See that image up there? The biggest word you see is Fashion. But what's the next biggest word you see? Design. One of the most important parts of fashion is design, but sometimes, people seem to forget that there's a person behind every piece of clothing created in our world, even if it's mass-produced.
Just about everyone who knows me can tell you that I'm no fashionista in person except for on very rare occasions, but as a costume designer, I know how to appreciate good quality clothing and attention to detail. This holiday, I spent much of my time watching Netflix, and I found one film and one series that anyone with an eye for fashion and a curiosity for how it's done, or anyone interested in foreign film and television, can appreciate.
The first of these is the film "Yves Saint Laurent," a French biographical film about the famous fashion designer as he and his lover promote the French fashion industry and build what is now one of the most well-known "ready-to-wear" fashion corporations in the world. Don't let the fact that it's a biography scare you. This movie is anything but boring. Yves Saint Laurent had an interesting and fulfilling life before his death, and this movie does well to portray it as such, carrying his spirit and sharing it with everyone who watches it.
The next I'd like to touch on is a Netflix original called "Atelier," a Japanese drama about a young Japanese woman who goes to work for a self-started custom lingerie designer. This show goes in-depth into the process of designing and producing high-quality one-of-a-kind clothing, from sketching to creating custom patterns and mock-ups to building a customized garment, as well as expanding into mass-production, public relations, the highs and lows of the fashion industry, and more. This series is practically a dream for me to watch as a designer, and for those of you who are less into that idea, there's definitely drama, though romance is pretty scarce (which is refreshing, for a show with a main cast of 4 women and 3 men).
These shows have gotten me completely fired up for the productions I'll be designing for this semester, and I've found that they've also brought a lot of inspiration for me to keep drawing and designing almost non-stop this break as I continue to grow and learn as an artist.
Between fashion and costume design, there are a lot of cross-overs and parallels despite some of the differences, so by watching these different shows, I can learn more and more every day about creating clothing, and at the same time, learn about potential ways to diversify my skill-set for use in multiple fields.
But even if you aren't a designer or a technical person, but are more of a performer or model, or a person who wears clothing, you can learn a bit more about how the things you wear are created, and about all of the emotion and energy that goes into them from every person involved in their creation, from the designer to the last person to touch the product in the phases of its production.
