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a little while ago, (actually, so long ago. haha!) we did a children’s collection for one of our school projects. i’d never designed children’s clothes before so it was tough! you need to find the right fabrics that aren’t gonna be poke-y, the right sewing methods that aren’t going to interfere with their movements, i mean there really is a lot to consider!

on top of that, i had no idea how to draw kids! hahahaha.

the parameters of our project stated that it had to be based on a certain kind of traditional or ethnic crafts. so what i focused and drew inspiration on was from wayang kulit, which originates from indonesia and literally translates to “shadow puppet”. i remember seeing these long ago when i was really young. thinking back, they are actually kinda scary because they all have these mean faces. but it is really an amazing craft and involves leather cut-outs. it’s quite beautiful as an art form.

so i actually created some prints to go onto the fabrics, which is quite hard to see after i scanned in my designs.

since the collection was based an indonesian art, i also made use of a lot of the shapes and forms that i found in traditional indonesian wear, and the way that they would dress the gods in these cut-out leather pieces. there were a lot of sarongs, a lot of cuffs and gathered puffy pants and sleeves. i found some traditional silk used as sarongs, which is almost like the indonesian/malay form of plaid. then i wanted to use more plaid-ish fabrics and since they were kids, i used gingham.

the collection was called chibikko, which means “little kid” in japanese slang.

personally i quite liked this collection myself. i think a lot of the pieces can be translated to adult clothing, which is what my teacher wanted us to think about as well. just like how marc has little marc! heh heh.

most of all, i want that raincoat, yes i do.

“headfone dreamy” by yoko furusho

on thursday, my roommate mark and i went to see my friend, yoko’s solo exhibition.

i got to know yoko perhaps a year ago, through my japanese blog. she is a friend of a friend’s, and i had clicked on her profile, after seeing her super cute, hand-drawn avatar. her work totally blows me away!! it’s so cute, so intricate and detailed, and so… japanese. i think that’s the best way to describe it!

yoko furusho is a recent graduate of the school of visual arts in new york. although if you ask me, she really doesn’t need much teaching because talent like that can’t be taught. you either have it or you don’t, and the girl sure has it!!

yoko recently won a competition with new york’s chopsticks magazine. this means she will be designing their cover for the next year! it’s a free magazine that i always pick up when i go to the japanese supermarkets or any japanese related store, so i’m really proud to tell everyone, “i know the girl who draws this!” heh heh.

her solo show was called exhale, and exhale we did!

i notice a lot of similar color palettes in your illustrations, that are also very detailed and textured. have you always done this?
i think that’s my palette. i’ve never tried to use that color palette, it just comes out naturally.

have you always drawn in this same style or has your style developed over time?
i try not to think about “style”. i think, it develops when it develops. so, i’m not sure about it.

what inspires you?
i think all my pieces are based on my imagination. so, fantasy books? like alice in wonderland. and photographers.

“a mad tea party”

“the queen’s croquet-ground”

do you work in a studio or do you like going out to get inspiration?
i usually don’t need to go out to get the inspiration. i work at my place, but i’m gonna share the studio with my friends soooon!

how old where you when you first started drawing, and when did you decide you wanted to do this as a career?
i liked drawing since i was a child. and at that point, i already decided to live with something related to art.

“world04″

do you ever have days when you simply cannot draw?
yes.

what can’t you draw?
a lot of things!! but after started my career as an illustrator, i’ve been trying to put some objects that i’ve never drawn before in each illustration.

“galliano’s girl”

as an artist, does the city you’re in affect your work?
yes. this city makes me feel like, i can do everything. so it makes me stay positive and feel lot of possibilities. i think that because this city is full of energy.

what are your favorite mediums?
ink and acrylic.

“world”

which is your favorite illustration?
i like my illustration that i did only for me

who are your favorite artistes or illustrators?
kiki smith, william kentridge, akio tomari and franceska woodman.

“seven deadly sins” for vain magazine

do you start off with an idea in your head, or do you just start drawing with a blank canvas and see where it goes?
both. for my personal piece, i usually start with nothing. for a job, i start with bunch of sketches.

what has been the most difficult piece that you’ve done so far?
nnn, every single time, i struggle!

what’s next for you?
i wanna try many many things! i think illustration is really usable art. like, i can print it on the fabric, can make a book, can be for magazine and so on. so i wanna try many possibilities, not only just for the magazine.

