Kae Lee Iwakawa at Yohji Yamamoto S/S 2002

I will call her Gina

I was lucky enough to get tickets to the London Collections:Men, I went to Baartmans and Siegel, Qasimi and Xander Zhou. This image is from the Qasimi presentation. The clothes were beautifully cut, the palette was warm and sexy and I was super impressed with the level of craftmanship. I really enjoyed the presentation and would love to go again. 

Another show that I was bowled over by was Xander Zhou. Living and working in China, he’s been tipped by the best to be the next big thing in menswear and it’s a label completely deserved. The show was entitled “Homies” and was a gentleman’s approach to street wear. Lots of perforated leather, over-sized jackets and a moderately playful colour scheme, the line was durable, but knew how to high brow when needed.  The atmosphere was electric, with many big names on the front row, the music was slick and en pointe and Zhou seems like a nice guy to boot.

Just when I thought the last fee days had been fruitless

This took literally 30 secs after a whole day of drawing, which is always the case with me.  Further evidence to support my theory that I have a kind of drawing personality disorder, I seem to be channeling Gruau today, I like it though.

This is probably the best piece I did when I went to Central Saint Martin’s Summer School. The week feel on my birthday and was definitely the best birthday present I could have ever given myself and I shall be attending next year (i’d go all the time if I had the dollar).

The course was intense and very hard, but taught me some of the basics of real drawing, this is how the masters do and it really shows. Life drawing is completely different from drawing from an image and the sketches we did, were max 10 mins to get everything down and add colour. It teaches how to really observe what’s there and draw with your eyes, not with your head. The course was so good in fact that I’d go as far as to say that I learnt more about drawing and observation than I did in 3 years at uni. Central Saint Martins in my opinion really is worth the hype.