The "Glam Nigerian" Project

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my friend and fellow fashion and life blogger, Biki John. She was telling me about an upcoming project that she was working on. Here's how it went:

Hey Eric

I've been commissioned to style a fashion shoot to launch a site called Stylecasted- http://www.stylecasted.com

The first of its kind, Style.casted proffers a simple but and most effective platform to celebrate and uphold the diversity and influence of our most obvious and beloved identity — our African style heritage — as well as foster a continued global appreciation of its wide-reaching impact. By virtue of curated daily images — images willingly shared by everyday (extra!)ordinary people — punctuated with bimonthly/quarterly professionally styled editorials, we aim to capture and illustrate African, and indeed, global fashion in a refreshingly new manner, pioneering a new fashionable era.

For the shoot the concept is, 'The Glamorous African Woman of Today' as Stylecasted is very young, I want to focus on getting a great photog, hair and makeup artist and model and not get too involved in Press Office drama, so the shoot is likely to be more portrait based. I want to go to Kotbusser Tor and buy ankara print fabrics and with brooches use them as head pieces, shawls etc.

I was wondering if on the day of shoot, you could help me with coming up with different shapes for the turbans etc/or loan me some of your dresses for shoot?
If you could help me on the day, I'd only need you for about 1/2 hrs.
What do you think?

Now, I was thrilled to pieces and I was trying to figure out what could I loan her. Then, a light bulb clicked on in my head. One of my fashion goals is to get at least one dress on the red carpet during awards season, and I saw an opportunity to put my skills to the test. I took a deep breath and approached her with the idea of creating two dresses for the shoot, if possible.

She loved the idea and we started talking concept. She put me on to her vision of what she wanted for the shoot and I took to it pretty quickly. I also started sketching out a few things that came to mind. She nailed the concept in one sentence, and honed in one particular vision :a glamorous Studio 54 style. I, then put on some music to put me in that place (70's Diana Ross and Donna Summer) and the dresses started to come to life on the page. Four dresses were sketched and two were chosen. One got changed at the last minute, but two dresses will be in this shoot. As Biki gave me the woman I was creating for: a glamorous Nigerian woman; the nickname for the project came to me as "Glam Nigerian" and all of the sketches were referred to as such.

We checked fabrics at my favorite fabric store and came up with these:

The first dress was supposed to be in a leopard print and in my interpretation of a Roberto Cavalli style.

Once we realized that the leopard print was a little thick and didn't have much movement, we then decided to make the skirt part of the dress black and use the leopard on top. Once we went back to the fabric store, the leopard print was gone and on the spot, we made a change to a gold and black snake print for the top and black full skirt with a high split in the center on the bottom. The top will have a curve cutout neckline with two straps in the back, connecting it all together.

The second dress will have a very low neckline and a high split on the side and will be made with a glittery copper fabric. The dress will also have a little more length in the back for a train. This dress was totally inspired by Donna Summer and Diana Ross. I also purchased this fabric and a pink/magenta version of it. I plan to create a couple of corresponding pieces to go with it, like a mini line.

Unfortunately, in the picture it comes out as silver looking. Here is the sketch of the dress:

This project is pretty awesome because this is one direction that I want to take my designs to.

Stay fashionable and sexy!!!!!

London Fashion Week- Part Two

The next show that I checked out had me screaming my head off and wanting everything in the collection!!! His name is Todd Lynn and he's from Canada. His work is all about razor sharp tailoring and androgony. I am willing to buy a few of his pieces and some heels to rock them, because they are so rock and roll. I can see Joan Jett or Chrissy Hynde (of The Pretenders) sporting his looks. LOVE THEM!!!! It was hard to pick my favorites here, but I managed:

You can check out his site at www.toddlynn.com

The third day started off quite well fashion wise as there were a few more shows that I liked a lot. One of them was Twenty8Twelve. I love their juxtaposition of masculine and feminine tailoring. It's a very pretty capsule collection that is very British!! Here are five pieces I liked a lot:

You can check out their site at www.twenty8twelve.com

This collection I LOVED a lot because of the prints and the styling. Totally wild and eccentric. The collection is by Louise Gray. Louise is from Scotland (another place I want to visit)and her use of prints are just AMAZING!!!! She's also pretty eclectic herself and I love that in a designer!!! Her Autumn/Winter collection styling reminds me of a group from the early 80's called Bow Wow Wow. Here are a few pics to see why I see that:

Peter Pilotto opened the fourth day and let's just say this is another designer that I need to get some fantastic shoes to wear with his pieces. They brought a lot of classic elements into their new brand of elegance. I'm loving the prints and colors that he is using. It reminds me of an "Aeon Flux" kind of style and is very Asian inspired:

You can check out their work at www.peterpilotto.com

Another designer that I'm crazy about is Michael Van Der Ham. He is from the Netherlands. I totally love his use of prints and colors. This is a designer that really knows his customer. He is all about a bold and arty woman. He does this collaging technique with the prints and textile mixing and matching. He always manages to come up with something amazing. He is also launching a jewelry collection and has created pieces for Bjork and Tori Amos. Here are a few examples:

On the last day of London Fashion Week, it is Menswear Day. This is the most biggest day for me because it gives me an idea of what I should wear as well as what kind of menswear I should be designing. My favorite show was the Topshop show (LOVE TOPSHOP). The clothes were sleek and sexy!!! Can't help but look great in anything from Topshop!!!

