A Sweet Melody

As a person with a lot of respect for "streetwear," Karmaloop is a website I go to often just to take a look around. On one of my many trips to this website I stumbled upon jewelry designer Melody Ehsani's work.  Most of her jewelry is made using laser cut plastic and Swarovski crystals and her inspiration seems to come from some pretty iconic imagery that maybe wasn't iconic, at least to me, until I saw it in jewelry form. As always, here are some of my favorites:

A Little Portfolio Teaser...

As graduation looms over my head with only 3 days to go, I've been putting the finishing touches on my portfolio and still have quite a few things left to do. One of the things I needed to do was make an "intro board" for my portfolio. Basically it is a concept board for what inspires me as a designer, not necessarily for any one particular collection and I wanted to share it below!

Anjelica the Muse

Watching Wes Anderson movies, in this case more specifically The Royal Tennenbaums, always makes me think of Anjelica Huston in her younger days running around modeling, acting as muse for designers Valentino and Halston and being photographed by the most iconic photographers of the seventies. She was discovered by Diana Vreeland and her career rose from there. Not many people knew she was a model before she was an actress and these pictures are too good to not show. Enjoy!

Clockwise from the top left: In Vogue 1972, with Halston in his studio, photographed by Gian Paolo Barbieri in Valentino and for Walter Albini, by Bob Richardson (Terry's Dad), and by Richard Avedon.

The 3 RRR's

This past Friday was a culminating point in my fashion design existence; I had my very first photo shoot (EVER) and my senior collection was the subject at hand, plus a few garments that had never really been in front of the camera before. My FANTASTIC photographer AJ Ragasa does amazing work so I knew from the start it would be him to shoot my work. I also enlisted my equally talented friends Alexander Aesthetic and Jake Treat to do makeup and hair respectively, and the looks are modeled by Kaylee Petter and Christina Wu-Martin. The shoot took a little over 9 hours and I am so thankful for everyone there to help! This collection is designed for Spring/ Summer 2011 and I hope you enjoy seeing my work! (Please be aware that if you click on the photos below, they will become larger and clearer!)

This is the first delivery called Revelation. There is very little structure, lots of draped fabric and pastel colors.


The next delivery, Reformation, is all about illusions with fabric layering, cut-outs and bright colors matched with muted colors.


Revolution is all about the bright and metallic colors, structured silhouettes to the extreme with a serious Lady Gaga influence.

Slick BP

So I don't know if you've heard but there was this big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few months ago... just kidding of course we ALL know about the BP oil rig explosion which sparked a massive hemorrhage of oil that is basically going to kill the seafood industry in southeast America. In the August issue of Italian Vogue, Steven Meisel shot a 24 page spread of Kristen McMenamy as a wounded animal covered in oil. I feel like she interprets the effected animals really well and that this editorial was such an unexpected yet effective way to illustrate the effects of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. My favorite images are below:

A Fall Preview Indeed

The Fall Preview 2010 issue of V magazine is proving to be an excellent issue indeed. While I haven't seen it in its entirety in print, I have seen many of the spreads in digital form via their website. This issue is one you may have heard a lot about because this is the issue in which five models (Adriana Lima, Isabeli Fontana, Natasha Poly, Lily Donaldson and Eniko Mihalik) each have their own cover with strategic parts of their body covered by a scratch-off V.

Above: The issue I bought with Isabeli Fontana on the cover looking crazy fierce!

I graduate this quarter and my obsession with pin-up girls is going to be the focus of my portfolio booth when I present my work at Benaroya Hall in September. The spread below named "A Woman in Full" is a big part of my inspiration for an extra line I'm designing which will focus on creating clothing for a modern and sophisticated pin-up girl.

The color palette, the hair and makeup, the poses of the models as well as the type of undergarments which make the silhouette is what makes these pin-up inspired pictures so representative of that era.

The Most Amazing Jacket EVER!

As I've been browsing the more recent issues of Vogue, Elle and Harper's Bazaar, the Spring Moschino ad campaign has caught my eye with this one in particular being my favorite:


After seeing this ad, I fell IN LOVE with the leather jacket the model is wearing! Upon further research, I found the jacket on the Moschino website. It's $5500 which means I will never own it myself but I think these images are magical enough. Well, magical enough to post on my blog anyway.


I love all the studs and cherry blossom leather cutouts and that tassel zipper pull, OH MY! This jacket incorporates two of my favorite things: fashion and art... TOGETHER AS ONE. As it should be. Enjoy!

Weekend Update

Again I've been a little M.I.A. but in my defense, midterms were a little crazy. Wanda is loading the homework on us in both of the classes I have with her, the Gerber system for computer pattern drafting still isn't working, and my marketing class is sort of obnoxious.

