What am I studying?

Here are some instagram photos of my life and what I'm doing lately. 

Sorry the first two images are not relevant to the course I'm studying. haha

1. apple crumble together with brother in SG       2. peking duck crepe together with Sam

3. Pattern drafting of a shirt     4. Technical drawing of a designer's coming collection

So, a lot of people - including my friends/teachers back in Malaysia have been asking me "So what course are you actually studying?" So many people have asked that I need to create a blogpost just to talk about it. Honestly, I had never expected myself to be doing what I am doing right now. I first came to Singapore to study Fine Arts Photography for my love of conceptual photography. But, halfway through, after a lot of thinking, I decided to switch to Fashion for my growing love of fashion photography, illustrations and the glamour side of the fashion scene, but I hate to tell people that I'm studying "Fashion" because it's kinda misleading to people who are not in fashion schools, they'd most probably think that I'm going to be a fashion designer, which I have no desire to, at least for now. 

Here's the course that I'm taking - Fashion Media and Industry, we normally call it Fashion Communication, although right now, we have to learn some basic sewing, pattern drafting and dressmaking techniques (which are more towards Fashion Design). 

So what is Fashion Media & Industry about? I heard you asking.

"The programme focuses more on the business side of the fashion industry and the areas of media and communication relevant to the consumption of the fashion image." (taken from LASALLE webpage) 

You might still be confused. So is it business, communication, or fashion? The answer is - everything. Right now we have to do machine sewing as well. At first I really had trouble dealing with the industrial sewing machines, it could be scary before you get familiar with it. But, after putting in more effort and time, I'm happy to be able to see the difference and improvement.

left - first try (few weeks back)    |    right - last night

Currently we're not only learning technical skills like machine sewing, we do fashion photography, technical drawing (you can see the image on top), digital visualisation (it's similar to technical drawing, but using Adobe Illustrator, we create digital flat pattern that factory workers could understand in order to make the clothes out). For what I know, we will start learning more about different types of layout of magazines next week.

I realised it's so much easier for me to show what is it about by showing part of my works.

Also, we do fashion illustrations. (I didn't draw any of these, it was just quick demo by my lecturer - Jon) Fashion illustration is a lot more expressive than technical drawing, which I adore from the deepest of my heart. One thing you should know about me is my obsession over beautiful faces, thus the love of fashion photography and illustration, makes sense, yes? (Here is one of the works I posted some time ago) For the past weeks we have been drawing nude models - but note that fashion illustration is very different from fine arts life drawing. Instead of drawing realistically, we elongate their legs, necks to make them look perfect.

What else, we have a class called 'the fashion product', where we learn more behind-the-scenes of the fashion industry, analysis of coming trends, forecasting trends, etc. To be frank, I had never thought about what goes behind fashion. To a girl who came from a small town like me, it's something very new, I find it very interesting. Besides, we also study fashion history, it turned out to be so much more interesting that I expected, it's not dull at all! Also, we learn about the design process - where we're taught about different techniques to get inspirations, and turn the ideas into something else.

These are what I'm currently doing. What else are coming? We'll learn art direction, fashion journalism, styling, marketing, fashion retail branding, fashion curation, basic advertising principles and so on. What jobs will we be doing, you ask? Examples include stylist, fashion buyer, fashion writer, fashion photographer, fashion critic, fashion curator, creative director, fashion editor, personal shopper, trend forecaster to name a few. I hope by now you have a better insight on what Fashion Communication is about! Basically it's more about images, text, magazine layouts, plus some business side of fashion.

To be honest, I'm really surprised by where photography has brought me to, and I never regret, I enjoy the learning process so much. So thankful for my parents who give me the right to make my own choice and decision, and trust that I would do well though I was uncertain of what to expect to be studying in an art/fashion school at that time. Also feeling grateful for the good friends and classmates to make school such a nice place to be. I feel blessed.