These should be heading into the stores soon, so check it out!!!

All pics are from the London Fashion Week website and they are simply amazing.

Stay fashionable and sexy!!!!!

London Fashion Week- Part One

As I enjoy my 2 week London vacation, by checking out lots of theater, eating lots of food, drinking a lot of pints in pubs (Guinness, mostly), I also made it a point to get here to check out London Fashion Week. I got to see the shows streamed on line as trying to get into Somerset House was near impossible. A lot of the shows were fun an interesting, but all of them embody all things fashion. This entry will talk about all of my favorites for each of the days.

The first show I checked out was Antoni & Alison. They set the tone by using fall colors (browns, greens, purples) and throwing colors that really pop (oranges, reds) into an AWESOME mix. They also used fabrics that drape and move well on the body (silk, chiffon) and all of the pieces can go from a day in the office to a nice night time dinner and dancing. These are a few of my favorites in the collection:

You can check out their site at www.antoniandalison.co.uk

The next show I checked out was Fyodor Golan. These guys were the winners of Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden in 2011. Their Autumn/Winter collection was an example of AMAZING artistry. The woman that they design for is bold and arty. These looks were pretty theatrical, but I loved them all. They work well in the daytime as well as the night (if you were working at a fashion magazine, art gallery, nightclub). It was hard for me to pick just five for this post, but I managed. These are my favorites:

You can check them out at www.fyodorgolon.com

The next show I enjoyed a lot was of John Rocha. He is a designer from Hong Kong that lives in Dublin (another place I want to visit). His work combines his Japanese style with rock and roll edge. Most of the pieces are sheer and quite furry (synthetic fun fur), but very wearable. A lot of the sheer pieces would work well with tights underneath. Here are a few of my favorites:

You can check him out at www.johnrocha.ie

I'll be back with Part Two of this post later ;)

Stay fashionable and sexy!!!!

Music, Fashion & Blogging: A Conversation Between Two Bloggers

Today was a pretty cool day. I got to spend time with a fellow fashion blogger that I met during Berlin Fashion Week. Her name is Biki John. I met her at the opening party for Berlin Fashion Week. I was walking around the party, looking for some interesting looks and some crazy fashion. I saw a few things and she saw a few things, including me and she took a picture for her blog. Ever since then, we've been chatting on Facebook and a few days ago, we set up a plan to meet up. She asked me to look stylish for some pics. I obliged and showed up to meet her.

As I come in and we do our kisses on the cheek, like most fashionistas, we order cheesecake and sit down to begin. We start off by talking about Berlin Fashion Week and our expectations of it. We both expected it to be overrun with fashionistas at every given moment. I thought it was pretty cool, but hard to get into as a designer and not because of the language barrier. We both understood that Berlin is really good for casual, ready to wear looks, and not so much high fashion, avant garde fashion (although there are a lot of avant garde designers here), or street fashion.

I mentioned to her that I was going to London for Fashion Week and I wanted to crash some parties. She tells me to look fashionable and follow the fashionistas because they always know where the parties are and getting in wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, getting into the shows is out of the question, but once I know the schedule, there is no harm in trying.

She asks me if I'm willing to work as a designer's assistant. I would because I need the money, the experience and the connections, so putting my vision aside for a bit so I can make some money is fine by me.

Biki is more of a journalist that has done work for a music publication in London. Naturally, after knowing that we begin talking about music. I had recently posted a comment about Madonna's Super Bowl Half Time performance and she asks about what my issue was with her. I told her, like I've told a few others that Madonna is more focused on being controversial and relevant than being creative. She agreed, although she likes Madonna more than I do. We talked about her new song as an example. We both wondered why the hell was Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. doing this song with here, especially when the song is horrible.

I also spoke about loving Leona Lewis and Adele because they were so normal, although I would love to create something a little edgy for both of them to wear. We also like Rihanna and Lady Gaga because they're willing to take chances with their looks.

We also talked about what we will do next. We both plan on going to school to learn German (I know I said that I would do it after I stop travelling) and I'm enlisting my German friends to help me out with my conversational German and I will help them out with their English. I'm also gonna get some of my pieces in consignment stores to be sold. No matter what goes down, I'll keep you posted.

Stay fashionable and sexy!!!!!