But even besides that it's been a bit of a high stress environment at Alchemy Goods where I intern. For the past couple months I've been prototyping something (I'm not exactly sure if I can mention it on here since it's not yet in production and I signed a confidentiality agreement) and I've been working on the bill of materials, or more lovingly known as the BOM for us fashion designers. Every company does theirs differently but it's even more complicated when you're working not only in yardage but in inches as well.

My mind has also been filling up with ideas from numerous sources of inspiration like Day of the Dead, Clue the Movie, Plush You! and that's just the start. I am also going to be extremely busy over Winter Break because I plan to open my Etsy store and start my line of menswear for the Art Institute's fashion show in March. And last week I learned how to screen print (pictures to come) from one of my friends through Fuel Magazine, David Gallo.

So I have a bunch of posts in mind, I'm going to try and focus more time on menswear posts and I have a lot of outfit posts in mind which I hope to take care of next weekend. But with how my procrastination is going on this Sunday evening, you may even get a post out of me tonight but no promises!

My Trip to New York

A few months ago, my Grandma Merrell called me and left a voicemail saying "Hey Chelsea's voicemail, it's Grandma, I just wanted to know if you wanted to come to New York with me for your Uncle Louie's wedding and I'll pay for everything. Gimme a call back and let me know." I got this message just a few minutes later and was screaming with excitement, as you can imagine. And I, of course, called back immediately accepting this once in a lifetime offer.

So August 5th through the 8th I went to mecca, a.k.a. New York, New York. The purpose of the trip was to go to the wedding but how can anyone expect a fashion design student to be focused solely on family activities when in the Big Apple for four days?

Grandma and I flew into JFK around 5PM EST. We took two different subways into Manhattan and got to our hotel and checked in around 7PM. Fast forward an hour or two and I was on a subway uptown to hang out with my cousin Geena. We decided to catch another subway back downtown and ended up chain smoking throughout Times Square, just taking in the sights.

Above: Outside the Virgin Records store in Time Square.
Dress: Mac & Jac (Macy's)
Shoes: Vans (Urban Outfitters)

The next day we caught a cab to St. Patrick's Cathedral. The wedding was very intimate and very beautiful. How could it not be in a place like that?! Anyway, it followed 8AM Mass, so after the reception we took our tired selves back to our respective hotels for a cat nap and met up again that afternoon to walk around Central Park. The rest of our family got preoccupied with some guy and his collection of hula hoops, so while they were busy, Geena and I headed over to one of the park's many large rocks for a smoke or two. There we met some guys and one of them, Justin, had five passes his Mom scored from work and took us to the Museum of Modern Art. The art was amazing, to say the very least, and hanging out with three cute guys didn't suck either. On our way back to Geena's hotel, we walked through Central Park again and found a charming little bridge.

Above: Somewhere in Central Park.
Dress: Pinkerton (Anthropologie)
Shoes: Rainbow Sandals

The next day, Geena, Carly (her sister and my cousin), my Grandma and I went shopping all across town including Mood Fabrics, Canal Street, and Century 21 (a discount designer department store). I bought some amazing fabrics for my upcoming line, Valentino and Balenciaga knock-off bags and a little white dress. The last day we were there, Geena, my Grandma and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because I wanted to see the Costume Institute. Let me tell you now, that if you plan on going to the Costume Institute in the next two years, don't, because it's closed for the next two years. However I did get to the see the Model as Muse exhibit which was just as well.

Above: Outside the Model as Muse exhibit at the Met.

The wedding was amazing, Grandma had a ton of fun being shown around the sites (she hadn't been to New York in fifty or so years), we shopped 'til we dropped, and got to see all the art I had could have ever dreamed of. I'd have to say it was a very successful trip!

MAC Makeup Art Cosmetics Collection

Tonight I had the opportunity to have a little fun and go to the MAC unveiling for their new products, the Makeup Art Cosmetics Collection, at University Village. This collection is all about celebrating makeup as an art form and Mac chose three different artists to aid in its design. They are as follows: Richard Phillips, a painter who focuses on photo realism; Maira Kalman, an illustrator who's style is colorful and playful; and Marilyn Minter, a photographer who renders erotic imagery.

"Der Bodensee" by Richard Phillips, retouched with MAC products.

The unveiling party was packed full of people drinking wine (with Jake and I picking a nice Sauvignon Blanc) and getting their portraits sketched by local artists. It wasn't a large release but it did stand out from their usual line of products. I picked up a technakohl liner from Maira Kalman's collection, an electric blue named Artistic License.

Maira Kalman's collection of technakohl liners. Mine is on the far left!

While the party wasn't all that it was hyped up to be, the collection was pretty impressive. All the colors popped, true to MAC form, but in a more exciting, modern way.