Flowering Scraptec Vest...how the idea was born!

I love my 'Flowering Scraptec Vests' made from the remnants of the 'Varda's Women Gowns'.

I never blogged about how the idea was created. So I thought I would finally do it!

As a woman with a small bosom, I was noticing that I wanted some attention to the chest region--an area on me that often goes unnoticed. I have always been a fan of designs that exploit this area creatively. Starting back when Jean Paul Gautier was doing cone-breasts.

The flowering idea came with the fact I had a million scraps left over from the gown collection and I couldn't stand to throw them away...they were too beautiful! So the flowering effect was a perfect way to utilize the scraps.

Before I decided to make the idea into a vest, it was first part of a dress that I reworked from the Rex Floodstrom collection (as seen below).

Since the Rex dresses were very long, I hacked them in two pieces and used the bottom as the skirt part of the dress and created the flowering part for the top (as seen in the image below left).





I am wearing the dress to an art show at Gray Area Gallery. It was the perfect dress to wear to an art show. In my mind, one must wear art when viewing it!

Varda's Women: The first dress

Over the last two weeks the interns and I have been working on creating the first dress of the new collection. The new line is called "Varda's Women" I love the name and it perfectly describes the way Varda adored women in both his artwork and life.

Dora--one of the interns--chose which of the sketches she wanted to start draping. This dress (which still needs a title) is a fun way to start, since the cut on it is pretty straight forward and the construction on it should be less demanding than others.

What I like about this dress is the way it juxtaposes soft and hard elements. For example, the bust of the dress uses softer repetitive shapes within shapes (although most people assume they are rosettes) that weave their way around the body. From the empire waist down, the dress breaks out into a series of triangle sets that fall down the body to the mid-calf.

The hardest part about this dress has been making the shapes around the bust. Catherine and Jesse (more interns) spent over 13 hours just playing with ideas of how to achieve the look I wanted.

The idea for the top area is based on the way Varda incorporates multi-layered shapes in the bust area. As you can see in the collage shown below, there are multiple circles covering the chest of the middle figure. How we translate this concept hasn't been easy. After some experimentation, we found a wearable version of the concept. Basically, we are using smaller and softer circles traveling around the top of the dress.

We are planning on iterating this pattern over the top of the dress. The finished product will be quite a bit more complex than what we have now. I'm excited to see what kinds of color combinations will make up the other circles here. I'm interested to see how this abstract element can be emphasized with color.

Starting the next collection

After months of rest and rejuvenation I am finally embarking on the next VAGADU collection.

2009 is definitely a year of change for our world and for me. I have decided to restructure Vagadu and simplify the model. I am returning to my original muse, and will be exclusively making make eco-formal wear based on the collages of my grandfather, Jean Varda .

I am very excited to be returning my roots again. Varda's art and life has been a major force for me the last 2 years and it feels right re-explore his work with some real experience and focus, that I lacked when I first attempted to make clothing from his art.

After three collections I have learned a lot all kinds of lessons. Most importantly, I learned not to get ahead of myself. This time, I am approaching the collection in a very slow and methodical way. Normally, I create by pure hands-on experimentation. That can be a fun way to work, but it does make it harder to create a more cohesive collection. For now, I am going a more traditional route. I am conceptualizing, drawing and draping before I use any of the fashion fabric.

One of the many reasons I am choosing this method is because my mentor-- textile artist Ana Lisa Hedstrom-- is letting me use remnants of some of her hand-dyed fine fabrics (as pictured above and below). These precious fabrics are in limited quantity so I just cannot risk any mistakes .

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For the last two weeks I have been staring at Varda's collages and finding themes that I plan to use. As you can see in his art, he is very geometrical and bold, angular shapes are a constant in all of his work.

Within the stark shapes though, his women embody a curvy sensuality. He focuses on accentuating the bust, hips and curves of the female form. Therefore, I am envisioning the dresses featuring angular dimension along with soft accents.

Another element I see in his art is that some of the women in his art seemed to be wearing more traditional garb. Since Varda was Greek I decided to do some research. When I found a book on Knossos (an ancient city on the island of Crete) I wasn't surprised to see the women dressing like they were from one of his paintings.

