- Gem x

The models are my beautiful friends Cheryl and Greg and the photographer is Tulula Fox.

I already posted pics of one outfit from this collection earlier in my blog (Disorder photoshoot). Here are a few drawings and some shots I took on the mannequins. Am in talks to get a proper photoshoot of the whole lot sometime soon and more drawings will be found in my portfolio when I can get round to sorting out that section.

and a few random pics taken while making the garments…

I based the colours on a piece of 18th Century fabric from a museum and I used lots of  inspiration and silhouettes from fashion around the time of the French Revolution. of course I have all this my very own twist.

Here are some pics and a clip from my end of year fashion show…

Click here to see a little mobby vid of my fashion show…  HNDFashionshow

I made two outfits for this production in early 2009 as I was busy with uni work. I designed Sour Kangaroo and Horton’s outfits. Excuse the crappy scans…

The characters needed to be human and just slightly resemble their animal, so no actual kangaroo outfits and trunks and ears attached to the head, etc. Sour Kangaroo is this big diva character so I made her a draped gown in brown, orange and gold (which had a pouch for her baby), fluffy ear-like cones on a headband and tons of gold jewellery.

Horton is a soppy character and I went with a kind of geeky look with cut off grey trousers (that had exaggerated pockets), slouchy grey socks (for that wrinkly elephant effect) over-the-top lapels and a huge tie to give the idea of a trunk (which also had a hidden glove part so he could use his trunk to hold his flower).

Will hopefully get a few proper photos of the characters at some point, but for now here are a few little snaps stolen from some of the actor’s Facebook pages…

In this pic you can see my Lion costume (from The Wizard of Oz production) being re-used in the background. Looks waaaaay too big on him as the guy who played Lion was quite a bit bigger than this dude.

Psst, I also made the hat ^ _ ^

My collection was still unfinished so I had to cobble some stuff together along with accessories and props. I dragged in a suitably handsome young man from work to model for me and he did a chuffin’ good job as you can see from the following photos.

One of my photos was chosen to represent our university in the magazine a few weeks later…

Sadly, I never ended up making it into GFW. Oh well, at least I got published ^ _ ^

Thanks again to Greg for being such a pro and Zemamnesh Campbell for giving up her time to take these fabulous photos for me.

A few pics during construction of Glinda’s dress and crown…

The crown was made using a tiara, some thin silver wire and pink organza that I had previously machine laced with silver thread

The dress was your typical huge froofy fairy princess dress (the girl I was designing for said she’d always dreamed of wearing a dress like this). It was inspired by Beauty and the Beast and 18th Century French court dresses. It eventually had a huge underskirt and hoop as you will see in the show photos.

A couple of pics from the local newspaper of Dorothy and Toto. Did some promotion in the mall as the Christmas lights were switched on…

This was the typical blue coloured gingham dress as made famous in the movie, but I also made a brown version for the start of the show when the colours are muted.

And finally some pics from the show itself …

Me!

So here I go with a spanking new website. Bear with me while a few loose ends get tied up. No idea what happened to my old posts on my last site so I figured I’d use my first post to introduce myself and then a few more to show you some stuff I’ve done so far.My name is Gem and I started Shibby, ooh about 7 years ago I guess. It’s transitioned through quite a few things from customised t-shirts, to hair extensions, then just a blog and now a fully running website. I recently graduated with a BA Fashion and so now I want to take this seriously as a design business.. but maybe with not so serious designs ^ _ ^

I’m crazy about clothes that make a person REALLY stand out. Totally inspired by Japanese street fashion (Harajuku Girls (and boys)), Tim Burton, historical costume and anime so my work tends to verge on the rather costumey, cutesy and often somewhat macabre side.