A day in the life of a designer..

Is London Still Swingin’?

As spring and summer 2009 are pretty much put to bed now, we are just praying that we get all the photographic samples back in time for the next shoot which is in about three weeks!

Last week Deborah (Long Tall Sally’s product manager) arranged a special jeans shoot and I have to say our jeans have never looked better. You’ll see the evidence in just a few short weeks. I’m also hoping by next week Carly and I will finish designing and selecting high summer and then it’s on to Autumn/Winter 2009…

However, rather than looking forward this week I have been looking back- Back in time that is! I went to a 60's exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. There was a film running in the background throughout the exhibition called “Look at Life – Swingin’ London – In Gear “. It was really fab all about life in London in the 60s. One of my favourite lines in the film has to be: “Everybody thinks London is Swingin’ –but is it really? You look around and here and there you see someone who looks like they might swing….”

It made me wonder, has London changed that much? Maybe it has? The clothes were truly amazing particularly the “retro look” of the 60’s which was mostly influenced by 1920’s fashion- You know the whole Biba thing with cloche hats and feather boas. However, saying that the 60’s really did design something truly special– the MINI!
That’s what I am really jealous of- it’s so hard for anyone to come up with anything completely original these days. Fashion seems to be a constant revival of something from the 20th century; from the 20’s through to the 80’s eighties everyone has their favourite decade.

Personally, I love them all but I’m on the look out for something new. Maybe London was swingin’ then or at least going in the right direction!

Talking of new and swingin’ Carly and I went to a party this weekend with pampas grass in the front garden. …Don’t worry we held on firmly to our car keys…

Carol

A day in the life of a designer..

My Cultural Weekend

Well it’s been a busy week at work- Carly (the other designer at LTS) and I have been trying to put summer 2009 to bed – so it’s all hands on deck. We’ve been fitting all the first samples on our model. Trying to get them to fit just right is a long process especially with some of the newer styles but we are slowly getting there.

Everyone in the office is pretty upbeat at the moment thanks to all of you out there. The reason being, we have received such positive feedback regarding our new look and catalogue. Here at LTS HQ we are completely overwhelmed and I just wanted to say thanks.

At the moment I’m itching to get started on designing Autumn Winter 2009 which hopefully we will start in about 2 weeks. I will keep you posted and let you know when it’s all underway.

Anyway all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy or Sally a dull girl. So as it was a bank holiday weekend I jumped in the trusty Golf and headed for the Cotswolds for a bit of R&R.
On route to a church cream tea I called in at the Alain Rouveure gallery. They sell fantastic Nepalese and Tibetan rugs in really beautiful colours and textures. All very inspiring for next year’s colour palette. I got home just in time to watch “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” with Clint Eastwood (Well, I wasn’t actually watching it with Clint, which was a good job too as I fell asleep half way through!) None the less I have to say I am now definitely feeling a huge Poncho revival.

On Bank Holiday Monday I continued the culture gig and went to the Tate Britain to the “Lure of the East” exhibition, mainly because I wanted to see the painting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was one of the first women to travel in the orient and write about her experiences. Her observations about costume and dress are exquisite.

Of course such culture was rewarded by cake… I needed the sugar rush to keep me going….

To round the weekend off I went to see The Dark Knight- The critics got it right, Heath Ledger is brilliant as the Joker. I particularly like him in the red wig and the nurse’s uniform! Maggie Gyllenhaal was great too and of course had some fantastic outfits. I think I too will be going for the pencil skirt, white blouse and waistcoat option this autumn; this was power dressing at its best. I’m just not sure that LTS will let me set up my own interrogation room in the office to complete the scenario…..

A day in the life of a designer..

Carol is an experienced designer and has been working at Long Tall Sally for over two years. Although Carol secretly dreamt of joining MI5 before she was hit by the fashion bug. Her passion for fashion started early on when she made her first skirt at just five years old.

Growing up she was influenced by Biba, Chanel, Norma Kamali and Perry Ellis. She is particularly interested in the fabric and cutting side of design. A tall woman herself at 5’10, Carol enjoys designing for taller women as she believes that height is an advantage and even admits she would like to be a few inches taller...

Carol's Blog

Not being a natural writer, I was a bit sceptical, at first, about doing this blog. I mean, why on earth would anyone be interested in what I have to say? Well, after a bit of careful research I found that reading about other people’s lives can be pretty interesting. And, I figured if Lily Allen can do it, so can I!

I’m a mere 5ft 10 and a half, which doesn’t make me huge but I do have an inside leg which swings between 34” at a squeeze and 36” in high heels (Although I do walk like Dick Emery in heels so I don’t tend to wear them that often!)

A lot of my friends are 6 foot and over and several around 5ft. Despite the obvious height differences we would spend hours talking about the difficulties of buying clothes. Personally, I think the five footers have it slightly easier, I mean taking things up isn’t a problem but if you are tall you can’t make clothing longer! I used to buy from LTS years ago, myself and several of my friends who were hard core label queens when it came to jeans have now been converted to Long Tall Sally for all our denims.

I’ve been designing at LTS for a couple of years, I haven’t always wanted to be a designer I wanted to be a spy really but I thought I might be handicapped by my tendency to gossip!

MI5 aside I love fashion, at the moment I am busy working on high summer 2009. The first thing we do each season is look at all the prediction and trend information, then we work on a colour palette and buy in print designs. The next stage is designing shapes and working alongside the factories to get samples based on our designs. It’s quite a long process but rewarding when you see your designs come to life.

Now for my favourite part, choosing what I want to wear this season- the Oxford shift dress, Rebecca jumper, Kingston skinny jeans, Audrey beret- I want them all!

This could take hours..

Bye for now

Carol