Through this semester, I think my ability has been raised overally. In September last year, everything was new and novel to me, but at the same time, it also made me feel a lot of pressure, because all skills needed to be relearned, and the surrounding environment and learning methods needed to be adapted. However, in the second semester, because I have already fit in New York and Parsons, I have more time now to discover my interests and explore new areas. Thus, I chose the Fashion topic studio and seminar class. I had the fashion illustration program before I went to Parsons. Although I knew that I was not good at fashion, I still want to give a try to experience what it looks like to study in one of the best fashion school in the world.
Before the final project, we mostly did some practicing projects, which did not give me the chance to design and create self-designed clothes. However, they were still hard and challengeable projects to me. I had never learned how to use the sewing machine or how to draw the patterns before. I was really struggle at the beginning, but after several failures, I was getting more familiar to the process of creating clothes. Meanwhile, in my seminar class, I worked on short essays about beauty and fashion. I was different compared to the last semester. In this semester, I had more space to talk about my own opinions and thoughts. Towards the end this semester, the studio class required us to create three wearable pieces as the final project, and for the seminar, we need to write a formal analysis essay on a fashion topic. This is the changing point.
To be honest, I felt a lot of pressure when I just knew I was going to do this studio project. Although I have learned a lot of skills, it was the first time to design a brand new suit of clothes by myself. I have no ideas for this project. At that time, I just decided the thesis statement for my seminar final essay When I did the research, I read lots of fashion blogs. I noticed some popular elements this year, collages, Morandi colors and waistbands. Thus, I added those elements into my clothes’ design. In the process of making clothes, the most difficult part was to collage different colors of fabrics together. Every piece of fabric needed to be measured in length where it joined, and you needed to be very careful when sewing, otherwise other part will be offline. It spent me almost two weeks to finish the collages part. I cutted a lot of fabric, and many parts had been sewn several times. In order to do this part better, I even bought a skirt made of fabrics and cut it to see how it was sewn. After I finished the dress, I realized that many of the clothes we saw in the store actually took a lot of time to design and make. Designers Efforts were beyond my imagination. This project gave me a complete experience of the effort required to make a suit of clothes.
In my seminar essay, I mainly discussed how fashion bloggers affect the fashion industry market. Compared with designing and making clothes, promotion in fashion industry is another brand-new part. Studio let me know the process of making clothes. When I wrote seminar essay, I learned how to advertise a dress in the market after it was made, so that more people could know it. In this semester, I have a new understanding of fashion industry, and also of myself.
