Tags

With the show rapidly approaching, Grace and I are wrapping things up. Most of my work was on the front end of the project, so poor Grace is sewing her little heart out, and I am helping where I can. Since Grace and I are super perfectionists and pay very close attention to detail, we decided it would be great if we had tags with our name in the garments. No one will see the tags, but we will at least know they're there. Last week, I screened the logo onto some hand dyed fabric and stitched the edges for a nice clean look and voila!


Still no pictures of the clothes, but at least you can see the tags!

Hope to see you all Saturday!

xo,
Anne Douglas

Press!

Here's a sneak peek of some of our work. Shh! Check out this article written about us in our hometown's paper (yes, we're from the same hometown). We're pretty excited! Only 4 more days until the show!!

xo,
Anne Douglas

We're Still Here

Just a quick post to promise that we haven't forgotten about our blog! Grace DuVal and I have been slaving away preparing for our "dry run" THIS Sunday! Sheesh! Time has really flown by and we are working down to the wire. Everything is coming together and looking beautiful. I can't begin to explain how excited I am! We will spend the next couple of weeks tying up loose ends and preparing for the actual event!

I thought I might include some details for the event because we hope to see you all there! The show will be on Saturday, May 1st at 3:30 pm at Can Can Brasserie (3120 W. Cary St, Richmond). The models will walk the bar as the catwalk to live music written specifically for the collection. After the show, we will hold a reception for guests to view the garments more closely and ask the designers any questions. We will NOT be posting any progress photos, so you'll have to come to the show to see the looks! We can't wait to see you there!!

xox,
Anne Douglas

MODEL CALL

Press!!!

Douglas and I finally managed to have a great photo shoot with Mel for promotional materials for the fashion show. VCU was kind enough to let us into the Scott House, which is this huge mansion on Franklin Street that’s full of beautiful old furniture. I’m really pleased with how they turned out!




cheers,
DuVal

Dying Dying Dying

Up until now, Grace and I have been working diligently on all of the planning and housekeeping aspects of our project. We have finally gotten to the fun part- dying and construction! Woohoo! I spent all day this past Saturday in the studio dying fabric. I had to start out with a sample to see if our chosen fabric would even take the dye- thankfully it did! After the test I proceeded to dye 3lbs of fabric, breaking it up into 3 dye baths. The dying took just under two hours and turned out beautifully as for the rinsing... Ohh the rinsing, my least favorite part of fabric dying. I recruited Grace's help for the rinsing since I knew it would be quite a task, especially since we were dying the fabric a shade of red (my worst enemy- it is the toughest color to rinse). With the two of us continually rinsing, it look us well over 3 hours to get the water to run completely clear. For those of you who aren't well versed in fabric dying and rinsing, it is essentially the same thing as washing clothes the old fashioned way- imagine doing that for three hours. Sheesh! While I hate the process of rinsing, I love the end result of hand-dyed fabric which makes the labor intensive process worth it. I was just very grateful for Grace's help, otherwise I would have been there ALL night!

Here are some before, progress, and after shots!





Until next time,
Anne Douglas

sketches

Anne and I are well under way with our project. Here are the sketches of the eight outfits we've designed. (excuse my messy drawings) Oh goody!!








xx DuVal

Greetings from Douglas and DuVal!

All of the grant recipients have to have their photo taken for VCU publications and today was our photoshoot. Needless to say, it was pretty hysterical. Grace definitely gets the crown for being the photoshoot glamazon. I, however, was rather awkward... no America's Next Top Model for me! Regardless, it was lots of fun to be silly with Grace in front of the camera. We found that our best shots were the silly ones- our friendship in a nutshell.

We're excited about the progress we've made. We've designed six of our eight looks so Grace is hard at work on the patterns and I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my dye stuff! Can't wait!

Until next time!
Anne Douglas

more thoughts on design...

last night Douglas and I spent a solid evening planning and designing. I have to say, we've gotten a lot done! I was stressed about how much we have to do, but now that we've talked and are getting under way I'm really excited! Here are some more ideas that we can play off of... all of these came from etsy.

LOVE this collar. nice structure:


this actually reminded me of one of the dresses we already designed. I just like the structure here, and the detailing around the neck:


this I'm not quite as nuts about, but I like the use of the upholstery detailing and the draping.




cheers!
DuVal

dress inspiration

hello hello!
Anne Douglas and I are well underway with our project now that we've finished winter break. We had our meeting with our financial advisor yesterday and now we have access to our funds, so we can really get cracking! The BIG news is that yesterday we successfully booked the venue for our fashion show at Can Can, a fantastic french restaurant in Carytown. We are SO excited that we've managed to find such a spectacular venue for our senior show!
on a different note, I stumbled onto emilyryan's etsy site and was VERY inspired by the structural element of the clothing she makes. amazing!













till next time!
Grace DuVal

some inspiration

Grace and I are slowly but surely getting the ball rolling. It's been hard getting into the swing of things after such a nice long break! Last week, Grace picked up lots of great fabric from Habitat for Humanity in Lexington, Virginia (for a mere $30!!). We have been collecting inspiration by looking at various types of old furniture and are meeting this weekend in hops of cranking some drawings and ideas out. In the mean time, we're making phone calls to different galleries in hopes of finding a venue for our show. We're still in the early planning stages but are looking forward to actually making our work!

And for some inspiration...











Until next time,
Anne Douglas