We live in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship

 

 

When our styling team had decided on bleaching and distressing jeans, me and kayleigh went away that night and scrubbed at these jeans with sandpaper until i think my fingers were a little distressed too .. we used sandpaper to give this really natural look to the jeans so it does look like gradual wearing away rather than just cutting slits into them which looks very artificial and uniform. I really liked the graduation of the bleach and how we didnt make it fall perfectly symmetrical on both legs as it made it more interesting. When we showed Angela, Ann and Rebecca our jeans that day they said that we should go away and use the jeans we had made as an example piece and try them on with each garment that was going down the catwalk this way we could note down how much of the jeans showed, what colour the garments are so we could play around with potential different coloured jeans, also see how much bleach would look most effective on the jeans ! Also whilst at the meeting our teachers said that they thought the idea of still using the brogues was too harsh for this more ethereal soft colour palette we were working with and thought coloured pumps were more appropriate which i then suggested we distress further with sandpaper to make them a more muted colour like that of the jeans/scarf prints.
At this stage in the meeting when our lecturers said they didnt like the idea of brogues i found alot of our styling group became personally affronted by the opposition to this new idea and i felt that they werent learning enough from this experience, we are at university to learn and listen to other points of view from lecturers that have worked in the industry and there isnt any point in fighting an idea just because you want to use your own. Like our lecturers said a stylists job is all about trial and error and most of group just werent interested in this process, throughout this meeting i decided to take notes and listen to what was being said and gave my own input like distressing shoes with sandpaper so i could work with my peers in bouncing ideas off of one another as i felt it was beneficial to me.
At this stage once we had left our meeting, the styling group got quite confrontational with eachother about these new ideas we had been pitched and because they had not helped at all with the bleaching/distressing process of the jeans werent interested in learning how to correctly do this process. They also werent very interested in the idea of using sandpaper for the shoes and so worked different coloured pastels onto white pumps, which was an interesting concept and worked well for some garments but they didnt take time to pick an outfit and look at what colours would work best on the pumps in collaboration with the garments and what colour jeans would be best for the garment or even what fit of jeans!!!
We all went away with the job of doing one pair of jeans each and one pair of shoes and picking a garment that these would be for however as far as i know only me and kayleigh went through the process of choosing a garment taking test shots with styling and then going out and using these photos to help us produce a styled outfit.
This part of the styling process was very frustrating, alot of the team werent interested whatsoever in helping in any part, some girls only turned up to the very last meeting which was annoying as they werent aware of everything we had already done, i also found some girls to be very arrogant and not open to reason or guidance. I also realised theres a reason why someone is a head stylist, having 10 girls all working on one look is difficult as everyone has different ideas, but when our lecturers guide us and almost act as a head stylist i thought then we could delegate tasks like picking garment and styling and do this to the best of our abilities, but for many this just wasnt the case.
I have however learnt that you need to work to the best of your own abilities and while you can offer help to others and encouragement sometimes they wont take it and just arent interested and thats when you need to focus on your own work as thats a relection of you and thats whats going into your portfolio, and sometimes as harsh as it sounds you need to be selfish and say when somethings your idea and when a styled piece is yours as often the people around you dont deserve the credit when youve sat until 3am waiting for a washing machine to finish so you can dry your freshly bleached jeans and they tell you theres disintegrated in the wash..