Last week

On Thursday we had an inspirational talk by Emma J Shipley, she graduated with a BA in Textile Design from BCU before going to the RCA to complete a two year MA.

 When we had visiting lecturers, some bring a lot of bullshit and self importance with them - not Emma - she was genuine, honest and someone who has worked very hard for what they have achieved.

 Her niche is designing highly illustrative drawings that translate onto scarves, bags, sleepwear. She has collaborated with Disney and Aspinall bags and is stocked in Liberty and Browns. Most recently designing a range of scarves for the older clientele for the Beauty and the Beast film

 https://emmajshipley.com/ - check out her website.  

 Her are some of the pearls of wisdom that I picked up on:
  • Enter as many competitions as possible to get your name out there
  • Don't sell yourself cheap
  • Consider putting your name to your designs rather than selling them onto a 3rd party
  • Work your butt off
  • Get a PR firm involved in promoting your work
  • Get an accountant
  • Consider moving away from fashion into interiors (nicer people in interiors apparently) and your wallpaper hangs around a lot longer than your clothes, mores the pity.
As for me, I did another Monday at Leamington College, their final year project was issued to them, called the Little Black Dress. Basically they can take the idea and run with it.
They were given some themes e.g. gothic, architecture, dark fairy tales or they can decide on their own.
So it was research for them and then when they returned I spoke to some of them about what ideas they had and I got some of the girls to experiment with a bin liner and making a basic top and then used an iron to melt it.

I really enjoy teaching there - I hope a job might come up that I could have in the future or be able to use the facilities for screen printing or heat pressing.

Here are some pics of the bin liner experiment, I keep telling them to experiment and but everything in their sketch books.









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