Monday June 14, 2010
We met at 830 to head to where the FIT in Milan is located for a lecture by the dean of design there. It was a cool architecture/engineer school and FIT Fashion Design just uses the campus for their small program.
The lecture was 3 hours… SO LONG. And no matter how hard I try, it is so hard to listen to English with a European accent. Wow, so much focus is required. It was not very exciting, or interesting, or really related to our class… but it was fine. It was one of those days where you are just sitting there so uncomfortably, fidgeting around, and just praying the time will go fast and that you won’t fall asleep.
We had an hour lunch break so we stopped in the first restaurant we saw, it happened to have GREAT food, I had a lovely Panini but the service was not so good. There were 9 of us who all ordered from the same table, together, the 2 with the past dishes got theirs in literally 2 minutes. 15 minutes later 5 get their Panini’s, all of them are headed back to class because class is starting and Chris and I haven’t even received our food yet. Finally we scarfed our meal, thank goodness it was delicious, and ran back to class.
For the next 3 hours we had 16 class presentations of each of our design ideas for our collection. (The reason we had this lecture was so we could present to the dean guy who gave it and he could give us pointers and critique us.) Everyone’s ideas are so great and so unique and different. It was a lot of fun hearing what everyone was planning on doing. I had put together a page with my main customer on it and was just planning on winging it. I know my customer, I know my objective, I know my style, I figured it would be fine. Everyone else wrote speeches and power points… I was kind of getting nervous but tried not to let it get to me, I just went up and talked. It went… interestingly. Haha, so I start describing my market (P.S. only my teacher and Heather know I am LDS at this point) (P.P.S. having to describe our market and modesty to people in a professional design setting is actually very challenging…) So I just go on about how my customer is very unique, must be higher neckline, sleeves, etc. and how there is a huge market in Utah, epscially at BYU. Blah blah blah, how we get married younger etc. and as I am probably 30 seconds into this speech the guy basically yells, in the middle of me speaking “so are you Mormon”… um, “yes I am…”.. [continue with speech] talk about how I feel there is a need for sophisticated dresses designed modestly, because I feel there are modest dresses but most of them are designed for a very young bride and I feel even if they are a young age, they may want to be more sophisticated. For instance, I have not seen one modest wedding dress I would ever buy and wear. Many have to have their dress custom made or built up which adds a lot to the price and I am hoping to bring a fresh, sophisticated, dress (that doesn’t look like a tacky white prom dress-no offense) to the market at a price range that is affordable for college student brides. Blah blah blah. Here comes my critique “so, since your Mormon do you practice polygamy?”… haha awkward smile (since that has so much to do with design...oh wait apparently it does).. “no, we don’t…” continuing with the awkward wide eyed smile, looking around at everyone with the same shocked look on their face, my professor was so embarrassed that this guy would ask that (this man was definitely in his higher 50s) haha oh wow. Then, here it comes… not exact quotes, I couldn’t remember all his detail, but… the idea is the same “yea, cause ya know, you could recycle the dress to the next wife, and the next and so on, ya know, share….reusable, modest, wedding dresses”… hahahaha????? What? Are you serious. More awkward smiling… everyone was dying. He finally finished, good thing I could barely understand him anyway. SO FUNNY!!! HAHAHA. Oh goodness.
We met at 830 to head to where the FIT in Milan is located for a lecture by the dean of design there. It was a cool architecture/engineer school and FIT Fashion Design just uses the campus for their small program.
The lecture was 3 hours… SO LONG. And no matter how hard I try, it is so hard to listen to English with a European accent. Wow, so much focus is required. It was not very exciting, or interesting, or really related to our class… but it was fine. It was one of those days where you are just sitting there so uncomfortably, fidgeting around, and just praying the time will go fast and that you won’t fall asleep.
We had an hour lunch break so we stopped in the first restaurant we saw, it happened to have GREAT food, I had a lovely Panini but the service was not so good. There were 9 of us who all ordered from the same table, together, the 2 with the past dishes got theirs in literally 2 minutes. 15 minutes later 5 get their Panini’s, all of them are headed back to class because class is starting and Chris and I haven’t even received our food yet. Finally we scarfed our meal, thank goodness it was delicious, and ran back to class.
