This is now officially my most favorite thing EVER
I found this veritable masterpiece on the internet the other day, I was kind of preparing for a larger article on Japanese fashion but it occurred to me that perhaps I should hold on before I start blabbing on for twelve pages about something so dear to my heart while the blog is so young. I literally only just figured out how to count the visitors to the page and I honestly was expecting zero. So when I saw that a whole 20 of you had visited the page I squealed like a little girl (which is difficult when you're a sixteen-year-old boy.)
Well okay maybe I didn't squeal but I was beaming anyway as I can only account for three of those visits. Perhaps I have really lovely friends who took the time to click previous page then go back then click it again as long as their attention spans could devote to it... But I did get one visitor from the states, so whomever you are please come again! I'll send you pickles! (Americans like pickles right???) Well, digital pickles anyway... probably would be weird of me to ask for your address so that I could send you pickles...
ANYWAY I'm ramblin, but let's talk about this AMAZING illustration above ^^^ It's by this wonderful person called Faye West....
Yeah, it's officially nothing o'clock as I'm writing this. So please excuse the block capitals, they are the only things keeping me awake.
I actually saw that dress in the flesh a few months back when I was studying Japanese designers for my college fashion course (more on that later) in an exhibition about Japanese fashion over the last thirty years (cunningly entitled 30 years of Japanese Fashion) at the Barbican Museum, London.
The dress is a Comme Des Garcons, (Rei Kawabuko, in my head, shares God stature with Stevie Nicks, jus' so ya know) and it was a real beauty to behold. It might seem like agenda pushing but seriously go see this exhibition! I honestly can't say I've ever had more fun/learnt so much/had such a life changing experience in a museum before. Ah!
Another piece by Faye which I now love >>>
What was I talking about again? oh yeah! I am a huge fan of Fashion illustration, I fell in love with artists like Mats Gustafsen (see last post) and David Downton a long time ago. (If I have enough time I might just scan in the pages from my sketchbook that I wrote about them in a re-edit of this post in a few days.) What I adored about their works, and about the work of every other illustrator I came across was the fact that drawing fashion as opposed to photographing fashion can be infinitely more engaging, when I saw that a-maze-ing illustration of the CDG dress from the show my heart literally melted in a way that the photo just never did. Perhaps it's because of the personal connection with the dress I think I have, I dunno, but I really believe that the core reasoning behind my reaction was that it caught the dress in an incredibly descriptive way.
That dress is all about Japan, the shape and the lapel attachments are so referential to classic Tokyo-chic and then the Big Red Dot on it is quite obviously the Japanese flag, then the girl's makeup is Kabuki with her hair tied back like a Geisha's... I could write pages on it but I shan't. So that dress represents Japanese fashion and then, like some incredible genius West has arranged it into a heart! It's message is very simple, it's "I heart Japanese Fashion." But that simplicity belies a greater talent.
Once upon a time I tried to be a Fashion illustrator. During my work on Downton I was inspired to do an ink painting based on his beautiful style and it turned out... O.K. but so very far from great. It looks so easy! it looks like the sort of thing you could absent-mindedly do in your spare time (kind of like blogging... ha ha Ha?) but as soon as you sit there with your inks, water and an empty page of white construction paper the real difficulty of what you're attempting hits you like a big yellow schoolbus and you run away crying.
I have more than immense respect for Fashion Illustrators, because it is a more than immense task. To merge both the vision of a designer with your own and then to carve it out of a page... I honestly wouldn't know where to start, and doubt my mental capacity to learn or otherwise find out how to. So when someone else does it and does it well (and I don't just mean 'well,' I mean CRAZY well) I simply gape in awe. Faye's work is inspirational and I adore it, I really hope she doesn't mind me posting so much of her work on here but I have to share its magnificence with you guys, even if 'you guys' is merely my 3 kind-hearted friends. So here is some of my favorite pieces of her work:
She did a bunch of illustrations based on London Fashion week, I love love love love love them all but they're too many to post on here, so GO HAVE A LOOK YOURSELF! once you're done here of course.
I just love her work, she's amazing. Promise me you'll follow her blog too? please?
why thank you very much Jack!x
ReplyDeleteI seriously adore your work! you're so very welcome! :)
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