I just realised in the rush I must have put one of the research book in the photocopier the wrong way around and half of both sides of the pages are missing. Never mind I have the rare chance to do part-page-skimming.
I was looking for Amanda`s lcf address and found this: http://www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/video-showcase/postgraduate-course-director-interviews/dilyswilliams-mafashionandtheenvironment/
I wish I could show this video to people when they ask me how fashion relates to the environment.
37C in shade, 29.5C in the living room, where I am buried into the research material and writing the thesis, most likely 35C upstairs I cant even sleep there any more it is too hot. Ironically officially autumn is here and I found some `okornyal` (gossamer) in the bathroom. I do not know how it got there through the windows and the library.
7.30pm
The garden is bathing in a luminous golden colour. The plants almost look like long lost, valuable antique jewellery and the trees over them like hundreds of meters lace drape on their beauty from a gigantic four poster bed. I don’t think I have ever seen such wonderfully fragile natural beauty in a moment. The old fashioned tall garden lamp emerges over the dying iris leaves as a rustic copper gatekeeper. The air is still, there is no movement, even the bugs are resting. Only one playful little bird is trying to find a comfortable spot on those lace imitating birch trees. The night is coming, and as we capture this very moment this evening, we know the morning will rejuvenate its antique beauty once again.
I find it important to copy a story here from an e-mail I sent to my wonderfully inspiring friend, Judith. It is about highs and lows, hopes and disappointments. It happened to me when I did my Art Design & Foundation part-time at Guilford College in 2002-2004 and an Interior Design course with Open College Network at Bracknell and Wokingham College. I loved every minute of being creative and enjoyed every opportunity given by the modules to design and make. After the first year I went to Paris with my brother and his wife. As we were walking around we got a bit lost and we found ourselves at a fabrics shop with wonderful fabrics and weaving looms in the window. We went in and I happened to start talking to a middle-aged gentleman. When I told him I study fashion and textiles in London, he told me I should send him my CV and could get an internship with them. That was Malhia Kent, the famous weaving company (http://www.malhia.fr ).I had no idea when we left that I was talking to the director Mr Christian Pays. They weave fabrics for Versace, Gucci and Dolce, Gabbana and so on. They always have a team of young weavers from all over the world to design their collection. When we got home I went to the local fabric shop and spent £50 on feathers, beads and different threads. That was my weekly wage/pocket money as they called it for an Au-Pair before we joined the EU. I made some samples (http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.244783015561490.64583.240722909300834) and made a little portfolio with the help of a friend and sent it off to Paris to Mr Pays. When he got it he straight away wrote a hand written letter on a plane to my tutor and invited me to go and spend 3 month with the company in their design team. I think it was partly my fault that I wanted to go during the summer to finish the term and by the time we got a new Au-Pair to replace me at the family Mr Pays left the company and the new people didn’t take on anybody he made agreements with. I went from total high to the deepest low. We say in Hungary: I was under the ass of a frog (I think it is not a very nice place to be that`s why we say it, when things get very bad.)
I remember getting the news the day before I had to hand-in my final project at the Interior Design course and I still had a lot of work to do. The dad from the family wanted an answer there and then in the evening what`s next. I still wanted to go to Paris I was so looking forward to it. The new Au-Pair was coming in a couple of weeks to replace me for 3 months and I just wanted to finish that project, I couldn’t give him an answer. I remember crying constantly and being so worried my tears were going to make a mess on the tracing paper. I tried to lean back from the technical drawing board, but couldn’t really see what I was doing through the tears. I made many mistakes, but finished by early morning. The hardest thing was I thought something was finally happening for me, when I got the news from Paris that they wanted me. And suddenly I wasn’t wanted any more. That was very hard to chew and swallow. I have been cleaning private houses including all the loos for 3 years by then. I worked so hard to earn money to be able to provide my college materials, I spent most of the nights working on my homework constantly struggling financially and holding against the pressure from back home why I haven’t become a millionaire yet. I was made to feel I must be doing something wrong and constantly told I shouldn’t study, as in Hungary the system wouldn’t accept my qualifications anyway. Becoming a millionaire in Hungarian measures in England within 1 year was the ultimate goal at that time for most people going to England. The exchange rate was good and there wasn’t such a big inflation yet in Hungary. I did pay off my mortgage for The House with The Garden. But I rather believed in investing in my education more than buying a flashy car for back home.
But by the time my tears dried up in the morning and I finished the drawings I decided to stay in England with the family (the dad very kindly cancelled my replacement) and I thought if 2d textile design didn’t work out with Malhia Kent, I learn 3D fashion dressmaking and the next day I applied for a City & Guild course and had a place. And very soon after that I have designed the Vondores logo as well. That is why I can make dresses now. There is a reason for everything, but when I heard about M.K. falling through I was gutted. I was even invited to the local BBC Radio to give an interview from the college about my-incredible-story-from-Paris. I was in the College Paper and everybody came to congratulate. I knew by the final project exhibition I wasn’t going to go to Paris. But I kept it quite. It was enough pressure on me to grieve in silence let alone being polite and keep my chin up if anybody would have asked why. I would have burst into tears. I was worried over the whole summer what if when I go back to the college somebody will ask about Paris I would be so embarrassed. Thank God English people can have a can`t-remember-about-other-people`s-business memory and very few people asked. I said the timing was inconvenient because of my Au-Pair job. They acknowledge this very easily and didn`t ask any more questions. I was very angry with my living circumstances deep down and had enough of everything (The English family was very supportive with me, without them I would have never been able to go to college to start with. I owe them respect for life). But I found it very difficult from time to time to be an Eastern European, and put in the move-to-England-to-get-married box and answering silly questions like if I knew how to use a compass and if I had ever seen one before. I felt like people thought I came from a 3rd world country to pray on their higher standard of living then ours. But now I understand they just didn’t know much about us, they thought we were extremely poor and uneducated because of the communism. And there are people in every country who can be just ignorant about the rest of the world. Since then I know and understand a lot more about England. I love it to bits, even though I am planning to set up the headquarters of Glocal Trinnovation and Vondores in Hungary after graduation.
Anyway when I went to enrol for 2nd year at Guildford, they told me there was a change in the law or policy and I was asked to pay £2000 for tuition fees. And then because I was offered that placement with M.K. in Paris, which has never happened to any of their students before (and it only happens with university students normally) the head of college honoured me the fee I paid the year before. I could finish college and went to university and am doing a thesis now.
Sometimes, it is more than difficult, almost impossible to understand situations when they happen, but they always turn out to be for the best.
If I had gone to Paris in 2003, most likely I would have gone on studying weaving at uni and would have never ended up at Fashion and The Environment.
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