Saturday 30th Aug: Redbull Music Academy Notting Hill Carnival - Art Direction and costumes

Here are my photos from Carnival Day at the Redbull Music Academy Soundsystem party with Lakwena in front of one of her murals and the dancers in my costumes which I designed to echo Lakwena's visuals.  

Friday 29th Aug: Mentoring for Somewhere_to with Kay Davis & Shireeka Devlin

As part of the Summer of Somewhereto_ scheme I spent a day sharing my studio and mentoring skills with two up-and-coming designers.  The photos of Shireeka Devlin and I above were taken by Kay Davis - so there isn't a shot of herself, but if you watch the video from the experience you will see her beautiful colourful vision.  Here we are making pieces for the Carnival costumes, chatting about the industry at large and getting to know each other better in this one-on-one capacity.

If you are between 16-25, head over to the site to find out more about how you can access free studio space set up by the incredible initiative.

See my blog post from the launch here.

Thursday 28th Aug: Redbull Music Academy Notting Hill Carnival - Art Direction and costumes - the prep

Notting Hill Carnival is my absolute favourite weekend of the year and dreaming of it's arrival coming closer is the only thing that gets me thru the Winter months.  2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the festivities and luckily I got to work on in it via the Red Bull Music Academy Soundsystem.  Alongside Lakwena, we collaborated on the identity for the artwork of the party which ran across the posters ahead of the celebration to the awnings which decorated under the Westway on the day.   Lakwena designed the graphics for the pattern with reference to my masks, and I then in turn referenced her shapes to integrate into the costumes for the dancers.  The whole thing combined in full scale murals which Lakwena patiently painted by hand, including the press board backdrop for backstage.  Photos of all of this will follow in a 2nd post, but here is a sneak peak of the preparations that took place in making of the costumes............. including threading my own beaded fringing because I couldn't find one I liked.  Every detail was made in-house from bending wire frames to dying fabric and feathers to sewing bespoke measurement teeny tiny thongs from scratch.   I wish I could just glue-gun some rhinestones to a headband and be done with it, but unfortunately I always seem to end up with the most time-consuming laborious process to realise the most cosmic spectrum that I can concoct.  

Thursday 28th Aug: Kite Making workshop

This is a return from the longest hiatus that I have taken from the blog.  Its been a month and in that time I have been solidly sewing costumes for Carnival.  With a deadline each day to achieve the ultimate deadline, I didn't have time for ANYTHING else.  However, I did multi-task and take a day out to run a kite-making workshop of which her are some snaps I took to document the colour and the beautiful location.  

Now that Carnival is over again for another year, normal service will resume to blogging antics ..............