“moulin rouge”

i think she has a long and successful career ahead of her!! head on over to yokofurusho.com to see more of yoko’s amazing work. if you’re in new york and would like to see some of her work up close, go to destination new york, which is on little west 12th street in the meatpacking district. the exhibition runs till september 5th!

good luck, yoko! がんばってねぇ☆

all artwork copyright to yoko furusho

right at the start of the spring semester (2008) at parsons’ fashion program, we were thrown into the wonderful world of knits. i love knits. we all definitely wear at least one knit a day. unless you’re the raunchy sort who goes around with leather knickers. (and if that is the case, more details please!)

here’s a quick summary of the facts, for those of you who aren’t quite sure. jerseys, like tshirts etc, are also knits. there are hand knits and machine knits, but they all fall into one happy family called knits.

there are 3 basic kinds of knits. one is called “mass produce”. i’m actually kidding. one type of knit is called the “cut and sew“, which means that a fabric, is cut into different pattern pieces (which are the parts of fabric that make up a piece of clothing), which are then sewn together. get it? you cut a piece of fabric, and sew it together. ta-da! easy right? now, although i made a joke, cut and sews should not be trifled with. gorgeous clothing can definitely be made with this method!!

the other kind of knit, is the kind i really love. and when i say really love, i mean love love love. it’s called the high fashion knit. you will see “high fashion marks”, that look like little ticks, on places that have tension in curves, like around the arm-hole, or neckline, etc.

and just to side-track a little, whoever gave these knits their names had no imagination.

i love high fashion knits. (although they tricked me into liking them by calling themselves high fashion.) and i love ‘em thick and chunky. very chunky. i liken them to soup on a cold and icy winter day. the thicker and chunkier the soup is, the better you feel drinking it. that’s what a good knit is to me.

one of my favorite knitwear designers is sandra buckland, who is queen of the knit world and previous winner of the amazing hyeres fashion festival. no questions asked and no denying anything. she inspired me to take up hand knitting and i still can’t do it like she does. she isn’t just a knitter. she’s a painter, sculptor, designer, artist, genius. oh yes, dear sandra buckland. i wish i could own one of her fantabulous knits but alas, even if i knew where i could get them, i would probably not afford them. and really i don’t want to find out where they are, because i might break in to steal them.

so back to my own pathetic attempt. my inspiration for this were clowns. namely, the clown from “it”. it, is a disgusting horror movie. i hate horror movies. i hate anything horror because i am the biggest chicken in town. they should be banned. but my friend made me watch this and now i have broken of all ties with her. (just kidding, i love you jess.) have you guys seen it? oh god i get creepy just remembering some scenes from the movie.

so i had watched this horror movie with a killer clown, which was scary and gave me goosebumps that lasted a whole night. the bad thing that came out of it was that i couldn’t do anything that night without freaking out and looking over my shoulder, and hurrying back home. and still look around the room because some bloody clown might come at me with an axe. the good thing that came out of it was, that it inspired me with many shapes and silhouettes that i used in this collection.

as for fabrics, my main fabric choice were silk jerseys, which i used in creating some cut-and-sews. in addition, i also designed some full-fashion knits, which i thought of using a nice fat 10-gauge yarn to do. i also used a silk gingham and a rayon mix woven as supporting fabrics.

for my mood board, i found an image of a nice fluffy cloud that sort of gave the image i wanted to portray with those chunky knits. and if you look closely, it’s actually the face of a clown. yes, very genius, but i’m so sorry i can’t give proper credit because i lost the link for it. i also included my usual muse, nakashima mika, who is a constant style inspiration.

clickety*click to enlarge the images!

comments, as always, are greatfully welcomed!!

i am from singapore. 100% singaporean. and (surprisingly?) rather proud to be so. since moving to new york less than a year ago, i’ve had 3 people tell me they’ve never heard of singapore. i bet they’ve never watched or read the news.

we’re a small country in south-east asia at the tip of peninsula malaysia. we’re so small on the map (like a world map), the word “singapore” is bigger than the size of the country when you look at one. no kidding. we’re a young country with a mix of different races, religions and cultures. my ancestors were from china, so my roots are chinese. but being a 3rd generation singaporean, i think we’re very very different from what our forefathers used to be.

what’s terrible about singapore? we’re near the equator, in summer all year round. it’s hot and getting hotter because of global warming. and because we’re so small in terms of size, sometimes it just gets a teeny-bit boring.

what’s so great about singapore? everything else. the blends of everything - food, culture, people.

and having lived overseas in japan and america, i honestly do have a new found respect for our government.

and besides, it’s still home.