For the next 3 hours we had 16 class presentations of each of our design ideas for our collection. (The reason we had this lecture was so we could present to the dean guy who gave it and he could give us pointers and critique us.) Everyone’s ideas are so great and so unique and different. It was a lot of fun hearing what everyone was planning on doing. I had put together a page with my main customer on it and was just planning on winging it. I know my customer, I know my objective, I know my style, I figured it would be fine. Everyone else wrote speeches and power points… I was kind of getting nervous but tried not to let it get to me, I just went up and talked. It went… interestingly. Haha, so I start describing my market (P.S. only my teacher and Heather know I am LDS at this point) (P.P.S. having to describe our market and modesty to people in a professional design setting is actually very challenging…) So I just go on about how my customer is very unique, must be higher neckline, sleeves, etc. and how there is a huge market in Utah, epscially at BYU. Blah blah blah, how we get married younger etc. and as I am probably 30 seconds into this speech the guy basically yells, in the middle of me speaking “so are you Mormon”… um, “yes I am…”.. [continue with speech] talk about how I feel there is a need for sophisticated dresses designed modestly, because I feel there are modest dresses but most of them are designed for a very young bride and I feel even if they are a young age, they may want to be more sophisticated. For instance, I have not seen one modest wedding dress I would ever buy and wear. Many have to have their dress custom made or built up which adds a lot to the price and I am hoping to bring a fresh, sophisticated, dress (that doesn’t look like a tacky white prom dress-no offense) to the market at a price range that is affordable for college student brides. Blah blah blah. Here comes my critique “so, since your Mormon do you practice polygamy?”… haha awkward smile (since that has so much to do with design...oh wait apparently it does).. “no, we don’t…” continuing with the awkward wide eyed smile, looking around at everyone with the same shocked look on their face, my professor was so embarrassed that this guy would ask that (this man was definitely in his higher 50s) haha oh wow. Then, here it comes… not exact quotes, I couldn’t remember all his detail, but… the idea is the same “yea, cause ya know, you could recycle the dress to the next wife, and the next and so on, ya know, share….reusable, modest, wedding dresses”… hahahaha????? What? Are you serious. More awkward smiling… everyone was dying. He finally finished, good thing I could barely understand him anyway. SO FUNNY!!! HAHAHA. Oh goodness.
This is my design inspiration board. (pictures borrowed from wedding blogs; greenweddingshoes and Rebekah Westover)
So after everyone came up to me telling me what a great idea I had, and that it was a really good market. People were talking about the Jewish, Muslim, and a couple other cultures that would also be interested in what I have to offer. I was surprised, I didn’t realize everyone would love it so much and think it would really work. How sweet would that be??? I never thought I would or ever wanted to do my own wedding dress line and design forever but… I could. aBree Original wedding dresses, not just custom made, but my own shop, my own real dresses in boutiques all over the world. It actually seems like it could work too! It got me really excited.
We got gelato on the way home, double scoop, fiordilatte (the cream cheese one) and what I thought was graham cracker… nope, wrong, it was some other something with dried fruit type stuff in it, not what I was expecting but still good. MMMmmm GROM. Delicious. Thank you. Scoop #10
We got gelato on the way home, double scoop, fiordilatte (the cream cheese one) and what I thought was graham cracker… nope, wrong, it was some other something with dried fruit type stuff in it, not what I was expecting but still good. MMMmmm GROM. Delicious. Thank you. Scoop #10
Happy Hour for dinner. Basically restaurants in the city have happy hour every night where you pay a flat rate of 7 euro for a drink and the buffet is free. It is filled with so much food, fruit, everything delicious and it is so cheap. Sadly for me my drink was only really 2 euro because it was non-alcoholic… so I guess it is a better deal for everyone else, but still good, good company, good time. Our class is really so much fun; it has been so good getting to know everyone! We all get along well.
This is my Milan Hotel.
This is my Milan Hotel.
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