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I became interested in sketching
because I needed to have an expression of art
throughout my time in high school and even in college.
I studied architecture.
So I personally have never been to a fashion school,
and I envy everybody who has.
But what I was doing during some of the, you know,
classes, like the structures class in college,
is I was continuing to doodle all of my fashion ideas.
What they did was create an ease in my hand
that was very good at expressing an idea for a dress.
And they do not need to be perfectly detailed.
They just need to express an emotion
so that the person that you're passing off this sketch
to to make it a reality understand
what you're trying to get to.
I usually just start with the shape, a silhouette, something
that is going to be where I place the dress
or the blouse or the sweater.
I always keep it very loose so that I could, you know,
make mistakes and change my mind as I go.
But I'll keep the dress silhouette simple
because in this particular case, the idea
is about the color combination.
So I'll stick to the same shape of dress
so that the pattern maker understands
that it's a chiffon dress, and also my print
designer understands that it is based off
of that and a new iteration.
So let's just say I change the drape
a little bit from what we just saw and perhaps I had a slit.
And when I know that I'm about to add color,
I try to keep the details of the garment to a bare minimum
because when you combine carbon or any kind of pencil
with color, it sometimes can get muddled.
So I keep it simple so that your pattern makers and your sewers
and your print designers understand where the dress is
going to lay on the person.
If there's some transparency, you
try to add a little bit of that into the sketch
so that they know that this is meant to be translucent.
So you kind of have to, like, give them
those clues so that they understand what they're
going to try to do for you.
Now, because I am in a blushy mood because of something
that we're going to do for the Met Gala
that I'm really excited about, I thought combining the blush
with the very electric yellow color
that I still have in my mind from the Ugo Rondinone work.
So I do not have the most perfect blush color.
But what I do is I do a light layer of the pink.
And because I'm going to combine the yellow at the bottom,
I'm just keeping it very light so that I can blend the two
colors together at the end.
I'm taking the nude color and the pink to create
a slight blush tone, something that feels sensual, sexy.
And after I get a sort of combination of somewhere close
of what I want to achieve in terms of the blush,
I then dial in the yellow.
And because I did it lightly around the middle part of it,
it's easier to blend the two colors.
And as I go down, because I do like an intensity of color
at one point, I simply double down
on the yellow with the weight of my hand.
I think everybody is different as
to how they choose to sketch.
Some people love pastels.
Some people love acrylic.
Some people love, actually, just ballpoint pens.
So whatever allows your brain to transfer through your fingers
the idea in a very good first, initial punch--
it's about knowing what kind of utensil
will express with the most honesty
your vision for the final outcome.
This is the idea that my fabric and pattern
maker can understand.
But what I do when I have that down is, for my own pleasure,
I try to do line weight, something that I actually
learned from architecture school.
What they taught us was the buildings
have to have-- for their facades,
they have to have a very flat sensibility
so that engineers and everybody who's
helping them make the facade understand
where the light is hitting.
So if the light's coming from this way,
that means that the line weights hit there.
So I keep this slide a little bit lighter.
If it's a little bit of gathering of the fabric
that I need to explain to my pattern maker, what
I tend to do is I do a couple of striated tucks
wherever I think the gathers are going to originate from.
When it's very taut, I usually have the gathers
extend all the way across wherever the fabric is laying.
So as you can see, you're starting
to understand where the light is hitting
because I am doubling down on the area
where the light is not.
So the side of the arm--
the light weights are going to be slightly darker.
And it also saves some time from you having to, you know,
shade everything and do shadows.
If you're in a rush and you want to express an idea,
this is a good way of sort of shortcutting that.
And then afterwards, when I went to finish the sketch because I
know that, for instance, a skirt can be confusing for them--
they don't know where it begins and where it ends--
I go and I do the final defining line, and the legs
so that they know that that's simply there
for seeing where the slit is.
And this will make them think, OK, the skirt is definitely
fuller than just the panel.
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And as I was exploring this idea last week
for the new collection, I realized
that I want to tap into another color combination based
on the same concept because I saw recently
a very pretty picture of a fabric dye diluting itself
into clean water.
The fabric dye color was this very intense royal blue.
So with the same chiffon concept in mind, something a little bit
more formal, less casual, strapless
with a lot of intricate draping panels of chiffon based
on a very pretty dress that Grace Kelly wore in
"To Catch a Thief"-- but the twist for this collection
for that dress is trying to capture it
with a very intense royal blue that then
on the chiffon skirt--
we add a little padding around the hip
so that the waist looks even smaller.
And what will be tricky is the placement of this
so that we understand where the fabric
dye, like the picture I saw, transforms into a slightly
different shade of blue.
And then it goes into the white because when intense dye goes
into water, around the edges of that dye,
there is a different tone of that color.
So it goes from royal blue to probably,
like, a cerulean very quickly, and then white.
These are the two color combinations
that I'm currently working on.
And whenever I feel like I am somewhat done, I'm--
can take this sketch to the back to explain how to make it.
I enjoy framing it just for myself.
And that might be in the next runway.
We'll see.