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Custom Wedding Dress & Kimono Upcycled Clothes | オーダーメイドウェディングドレス&着物ドレス

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Mommy’s Diary 30

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Week 30 of motherhood here. Kiko is still on the same eating schedule of baby food and formula, but she is now showing preferences. She eats a mush of vegetables (carrots, potato, tofu etc) first and then have some milk. This week I found there are Anpanman (Japanese catoon character) biscuits for 7 month old and up, and decided to pick them up. She prefers the biscuits to veggie mush but we primarily stick to veggie mush and tofu plus one biscuit after finishing the mush. It’s so fun to see her grab a biscuit and enjoy eating it on her own though! I’m tempted to give her more, but resisted the urge:p

Back home, there is a picture of my sister when she turned one year old. My parents gave her a strawberry short cake for her birthday for the first time in her life, and the picture of her biting down the cake with whipped cream all over her face and hands is priceless! I want to do that for Kiko’s 1 year old birthday…

Kiko is now able to actively choose her toy of preference so we put all of them on a shelf and let her use the walker to roll over to the shelf and choose her toy for herself. She plays primarily with a grey silicon cup (which was a gift from my sister to Andy, but Kiko took it), coke pet bottles and plastic bags. So strange she chooses these over cute stuffed animals! What was your childhood favorite toy? I think mine was Jenny doll (like a barbie doll). Unfortunately Jenny became bald after my failed attempt to give her a hair cut…

Inspiration: Meadham Kirchhoff’s Spring/Summer 2012 Show Backstage

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All images via Rookie

I came across these backstage photos of Meadham Kirchhoff’s SS 2012 show in London at Rookie, and went through the entire 66 photo collection with great curiosity. As someone who designs and sews clothes, I am always curious how the other designers/seamstresses create their collections. I like the mountain of inspirational images that they collected, and the fashion drawings. I wish I could draw better!

Creating A Lookbook Pt. 1

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Hello! Since I’ve finished writing the “Making the Wedding Dress” series, I was thinking about what I should do for my next series. I thought it might be fun and informative to do a mini series (Perhaps 3 parts over 3 weeks) on creating a lookbook for your clothes. In the past year or so, I’ve had a number of opportunities to do  photo shoots using my creations. Some shoots were planned by me, and others were collaborations where I contributed as a designer or stylist for someone else’s shoot. For some shoots, I have not even been present, I just loaned out my clothes. Here, I would like to write about the experience as an organizer of a  shoot. Photo shoots are fun, but take a lot of effort! It’s like preparing for a big party.

Here are some things I’ve learned while preparing for a shoot:

1. Decide on a theme and concept.

I like to come up with a cohesive theme incorporating all my designs for a given shoot, this includes deciding how to display the clothes. I like to give a title, like “Secret Garden” or “After the Carnival“. I think it’s fun, and the title will guide you throughout the planning process and help you stay on the initial concept. It is easy to go off track or get confused without a set direction.

2. Collect some inspiration images.

Every time I plan a shoot, I create a folder and save images that are similar to the ones I am aiming for. This helps the photographer, make up artist, model and everyone else involved in the shoot to stay on the same page. This also lets me set the goal for the images that I am hoping to attain. I like this process a lot. I go through Pinterest or Tumblr for pretty images to inspire me.

3. Check out the locations and take pictures.

I vastly prefer the studio, because the weather does not matter. But getting  studio space  in Japan is very expensive.
For the last shoot, I picked a near by park. I went there a couple of times before the shooting day to check out possible locations and took some pictures to help plan specific shots and specific locations within the park.

Other things you might want to consider are: how crowded is the place? do you need to get a permission to shoot at the location? In some places in the past, I was asked whether I have a written permission to shoot.

4. Talk to photographer, model and make up artist.

Communication is key! For successful shoots, I always have a long chain of emails between everyone involved, especially with photographers. I communicate what I’m aiming for, and incorporate their advice and suggestions.

5. Create a shooting plan sheet.

Last shoot I did was the first time I made the plan sheet, and it was an enormous help! I have different columns in Word Doc, stating the order of the shoot and time, inspiration images, location images, clothes and props, and make up and hair plan.

I hope this helps – I will be back on Tuesday next week with more tips 🙂