I have also been taking note of all the different color palettes and combos that arise in his work. Quite simply, I went through around 30 of his works and sketched out all the different color sets that appeared. I then separated each color and took a tally to see which colors dominated his art. Various shades of red and gold were the definite winners.

In this preliminary sketch below you can see a dress that is using the color palette, along with some triangles and softer lines.

I'll have more sketches next week, they are great!

Reflections on the first collection MAZURA

Vagadu is my new fashion line. I started it to bring together my love for fashion and art. I have been designing clothing for many years, and so of course I think of my designs as art. But I also wanted to design clothing that celebrates and participates in art. Let me explain.

It all goes back to my grandfather, the Bohemian artist Jean Varda. Varda made brilliant collages of celestial cities, curvy women, and funny looking fish, and worked around San Francisco with Henry Miller and the Beat Generation in the 1960's. For quite a while, I have thought that Varda's work has not been given the recognition it deserves. And being an artist myself, I saw that the best way to honor my grandfather was to draw inspiration from his work in my own designs. My first company did just this. It was a collaborative effort called MAZURA, and we premiered our Varda Collection in May. MAZURA no longer exists, but the fashions live on and this blog allows me to explore the creative process and meaning of translating art into fashion.


So... what is Vagadu, then? It just came from one of those "ah-ha" moments where everything made perfect sense (it is also the name of my mother). I liked making clothes this way so much that I had to create a new fashion line to draw inspiration from other visual artists for new, one-of-a-kind fashion pieces. Because the artist for the first collection of Vagadu is still under consideration, and both lines are based on the same premise I feel this blog is a great way for people to understand how Vagadu will be designed. As time goes on, I will start giving behind-the-scenes looks at the ideas going into the first Vagadu line, which will be debuted this December in Chicago.

Here I will describe one of the Varda fashions in detail, and a little general commentary about the whole collection.

When we (my then partner Masumi Patzel) took on Jean Varda's work, the first challenge was to choose which collages to use as muses. He was extremely prolific and so narrowing down took some time. I took a week or so just staring at different collages that I had printed out and let outfits come to me from a slow, observation standpoint. Over time, it became apparent which collages would be used since I could imagine several fashion pieces from particular artworks. This was key for me because I was already envisioning the fashion show where models would emerge from one painting and would interact with each other as if we--the audience--has stepped into their world.

One of such collages is the untitled golden collage that first appears above. This piece has an amazingly rich pallet, and the figures inside of it are regal as if we were entering a fantastical Egyptian court. As I worked with this collage idea after idea came to me (and still do). In fact, four of the pieces from the collection are derived from it. My favorite from the four is pictured to the right. This piece was one of the first I started and the last one to finish. It combines both literal and conceptual elements, and is one of the strongest designs from the collection.

The top of the dress came from a terrible disco-era-early-80's dress. I loved the sparkles and the beautiful scoop of the neck and knew that once removed from the original garment it wielded potential. The somewhat wispy texture of the fabric also represented the airy white shoulder garment from the Orange Woman in the collage. Although you can't see the back of the dress, the halter's sash is polka-dotted which match the arms of the Orange Woman as well. The stripes in the dress make another such obvious connection with the collage. The skirt originally was knee-length and straight across. The v-shaped cut of the skirt was the last element added to the dress which not only adds more dimension and flow to the piece and is also in the style of Varda.

As you can see in the image that follows, Varda uses triangles in the pelvic area of the women in his art. Cubuesque, it is a symbol that reinforces the raw femininity of his women
that is necessary since he rarely defined the breasts separately (a more typical symbol of women). Therefore, adding the v-shaped curve to the dress was appropriate. Moreover, it emphasizes the red and yellow slopping pelvic decor that are derived from the colors in the Orange Woman's skirt. The last note I want to make about this piece is its origins. The sash came from a dress, as well as the skirt, the yellow fabric is fringe from a curtain and the red is a remnant. Depending on the wearer, this item can be worn as either a dress or a tunic or a blouse....my designs let the wearer decide. But flexibly is key to the majority of my clothing pieces.

I will be posting about once a week at first, so if you like hearing about my creative process, or want to learn more details about the upcoming Vagadu line, check back in soon.