click*click to view! images of the older parts of singapore captured by my lomo cameras.

for our winter holiday assignment in the fall 2007 semester, our project was to be based on our ethnicity. some people i talked to argued i was just a chinese. i told them to shut up. yes, i am chinese. but i am a singaporean. it’s different.

i went home over the winter break, so i really did enjoy going out and around, especially to look at the old shophouses, many restored and preserved as cultural treasures. i basked in it and soaked in the sights, the colors and the smells of everything.

i drew ideas from our unique blends of culture. my aim was to create a collection for modern singaporeans. you can’t really see this (because i’m not going to upload the entire project and go too much into the details of the clothing), but a lot of tiny details that go into panels, are all based on the architecture of the shophouses.

when i presented this, the only criticism i had was that it was too modern and the person who said that couldn’t “feel” my ethnicity at all. she had expected that i would draw at least one girl in a cheongsam. i have to be honest and say i couldn’t understand that comment. after all, i’ve never worn a cheongsam in my life. it’s hard to explain what being a singaporean is all about, to someone who has never lived there, or at least visited long enough to experience what the country is really like.

i think there are parts of us that are very traditional. we’re all still very “asian”, especially in terms of family values. but the rest of us are as modern as modern can get.

to me at least.

ps: are you sick of my sudden influx of design posts? heh heh. sorry, but i’m lagging in posting these and want to put them all up!!

our last assignment of our fall 2007 semester at the parson’s fashion department, was based on historical icons. some of my classmates chose to base their collections on twiggy, or alfred hitchcock etc. i, on the other hand, had just finished re-watching on dvd, bushi no ichibun, which translates into “one part of the warriors”.

it’s a tale about a lowly-ranked samurai who is employed as a poison taster, and loses his eye-sight after eating poorly prepared raw shellfish. this show was called “love and honor” when released in overseas film festivals, which completely leaves me dumbfolded because of how different the meaning of the title becomes. it was by acclaimed japanese director, yoji yamada, and stars in its lead role, you guessed it, kimura takuya.

inspired, i decided to base my collection on the samurais of japan. they have always intrigued me, and it is such a different and interesting culture of historic japan. even today, their spirit and mentality lives on in modern japan. (by the way, if you are interested in samurai culture, you have to watch shinsengumi. it is amazing.)

this was the final project of our fall semester and one that i am quite proud of. i did not want to take the samurai theme too literally, but rather, explored into aspects of the samurai costume, as well as japanese dress and kimonos.

click*click to zoom in!

my teacher last semester was big on basics, so i thought i’d better add in some basic pants and skirts to go with the collection. i’m pleased with the outcome of it though! i think it helped balance the overall look. my favorite pieces are the coat on the 1st girl, the chunky hand-knit on the 2nd, the skirt on the 3rd, the shirt on the 6th girl and the jacket on the last!

looking back, i think i really stepped it up with this collection. my drawing had definitely improved and it was such a relief and joy to end the semester, a very, very tiring semester, with a piece of work that i was happy with.

what do you think?

i realized i haven’t uploaded my design work in a long long time!!! so you’re going to be seeing a whole flood of this, since i have a whole semester’s work that i haven’t put up!!

(my sister and i at tokyo disneyland, christmas 2006!)

when we had to do an accessories collection, my instant reaction was to look to alice in wonderland for inspiration. i’ve always loved alice in wonderland, both the book and the disney rendition. and i thought both the story and the colors would be a great inspiration for an accessories line!

when i first did my croquis, it was really funny because i had just read the “darker” version, and everything that i was sketching was full of leather, studs and was a little kinky in a sort of s&m/fetish kind of way. which i really liked!! but i decided to save those sketches for a bigger project where i could incorporate with clothes, so i re-watched disney’s version of alice, and looked back at some of my photos from disneyland. i really liked the idea of creating a line for the queen of hearts, who is such a funny and ridiculous character!!

i quite like it, if i may say so myself. i want some of the shoes definitely. i concentrated on hard accessories, which means shoes, bags and belts. (fyi: soft accessories would be hats and scarves, etc.) i also drew them in various sizes, just because of the magic stuff that alice drinks, that makes her grow big and small. just a little detail i wanted to throw in!

this is another one of my projects from the previous semester. it was for a bridge collection. for those of you who don’t understand what a bridge line is, well it’s a little hard to explain because it means a lot of things. we have the high-end designer lines, like donna karen, and then her bridge line would be considered dkny, where it is more affordable for the masses, and consists more of separate ready-to-wear outfits (although there are, of course, dresses). bridge collections are usually for everyday use, especially for the working career woman, sometimes to take her from the office to dinner. there are also some well-established bridge lines like dana buchman, tory burch and so on (although some people consider them more contemporary).

we were supposed to design a working woman’s wardrobe, inject our own design aesthetic into it, and yet keep it wearable for the masses and to be able to carry someone to the office and then to a dinner.

