Meeting Myself posts are a freestyle. No real themes or directions, just a general overview of what’s been going on. It’s also been the place where I’ve put my loosely defined goals and generally track my progress. Mostly it’s just ramblings.
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The sun is out.
It’s been a beautifully still week in San Francisco so far. It’s even been warm. Crazy.
The past month has been filled with all sorts of developments and excitement (in my head if not in the physical world).
I’ve been trying to figure out how much of my garment creation and design process I want to share on this blog. At first I felt like I should hide away for the next few whiles, quietly patterning and clothes making until everything is ready to go. I think doing that would significantly undermine the spirit of this project. So I’m gonna go against my nature, or at least my initial feelings, and post as much as I can about my design process, cause in reality, none of this actually belongs to me. This blog is evidence of as much. I’ve stolen so much over the past year, the least I can do is show what I’m doing with all the stuff I’ve been gathering. I plan on scanning my sketches, the fabrics and trims I’m choosing from, and posting other designery things that I do. Hopefully someone will pay me the same compliment by theft in the future.
After 6+ months of focusing on artists, designers, blackface, writers, academics, sexuality, and whatever else managed to make it onto these pages, I’m guessing that the next few months will be a bit more focused on me. me. me. Me. ME. MEEEEEEE! I suspect that lots of pictures will be taken, I may comment more on my body as my interest in it as a part of this project has already started to increase. I’m working out regularly, eating healthfully when I can, taking dance classes to get more comfortable with my body. I even went to a traditional Japanese bathhouse this week, which ended up being a great study of bodies in addition to being incredibly relaxing (except for the moment when the frisky couple necking in the hot pool got reprimanded by the bathhouse attendant. Awkward!).
I’ve also realized that my attention is extremely limited (or focused), there is fashion and dress, fabric and buttons, bodies and beauty, photographs and art…and not much else. I feel like a woman possessed/obsessed. There was a point in my life when I cared about other things, right? I’m not so sure anymore. I tried to read a “regular” newspaper (instead of WWD) the other day and found the articles to be humorless, out of touch, generic, unimportant, lazy, and stupid. It made me angry, so I picked up my needle and thread…
It’s strange to feel connected to inanimate articles.
I ended the style posts recently, but I haven’t stopped collecting designers and labels I respect and fantasize about working for or learning from. Resort 2012 collections have been popping up on WWD all week. Here are some tasty treats:
I like resort collections because there is something so easy and relaxed about them (duh). The shows are smaller and generally less extravagant, silhouettes seem to follow. Despite the assumed privilege that hovers over resort specific collections, I find the presentations to be easily translatable and less friv0lous than some spring/summer and fall/winter showings.
I’m gonna end this meandering post with some recent shots of myself, taken over the past week or so. I’m beginning to realize that I will need to have a pretty strong light source available to me at all times next year. It’s the only way I’ll show up on film and not look completely haggard. Not that there is anything wrong with haggard, just exploring my options. Also, I should invest in a tripod.
I took some of these shots on the roof deck at my apartment on Tuesday. The weather was amazing. The surface of the roof is painted with this great reflective silvery stuff, and on a sunny day this is how pictures turn out if you overexpose the flicks. I could only bear to open my eyes for one shot because it was so bright up there, also, either the paint was not dry or the hot sun turned it, cause I ended up with silver paint in places I do not care to mention.
Something about some of these shots reminded me of the “anonymous self-portraits” I saw on Takara Portis’ Flickr page. She is an amazing up-and-coming photographer/artista. Check out her BlackOut series. It’s excellent.
I also tried to take some shots of myself with pins in my mouth, cause that is something that happens a lot while I am stitching. I find it a disturbing habit, especially when I sew in shops with lots of people. It’s not clear in the pics that that is what’s going on, so I’ll have to work on capturing that.
Love and Enjoy.
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