Sunday 21 April 2013

Next steps………….

Today I finally got back from Kyrgyzstan and will head to Hockley studio tomorrow to star working on the design. SO excited! 

Thursday 11 April 2013

Results :)

After a few days of waiting, I got an email saying that I won...it felt great! 

I'm so excited and honoured to be chosen by the judges and would like to express my gratitude.

Looking much forward working with Hockley team on my final design and traveling to the Saga Fur Design Centre in the near future! Woooo hoooo!

Here is the winning design! It is a seamless felted coat with a massive mink collar, which i'll be printing over with pink paint. 



Friday 5 April 2013

Final Judging

When I was submitting my final designs to BFTA, I was faaaaaaar away in Kyrgyzstan... felting. It was impossible for me to submit my final designs in person, so I've sent everything to my friend and assistant Julia van Ijken, who like a fairy (and she dresses the part too!), delivered everything on time to BFTA office. Thank you, Julia! 

Friday 15 March 2013

Fur Workshop

Fur workshop was fantastic!!! 

As a finalist of the British Fur Trade Association's Fur Design Competition (BFTA) I was invited along to a workshop.

It was divided into two parts. First part was an introduction, I've really appreciated an insightful presentation from Hockley and BFTA representatives: Tina, Izzet and Andrea. Their speech was a great introduction to the fur industry, its benefits and challenges, and I've learnt to better understand its role in the fashion industry and learn about Origin Assured. Then, the Head of Design & Innovation at Saga Furs, Dorte spoke about Saga Furs and showed us unbelievable fur samples brought especially for the 8 finalists to see. We were all amazed by how much you can do with fur and what a generous material it is to work with. I was inspired to be more creative and experimental with my own work with fur. 

My most favourite samples were: 
1) The degrade shaved emerald coloured fox! I couldn't keep my hands off it. 
2) Fox strips sewn onto jersey. It was weightless and stretchy fur - unbelievable! 
3) Burberry's Haymarket check in fur - anything is possible! Sam Towner couldn't let it go either! :)
After seeing all the samples and getting inspired, we had delicious lunch and proceeded to part two of the workshop.




The second part of the workshop was more technical: we were shown how to use the fur sewing machine and were introduced to various furs available at the warehouse.



Personally for me, one of the most useful part of the workshop was a one-to-one tutorial with the judges. Speaking about my ideas and designs to professionals, who gave me critical feedback, helped me a lot. 

After the workshop, i had two weeks to design and submit the final designs. 

Thursday 28 February 2013

About me and graduate collection:

Hi, My name is Altynai Osmoeva and I'm a final year fashion print student at Central Saint Martins, originally from Kyrgyzstan. My graduate collection is inspired by: felt and traditional crafts from Central Asia, nomads, raw materials like leather and FUR! As of print, i'll be iron branding seamless felted coats that i had produced with Kyrgyz felters and screen printing on fur. I am really excited about what's going to come out of it!