BOY it was hard. i decided i wanted to do a masculine collection with a male touch, because although i do love crazy stuff, i also love the suit and i love jackets and i also love menswear, so i wanted something menswear inspired that a strong woman could wear.

besides my favorite white, black and navy colors, i also wanted to inject some brights in there with my two beloved neons, pink and turquoise. yes, ladies and gentlemen, you will see these colors in a lot of my clothes!!

ps: although i do wanna show you guys more of my croquis and the planning stage, i’ve decided that that might not be a good idea after all. i guess i have a need to keep some of my ideas to myself! heh heh!

seriously, i’ve drawn these stockings with black hearts in so many of my designs. i love it and keep going back to it. i wonder if there are already a pair of stockings out there that look like it. if not, no one better steal this idea (i’ll come after ya)!! if i ever get my own line out there i’ll definitely produce these. love it!

i live in denims. jeans, skirts, dresses, whatever. so doing a denim project was just super!!! i had a lot of ideas and it was sooooo hard to decide on what i wanted to do! in the end, i picked a theme that i loved…. birthdays!!!!!!

who doesn’t love a birthday party??

i know i do.

i scoured the internet for gorgeous, colorful pictures of birthdays and birthday parties for my inspiration board. thank you thank you to gala darling, for your rainbow bursts of pictures too!

these are the sketches i came up with. ok i swear, i can’t wait to start sewing in class cos there are just SO many things in this page that i want for myself!!! ugh!!!

and here is my mood board for my project, as well as my completed finished edits.

i’m actually quite proud of this collection. i think i managed to pull of some crazy pieces, but still keep myself in check and restrain a bit of my craziness!!! i made sure that i added in some simple, plain pieces. a friend questioned during our critique session as to why i had such simple tshirts and why they were just white. well, i felt that because i had some pretty mad stuff, i needed something simple that could be paired with any of the crazy pieces. and i love white tshirts - i own a ton of them myself - and i feel everyone should own a couple of good, white tshirts!!

i cheated a little in the sense that the outfit on the left (with the white shirt and penguin pants) is something that i have already designed and sewn previously. hee hee. but hey, at least i made them! what i really want a black leather biker jacket, that pink balloon skirt, the skirt with the swirls and hearts, and those pink jeans and shredded white skirt!!! ahhh!!!

when i was younger i never used to wear dresses. and i mean never. i was the biggest tomboy and i had short hair for the longest time. frankly i really did look like a boy and there were many times when i went to the restrooms and would get told by some old lady, “boys go that side!”

i think i only started wearing skirts and dresses when i was like…maybe 17 or 18. and even then i probably only owned like 3 skirts. it wasn’t until i was 19 or 20, and after i went to japan that i started really loving dresses and found how well i love expressing my individuality through them. i think it must have been that singapore only had really boring dresses, nothing that i wanted to wear. when i went to japan and found this whole array of different styles, it was like a whole new world had been opened up in front of me.

designing dresses for class was something that was really exciting to me, but i tried to rein myself in because my teachers have said that i can get too costume-y.

our inspiration had to come from architects, and after some research, i decided i found many inspiring ideas from herzog and de meuron. the duo from switzerland used to design really simple buildings, but their recent projects show a different side of them that i found really exciting. they were using a lot of lines and almost grafitti-like swirls, and combined with sharp lines that they still use now, i just imagined so many different clothes in my head. they are also the pair behind the fabulous prada building in tokyo, as well as the beijing olympic stadium - which looks like a bird’s nest. i love it!

here are the rough sketches that i drew. they are so ugly i can’t stand it. i really wish i could draw better. initially i wanted them to be brown in color… then as i painted a few in brown, it just bored the hell out of me and i changed my color scheme to red, blue and plaid!! thank god!!

below are the 6 dresses that i picked from the lot as my finished edits…

then i redrew and painted them, and voila!

i know, i still have that costume-y thing. my teachers tell me that people won’t wear things like that, but i don’t understand yet. because i would! i would totally wear them. i don’t design things that i wouldn’t wear myself, and i wish people here understood me more.