How much will Kate Middleton influence the Fashion world

Starting right back in 2007 Kate Middleton wore a dress from Topshop for her 25th birthday the dress sold out within 24 hours. The blue dress worn on the press day for the royal engagement also sold out. The wedding dress designer is the head of design at Alexander McQueen, and she has designed a wedding dress in the past with a 10m train. This is great news for the designer as it will make her and the dress infamous, designers over England are waiting with fingers crossed for Kate Middleton to wear their clothes.

Salvador Dali

I was really surprised by this exhibition as I thought his work was mainly fantasy in a heavenly way, but he seemed to have a lot of works depicting hell and sins, few of the pictures were very gruesome. I always thought his work was fictional but still looked realistic, i noticed he did a lot of sketches that seemed almost dreamt of by him for example a unicorn with with hair flowers and other very strange illustrations. The most clever were the paintings of scenes that were divided like a puzzle, one being Mary with baby jesus inside her, and a lot of the pictures were religious. Another clever picture was a scene that from a distance became another picture of a portrait.

Prague University

Where the uni was situated must have been peaceful as it overlooked the picturesque river dividing Prague, and was in the top of an old building. It was interesting to discover how little equipment they actually had at the uni, but then hearing that it is free for czech students it made sense. The students also had their own machines at home, and were given the option to work mostly at home and just come in to talk to the only 2 lecturers on the course. Being a studio just in a large flat in the building there were few places on the course and only two places for the Ba year! The course was very tailored to the students in the upper year as they pretty much had one to one tutoring, but the chances of getting into the industry in Prague are even slimmer than in the UK. The designs were very creative i didn't think high street at all, they were all high end fashion designs, and the reason being the course leader encourages them to almost get the creativity out of their system and use it as much as possible on the course before leaving into the fashion industry.

Alfons Maria Mucha - Prague

This exhibition was amazing, I have always loved and been inspired but the art nouveau movement. The most interesting aspect to this exhibition was how Mucha even doodled beautiful tiny deigns on envelopes of letters, a way to make them very personal, and showing his passion, his work being part of his life. He also designed money and other forms of advertising as well as just posters, which i assumed was all he did. The way he illustrates was fascinating as the use of colour with such bold lines like a stain glass almost, still looked extremely elegant and detailed. An unexpected photograph section to the exhibition was clever as it demonstrated how he was inspired by beautiful women, it showed photos of glamourous, sophisticated women in sometimes still life poses.

Vintage shop - Prague

We were fascinated by this shop the, way you walked down into it, and especially the layout and decor made the customer feel like you were looking through special clothes. The 50's postcards on the walls made it feel very arty and relaxed, and the fitting room had phrases made from newspaper cutting you could wonder round and just look at the funny pictures on the walls for ages, and even random decorations such as dolls and fairy lights. There was no comparison to the character of this shop to the plain white walls, and boring repeated layouts of the highstreet brand shops.

Prague

The buildings are the first thing you notice when in prague, they reminded me a lot of rome and no matter how far from the centre you walk each building has character. The nicest thing about prague was the fact that you never really need a map, the second you start to feel lost you end up in a busy recognisable square. The highlight was the tower, which we were advised to visit at sunset; this was the most beautiful way of seeing the city landscape gradually getting darker with the orange sky. This gave me chance to play around with my camera as we were up there for a long time, also listening to music from the bridge, people watching. I felt prague was the most laid back city i had been to, it seemed a place for creative people with a lot of art galleries and quirky jazz cafes. It was probably the carefully chosen time of year for the visit but it didn't seem overrun by tourists or too tacky either considering beer was £1.50, they have stuck to their culture.

Upton Peacock Art Gallery

This was a tiny exhibition area I have visited in the past which shows local artists work all for sale. It is nice to see a mish mash of different artists and subject matter. Todays exhibition was the best of an art group, and talking to the tutor for a long while I learnt a lot about the challenging techniques behind what appears to be simple abstract art. These last 2 canvases were made with layers of acrylic paint underneath then covered over in the chosen areas, and the frame was made on top of the painting by one of the tutors.

What Fashion Technology can I get hold of?

I have found it difficult to find companies based in the Uk but willing to pay postage I have got hold of fibroptic fabric and emailed the inventables about photochromic fabric. It is now my mission to use this fibreoptic fabric as it is sample size but works, whether it be used eventually as part of an accessory or preferably part of an outfit, using the fabric will revolutionise my collection. Depending on costs incorporating a garment heating system into an evening jacket would add to the functionality of it, creating a collection thats not purely for asthetic purposes, and taking away the gimmicky image of using lights within fashion.

interesting research....

The Philips, skin dress, experiments with emotional fabrics meaning that the fabric has senors that change the dress colour when your mood changes, for example angry goes red. thats wearing your heart on your sleeve..literally. Fibre optic fabric!? Katy Perry wore a colour changing dress made by cute circuit, consisting of 100's of LED bulbs the size of pinheads, these two designers also created the Galaxy dress which has enough bulb to project any messages etc.