a new age

This has been a long time coming.

Finally, after what felt like endless months, my thesis collection has come together in completion. This is going to sound cliché, but it honestly feels as though I just started University yesterday... And yet the last four years have also been filled with such vast amounts of knowledge and learning that I know they have deeply and intrinsically changed me.
The real world of adult responsibility and careers always seemed like a distant thing that didn't apply to me, like a generalization that belonged to the world and that I could resist being a part of as an individual. But here it is, making itself announced as a singular experience that I am now a part of whether I try to resist or not - moving on from my life as a student.
My attachment to the academic life has been a strong one, I've been a student all my life and it's a role I know in and out. But since spending a summer in Paris (in school mind you), I started to feel my student self becoming unhinged. On coming back to school last September, I was unsatisfied with my courses, frustrated with stifling curriculums, and angered by the bureaucracy of the University. I guess I'd come to terms with the fact that I was moving on.
And in the midst of all this anger and frustration and long days of being underfed and exhausted, I'm happy to say that I turned out a collection that reflects my personal design philosophy, my love affair for creating clothes and my individual skills in crafting a garment.

The other night, our graduating class presented our collections to an audience of media and industry members. Here are some images of the night taken by Arthur Mola for Mass Exodus 2012.

And there it is! I hope you enjoyed the photos.

Note: The first image of the collection lineup was photographed by Katrina Cervoni, with makeup by Jake Ryan and modelled by Lauren Wood at Ford

alphabet city

I apologize for my extended absences from this blog... I don't seem to be cut out for the internet world.

I wanted to post some pieces I did a few weeks ago for my friend Shannon Jager's fantastic new magazine Alphabet City. The pieces I did were for an article about the connection a girl makes to the city of Toronto, and being a Toronto girl myself, I felt that I entirely understood that connection.

Toronto is a like a friend you really like to have coffee with, a city that quietly hums with creative talent, a mix of humble gem-like neighbourhoods.
I chose my personal icons of Toronto for the illustrations: the streetcar, the Victorian homes, the flatiron building, the skyline.

Alphabet City will be going to print soon, but for now you check it out online, it is absolutely amazing.

rose-coloured

Lilogi.com has a wonderful feature called Design/Inspire, on which they feature various fashion students' work. I was lucky enough to be selected to contribute for their pink week!

Considering shades of rose are my favourite colours (you may have noticed), I was super excited to do a sort of self-portrait of myself in my favourite sweater...

I was also feeling a little Sonic Youth, given the best line ever from Dirty Boots is "pinking out the day/dreaming out the crazy way"

Dirty Boots - Sonic Youth

Here we go to another candle I know
All the girls there playin' on a jelly roll

Time to take a ride, time to take it in a midnite eye
And if you wanna go, get on below
Pinking out the day, dreaming out the crazy way
Finger on the love, it's all above

Everywhere it's six-sex-six by luck
A satellite wish will make it just enough
You'll be making out with a witch in a coffee truck

Time to rock the road and tell the story of the jelly rollin'
Dirty boots are on, hi di ho
Pinking out the black, dreaming in a crack
Satan got her tongue, now it's undone

I got some dirty boots
I got some dirty boots



Listen here

the ghosts of memories past

I was debating whether or not I should post these, but I finally decided to...

I'm spending the year working on my thesis collection, which has grown out of an obsession with the french phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard. I'll admit to having only scratched the surface of understanding his writings, but what really hooked me was his link between the essential concept of the home and the experience of daydreaming. A sort of magical book, like a fairytale.

Anyways, after many months of editing, here are my final illustrations for the looks I will be completing over the next three months.

I hope you enjoy them.


Collection 01. The Solitude of Daydreams

Rare moments of self-reflection often come to us when we are alone.
In these moments, memories of people, places, feelings appear like ghosts and drift across one another. Like a montage in a film, these images of our memories become juxtaposed in a new and strange succession.

We relive intimate moments of home, feelings of comfort and safety, spaces where we have escaped into daydreams. As each new layer of memory becomes interlaced, a stream of vivid images constructs itself before our eyes. Familiarity clings to these images, until they are rendered unfamiliar in their juxtaposition.

Like a haunting from the past tinted with the colour of imagination, we experience

the daydream.



Adella

Minerva

Vertiline


Elvira

Philomena




Also, I have updated my portfolio a bit, if you'd like to take a look.

art for contemporary ladies #2

Long raven hair and Raphael Kirchner


Perfect white and an unknown erotic nymph illustration

Gothic turban and an excavated wall at Pompeii

Calf length skirt and Harry Clarke

Rainy day outfit and Roger Rogue

Pink on white and Antoine Watteau

Ochre shorts and John Everett Millais

Jumping dove grey and black and Philip Alexius de Laszlo



All artworks via Lush Retina

christmas time is here

I hope you all had a delightful holiday

lilogi x chanel x me

I recently did a collaboration for the launch of the online magazine, Lilogi in association with Maison de Chanel. I illustrated the love story of Boy and Coco for the piece on the iconic Boy bag. It was such a fun project to work on... I hope you like them!

graphite

the beauty of a graphite pencil...