All finished up!

I'm finally done with the quarter. I thought I'd fall into a pillowy euphoria in the absence of things-to-do, but instead, I find myself a bit irritable and discombobulated from not having a fire under my ass, oddly enough!

Here now, I'll share with you a bit of the "smoke" from that fire-- my final group design project.


Here are a few of our sketches... each group member contributed 10 designs, then cut them down to 2 apiece. On the right of each grouping (named after songs in the "Anastasia" movie) are our Romanov-eagle styled color palettes.



We had to do a few Corel Painter renderings of our sketches; this purple dress with the ermine stole was one of my favorites. In addition, technical flats, sizing specs and construction details needed to be drawn up as well. Luckily, there are people in the world who, unlike me, love to do these. Even luckier, two of these talented people were in my group!



I devoted a big chunk of my time designing some accessories... I especially like the Maltese Cross Mary Janes and the Faberge Minauderie. You can't really tell, but the pattern I made for the luggage features little Romanov eagles inside of the argyle-style diamonds.


At the last minute, we decided we needed something to divide the artistic portion of the collection from the "nuts and bolts" portion of the project, so I searched for images of a Russian passport and emblazoned the front with "Czarina", the name of the collection. On the opposite page was the "inside" of the passport, complete with our Girl's name and job description-- a way of describing our target market. You might recognize the photo inside from our project's coverpage!

...And lastly of all, the outfit I wore to do the presentation:

Dress: thrifted. Belt: Abercrombie and Fitch. Capelet: thrifted. Tights: Target. Shoes: BCBGirls, from Loehmann's.

...next up... the contest!

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When in St. Petersburg...

For our final design projects this quarter, we had to choose a movie to base a collection off of. In the mood for fur, my group of gals chose "Dr. Zhivago" at first, but somehow, it wasn't vibing with us. We needed something a bit more fanciful, with more raw material. So, we switched to the animated "Anastasia".

Here's the DVD cover (we did a lot based off of her "moppet" look early in the movie, and some evening wear based on the blue gown in this image, as well):


Here's the title page for our portfolio:

Names have been obfuscated to protect the innocent... Our "girl" is a Moscow-based gallery owner on an art-buying mission in New York, hence the passport and Kandinsky. Our looks are designed around a 3-day itinerary we made out for her filled with gallery visits, charity galas, and dinners with her Senegalese lover, Amadou...

We got a lot of inspiration for the movie, but we filled in the blanks with a bit of research into what the Romanovs were wearing during the first World War -- isn't Anastasia smart in her little sailor outfit?



We (like they) used lots and lots of Battenburg lace, sashes and other military touches like Maltese cross pins and trousers tucked into high boots. Our colors are principally white, black, gold and red, and we even have a Faberge egg bag and Romanov eagle-print set of luggage...

When what to our wondering --and slightly disappointed-- eyes should appear on the home page of Style.com on Friday, but Karl Lagerfeld's Pre-Fall 2009 collection:



Ah well... there is nothing new under the sun. But for sure, that Karl's put together something really stunning here; not as predictable as his recent collections have been.