Hi, Everyone!
I hope that your September has been prosperous so far! I wanted to check in and give an update on what is going on with your’s truly :). Let’s just jump right into it.
So the semester began on the 28th of August and I’ve been busy ever since. This September marked my 12th season of being invited to cover Fashion Week! I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for 6 years, time has definitely flew and its been a labor of love.
I had to skip quite a few shows this season because of my class schedule and all that I have going on. Usually I am able to make most things, and if I have to I will go to my class on another day if my Professor teaches the class twice. Its quite convoluted but I usually make it work and don’t miss too much of anything. So, I only went to 3 days worth of events out of the week, and I stupidly forgot my camera at home for one of those days. I tried to do the whole ‘go to class, then go to a show after class’ but it was so hard to put everything away, change, and then make it to the events which were usually right after my classes so I was just like okay, there is always next season :). I’m going to share my photos in my next post.
This semester is very different as I am now an Accessories Design major at FIT instead of a Fashion Design major. As you guys know, I have a Fashion Design degree from Parsons, and I was studying Fashion Design again at FIT (don’t ask, it made sense initially lol) but I got very bored with the pace of the curriculum. I decided to apply for the 1 year accelerated advanced Accessories Design program and got admitted. So, I am getting used to everything but so far so good.
Accessories Design is so different than Fashion Design, but the same concept. My 5 hr footwear class is the most advance class that I have and boy does the class move fast. The faculty only wanted us to do two patterns for this semester I believe (why so little, I don’t know -_-) but thank God I have an amazing Professor that wants us to get everything out of the class that we can since we only have 2 semesters. He pushes us and we are on our 5th pattern and its only the 3rd week.
It’s cool because I am a shoe fanatic but I was never fascinated with the construction of shoes until this program. It all starts with a shoe last which you’ll see in the photo above. We tape it up, measure, design, take it off, fix the pattern measurements again, etc. Then you cut it out in leather and test it with a pull over. You don’t finish the pull over, you just pull it over the last – that is the grey that you see on the last in the photos above! We haven’t made our official first shoe yet, we are still making various patterns which we can use to make other shoes. We’ve made a ballerina flat pattern, a pump, an oxford, a moccasin pump, etc. One of these patterns can be transformed into a boot pattern and so on. I have already expressed my love of crystals and glitter to my Professor and asked him if it is that when we make the thigh high boot if I could crystalize it and he shared my excitement so that was all I needed to hear, lol!!!!
This was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and I am excited that god willing in May I’ll have my Accessories Design degree. I will be a well-rounded designer with knowledge on how to not only design & construct clothing, but also bags, shoes, belts, and hats. With two 5 hr classes with 2 hour breaks in-between, and four 4 hour classes 4 days out of the week, the in-class workload is a lot though so I will be praying for all types of snow days, rejoicing on every day off. I zoom out of my classes when they are over like there’s a fire lmao.
I may share some of my projects on here so be on the look out :).
