This, being a year for firsts, will be my first time away from home for Christmas. I have a very large close family and the holidays are always a fun time. This time they will have to have fun with the themed Christmas Eve dinner and beer blind-taste testing without me. Briana and I will be hosting our own Christmas dinner party. It is always an adventure cooking American food with Italian ingredients. Briana perfected her cookie recipes so if the Christmas ham/prosciutto thing doesn't work out then at least we will have cookies!
The weather has changed to kind of cold, usually gray, sometimes rainy and a little bit of snow. Not my favorite, but it does make the hot cappuccino con cacao and brioche all the better in the mornings. Below, is the cappuccino and brioche from my favorite bar in Milan called the Bluespot. Every morning they are playing upbeat blues with smiles on their faces and so far, their brioche con crema wins. I love them.
Below, the Castle is withstanding the cold and rain and then a few hours later I was delighted when there was a Christmas light show. I would like to get some good video footage because it was quite beautiful with the music.
Navigli has a different take on Christmas decorations. It is charming in a gaudy way. Love it.
This year I'm not really sure how I feel about my classes. I love Knitting class, making scarves and creating my own fabric. That is probably the only one I would say I enjoy, besides METAproject (sometimes) which I will show you in a bit. Below are two projects from my Body Contours class. The first is a leotard inspired by radial lines. The second is a body-suit inspired by Japanese kimonos. At least I can wear the scarves I make...
Below is a portion of my METAproject work. I am in a group with two wonderful Italian girls and Briana. Our mission is to create an African-themed collection for United Colors of Benetton, consisting of three lines, Basic, Heritage, and Fashion. The class is all about the process, researching and drawing inspiration from Africa in a way that isn't cliche. The first step was to draw elements from three African photos that the teachers gave us. We have five Italian teachers by the way, so it's really easy to please them all. From there, we looked for evocative images that conveyed the ideas that we were trying to express. That first step took about two months. They are very serious about research. Then we had to compile the images into a mood board and a customer lifestyle board. Below are the two that I did for the Heritage line. My group decided to create a bold line with masculine and feminine elements and lots of eclectic prints.
To give you an idea of how I created these boards, I have included some of the original photos which I cut and colored and photoshopped all to hell. But I am happy with the outcome so it was worth all the work. Below, do you recognize someone's head and someone else's body? And how about that printed journal cover that turned into a wall which is behind a completely different colored couch...
I was put in charge of doing the figures for all of the lines which was part of step 2. Briana did all of the technical drawings which are not shown here and the other two girls compiled and organized everything into nice presentations. Below are the figures for the Heritage line without colors and prints. After the semester ends I will try to post the final presentation.
