As Promised ... My Month in Milan

As I mentioned before, I spent a month in Milan last summer. I attended summer course for Fashion Stylist at the Istituto di Moda Burgo. The course lasted 4 weeks, two of which were intended for learning to draw fashion figures and clothing in various techniques; and the second two weeks were basically a pattern drafting course.

I must say I LOVE Italy, always have, always will. And those four weeks there not only deepened my love for Italy, but also opened my eyes to a whole new world of creativity and gave me the necessary courage and enthusiasm to follow my dreams.

As I said, we spent the first two weeks drawing. We started drawing first the silhouettes for fashion figures in various poses, then we drew separately legs, arm, hands, face with hair. That was to get down the proportions and details. Then we started drawing dressed figures, first in pencil, then coloured pencils and at last in markers. I cannot tell you how much fun I had. I re-discovered my love for drawing and the more I did it, the more fun it got. The most fun was definitely trying to figure out how to draw various fabrics to get the wanted effect. We used fashion magazines for reference, which was really helpful.

Here are a few of my drawings:




(click on images to view them larger)

I spent the second two weeks pattern drafting. Since I had some previous knowledge of drafting, me and my teachers decided to draft and sew a perfectly fitting sloper for me along with a detailed explanation of all alterations. I forgot to mention before that the IMB has its own books, both for pattern drafting and figure drawing. We were given both books on the first day. And as you know each pattern drafting books slightly differs from another. I learned pattern drafting using the Rundschau system. The IMB system only slightly differs in the drafting process itself, the main difference is in the final result, namely, the patterns drafted with IMB system are tighter and more fitted. But nothing a few minor alterations to any pattern can't fix.
Anyhow, during these two weeks I also learned a few tricks of the trade, and we played sort of a game where we showed out teacher a photo in the magazine and she told us how it is done. Amazing! Let me just say that some things look more complicated than they really are :) I found it interesting that they do encourage copying works of other designers to learn various techniques. But they do however encourage creativity and imagination in every possible way.

Here are a few pics from my pattern drafting class:





Well, while I wasn't attending classes, I was exploring Milan and nearby cities (Verona, Bergamo). If anyone is interested I have tons of pics and I could share some with you.