Exploring Fashion - Visiting Desiree Salas

 Desiree Salas is an Oakland, California designer.  Her focus is on vintage inspired dresses and separates that flatter a real woman's figure.  As a long time friend and fellow pattern maker, Desiree opened up her home studio to our Exploring Fashion Team.

Look at this Cute skirt with red accents!  Perfect for Summer

Showing us her patterns

In the Sewing Room

More work with patterns

Super inspiration board

great vintage fabric

Exploring Fashion - Candace Kling Ribbon Artist

 Candy Anyone?  

Recently, our fashion camp had the opportunity to visit the studio of Candace Kling.  Candace is a ribbon artist and as we've come to find out, one of the leading ribbon experts in California, if not the US.  Studying the ribbon arts from history as well as creating her own modern wonders, Candace brings ribbon to life.  Check out her works of art below and above.

drawer full of vintage and antique Ribbon

Antique Ribbon Creations

Ribbon Flowers created by Candy

Ribbon Work on Millinery

Sculptural Ribbon Hats from the 1980's

Fancy Ribbon work on this sculptural hat!

Cate and Jocelyn viewing the work

Folded Paper Dress made from a book

Fancy Pleating

Exploring Fashion - Visiting Levi's HQ

 Friday was our final day of Exploring Fashion Camp.  We got an early start and visited the Headquarters of Levi Strauss and Co. .  What a treat we were in for.  Starting off in the lobby with a little history lesson, we learned how Levi Strauss started  the company during the Gold Rush. 

 Onward to THE VAULT where the students viewed archived and restored historical garments and some great Hollywood memorabilia like Jennifer Lopez's customized Levi's and the photo of Marilyn Monroe wearing her Levi's.

Fun in the Vault under the Hollywood sign!

More fun in the vault!

Look what you can do with Denim overalls and a little blazer.  Great style in the lobby.

Our team with Sage.

 Designer, Sage Mathews gave us a tour of the Men's design department and answered Anese's miriad of questions about the design and development process. 
 We ended the tour in the pattern making department.  Pattern maker, Jose, showed us how to manipulate patterns in the CAD system they use to work on patterns.  So Interesting.

What a great Visit!  Thanks to Beth MacLean, Susie Poulelis, Elaine Hamblin & Jose for such a rich and rewarding experience.

Exploring Fashion - Photo Shoots and Modeling

Thursday we visited the studio of Emery Street, a clothing manufacturer in Emeryville.  Emery Street  produces knit dresses for other fashion companies like Boston Proper, Lesley Evers and Celebrating Grace. 
Susan, Emery Street's head designer and owner invited us to come and observe a photo shoot in her studio.  She was having many of her knit dresses photographed for her website www.emerystreet.com.

Our Laurie Ann was on hand to help coach the models.  Modeling takes effort and thought. We found out that learning to use your body to make the clothes look good is not as easy as it appears on TV.  And also that photo shoots take time.  It's not all glitz, glam and glamor.  Still, it's fun to be involved!

After we returned to home base, we decided to do a short and much simpler photo shoot of our own.  The girls modeled the clothing they wore to camp and practiced smiling, sitting, standing and using different body positions.  Here are our final shots, edited and chosen by each student.

Anese

Ellie

Jessica

Rachael

Sofia

Exploring Fashion - Bay Street Fashion

Exploring Fashion - Fashion Journalists Week 2

Yesterday, we started Week 2 of our Exploring Fashion Camp.  Our group (see above) spent the morning of watching "Bill Cunningham - New York", a documentary about a Fashion photographer in NYC who rides around on his bicycle  taking pictures of fashion on the Street.  Afterwards, these young fashion bloggers went to Bay Street in Emeryville where we spotted trends, hot colors and some pretty awesome accessories.  See below for a taste of their favorites.

This lovely lady had a great studded ring and gorgeous BRIGHT Orange nails.  One of the Hot colors for the season for sure!

 

She had matching studded shoes that she decorated herself.

Neon was the Uber trend of the moment along with color blocking neon as you can see in the shoe above ( at Steve Madden) and the Window below (LoLa)

Cool combo of printed blouse and lace shorts!

 Love his bag! &lt's Bright Orange!

More candy coated colors at Williams Sonoma.

                                                          Neon is sooo in!!!!!!!!  :)

The Gumballs carried the theme and were fun to look at.

                                           This is so COOL! Look at the beautiful pink paint!
                                           I wonder if they got my message?.......

We love the nails and phone cover!

Exploring Fashion - Jean Paul Gaultier at the De Young

Yesterday we traveled to San Francisco for an exciting adventure at the De Young Museum.  The museum is housing an absolutely amazing exhibit of Jean Paul Gaultier's work over 3 decades.  Here is what our blogger's have to say about it in their own words:

Emma - My favorite part of the exhibit was the tights that had special designs knitted in.  I especially like the tights with the Eiffel Tower on the back side.

Emilie - My favorite part of the exhibit was by far the dramatic use of the pyramid shapes and the feathers . The image below is my favorite piece of the whole show. The way the light makes the hips and the breast pop with the sliver body leotard and the blue and salmon feathers really caught my attention. I was just utterly mesmerized by the way he used such geometric shapes but made everything look so elegant yet so raw/edgy.

Lucy - My favorite part of the exhibit was the revolving catwalk. The diversity of the outfits was unexplainable. The way that they moved so slow was smart so that audience could see every detail of the designs.

Cate - I completely loved the runway !!!!! I adored the way all the clothing was thought out of the box.  My favorite were the ones that included Paris themes !!!!

Jocelyn -I love the way that he made all of the designs different. I also love the way that there are so many shapes that are some what similar but when he adds the designs it becomes a completely different outfit.

Jennifer - The manequins were fantastic.  Photography could not do justice to the projected faces not to mention the voice given to each one.  Some of the girls were a little weary of them at first, but I think the humor of JPG and what his visage was saying in the early part of the show helped to make it all the more exciting and incredible. 
I was so inspired by Gaultier's use of the French Sailor theme as well as all his work with Corsets and can't wait to start creating.