, but it served it's purpose and it gave me practice.

This is what everyone else was wearing. (in brown)

Here is how she wore it.

Luxury Exhibit

Last night for my textiles class we met at this exhibit at the Museum at FIT.

It was a beautiful exhibit. In this day and age of "fast fashion" it was so cool to see handmade fabrics, intricate dresses, and beautifully draped fabrics.

How did the women fit into these clothes??? The waists were teeny and even some of the early 1900's shoes and gloves were sooo small!

Another observation is the fact that women nowadays wouldn't wear most of the stuff. I wouldn't! How could you? Some of it because it's too ornate, too fancy and I wouldn't want to ruin it and secondly our lives are so different now. We are so busy and to carry around all of this fabric would be so crazy! Below is a "day dress".

yeah right! Not in my day. I probably couldn't even make it down the elevator and to the subway in that thing. I would want to, it's gorgeous, but would be sweaty and tired from all that heavy fabric (tripping factors aside.)

Then we have this dress by "Coco" Chanel. Amazing! I would totally wear that! She was always so fashion forward and so into luxury that is comfortable.

Everyone should know this.

This Hermes Kelly Bag really set off the whole handbag movement in 2000. Notice how most luxury design firms now have waiting lists for their top handbags and accessories are so "in" right now.

Anyway, I could go on and on but if you are in New York, go see this exhibit. If you aren't check out the website, it has some really great pieces.

Be careful you bike riders!

I forgot to document the horrific scene Dereck and I came upon on our way home from church on Sunday.

We were driving along in Brooklyn and as we were coming to a stop at the stop light, we saw a guy (probably 30's-40's) lying on the ground with his bike near his crumpled legs, and one shoe further out into the middle of the road. It was horrible. He was clearly convulsing and I saw blooding trickling either out of his mouth or out of his head. I immediately unbuckled my seatbelt and was about to jolt out there when I realized that I had nothing to offer this man. There was someone who was already calling 911 and a few more standing near by anxious to help.
I thought, why would I jump out, I have no skills! I learned CPR on a mannequin, but it's been so long I don't even know the current regulations. What could I possibly do besides get in the way. So instead of crowding around him and causing more of a traffic delay and distraction by blocking the street we realized that there were plenty of people there to help him and continued on.
Of course I started crying, but why?
I don't know this man.
I will probably never know if he is ok or not.
I know that thousands of people get in accidents all the time, but it was just a bad scene to stumble upon and my heart went out to him.
It was a beautiful Fall day and I am sure he just left his house not planning to get hit by a car and spend the rest of the day in the hospital.
Life is so precious. It seems that several people have expressed this lately, but when we are so busy running from work to school to internship to home to wherever we need to remember to at least enjoy the moments!
Remember why it is you are doing what you are doing and be grateful that we are able to do these things. I am sorry that it took this to take that moment to Remember.
Sir, where ever you are - I hope you are OK!

Updates

Where do the days go? I haven't been a great blogger lately, so for that I apologize. It has been a busy few weeks.
What have I been up to?

Well, for one, the next few weeks I have midterms...Already! I can't believe I am halfway through the semester.



Update on my Italian, not so stallion, professor.
He still continues to amaze me with his craziness. An example - our classroom has a few of the teacher's lockers at the back of it. He begins at 5:59 (class starts at 6). So every once in a while, one of the teachers will have to walk through the classroom to get something from their locker. He will stop whatever he is doing, give them the STARE and then proceed to tell us how in 27 years he was never late nor did he miss a class that he was teaching. Even one time he came straight from the airport on his way back from Hong Kong.

Get over yourself.

He often compares students work to a "day old bagel"....thanks a lot.

I am making progress on the jacket - I had to redo the pockets a few times. My favorite memory is when I showed him the work I had done, he looked at me, told me to undo it and come back. He grabbed the pocket and silently re-did the whole thing for me. Fortunately one pocket looks great, unfortunately, I had to do the other pocket without his help and endure the drama. Oh well, it was worth it kinda. The good thing is that I am not the only one that looks like a jack--- on a weekly basis.

The Internship
Still going well. I have visited several additional factories, sat in on a textile meeting - the representative brought gorgeous fabrics from India. Such great information and inspiration. Helped Donna Karan's DJ choose an outfit from Mara's fall collection to wear to Donna's birthday party that she was DJ'ing.
If you have the October 8th People magazine - I haven't seen it yet - check for her

(Top Chef host) she was the one who's stylist came to our studio for clothes for the People Magazine shoot.

That's about it for now, I will blog more later.

P.S.

I kept the iphone and I love it!