Fabric Sourcing/Research

Here are some of the ideas I had in mind for my senior collection titled: The Late Bloomers. These ideas came to mind while I was participating in the Tapestry Talks with Coach. Our assignment was to find fabric that we had in mind for our designs for the collections we were creating, and so, I chose to develop my senior collection and thus picked out fabrics at the time I thought would be best for the senior thesis. It has changed since then, (due to also keeping in mind prices) but I wanted to share with you my process of when I first researched the type of fabrics I was looking for. I also implemented designers that I've taken inspiration and interest in for my senior thesis, Alexander McQueen has been my biggest inspiration since he loves flowers. In this photo, the look is called "The Rose Dress" inspired by the red rose. This dress is now encased at a museum, but before it was made with taffeta and silk satin if I'm not mistaken. It took a lot of draping to get it exactly right for the top and bottom, alongside the pleated details that you see on the shoulders. This is the aim for "The Rose Dress" Taffeta and silk satin will be the main fabrics that I would want to use for my dress. The goal is to have the appearance of the dress look like a rose as much as possible, the contrast of both fabrics should make it look like that. Taffeta is a pretty stiff fabric to use especially for molding the outline of the rose; silk satin is for the shine and just to bring the dress out, make it pop! 

 The Khaki Pantsuit is by HRM which is my inspiration for the "June Suit", the idea is for the carnation flowers to be painted onto the suit; of course, the type of paint that will be used will ensure that it can stay as is, and most likely will be dry cleaned as a option instead of machine wash. The fabric for the June Suit will be Cotton Twill; I didn't think too much about the fabric only because the main act will be the painted flowers. The quality will still be A-1 of course! 

The menswear and womenswear look fabric swap is a cream khaki color, this is what I have in mind for the denim jumpsuits. the Cotton Twill Khaki color is for the menswear look (mainly the pants) I wanted a more sleek look but not too sleek that it gives off eveningwear but more so a relaxed chino pants outfit. 

Bringing the flats to life

The design process of bringing the flats (sketches of clothing) to life and choosing what color to use was a unique experience. I knew the ideas I had in mind, it was just making sure the collection would look cohesive. As you can see there are 3 variations of the"Rose Dress" This is due to me really wanting the Rose dress to look like a Rose. It took a lot of time for this piece because I was looking at reference photos and trying to mimic it the best way I could, while still looking like a dress. But I knew I wanted the dress to be long, so when the final look came about I was very pleased and satisfied with it. The Yellow Catalina Rose dress came about from the original photo of the two pieces which was supposed to be called "Daffodil". The look to me looked okay but it wasn't something I could see in the show, I might reconsider but as of right now I scrapped it. Same with the menswear piece at the top, my inspiration was the Poppy flower; originally it was going to be a women's piece but I didn't like this as much so again I scrapped it. My process is that sometimes when the piece is made I would like it, but later on if something else is sketched out I just refine the original piece to make it look better. The only look that hasn't changed is the "June Suit" which is your tailored suit with painted blue carnations from the shoulder all the way to the right thigh. 

My Senior Thesis Process

My journey of creating my senior thesis collection hasn't been easy, but it's been eye-opening to go on. Looking back at this process, I can see where some sketches I made I loved and others not so much. But I wanted to share this process of creating my collection, so it can hopefully draw you inspiration for yours! I started by brainstorming ideas, originally my collection was going to be called "The Expression of Art in the Form of Fashion" but since it didn't have any real meaning behind it, I ended up scrapping it. I then started to draw inspiration from flowers, ever since two of the most important people in my life died, I've started to pick up a deep interest in flowers. So I knew that I wanted my collection to be based on that. From there two things I had to keep in mind when making my collection : the name, the meaning behind it, and what I wanted my collectin to be in terms of if it was evening wear, daytime wear or both. 

With that in mind, the creative concept process took time and fine tuning. At first the name was going to be called "The Flowers Collection" but there was no true meaning at the time, just that I wanted to pay homage to the strong women in my life who raised me to become the person I am today. 

Overtime the meaning came along one day during the summer at my job. I had become heavily frustated over the last couple of months due to everyone pressuring me to drop something, and how if I don't i would miss all of the opportunites that would've been presented to me. So the name "The Late Bloomers" came to mind; it was going to be based off the process of becoming a designer and how that process overall takes time. The way the current world works is that "hustle cutlure" and "sucess happening overnight" means rushing the process in order to be reocognized. The thing is, not everyone thinks that way, me being one of those people. When making something I like to take my time, is it lazy? Some may think so, but I beg to differ. 

From thereon the process of designing started to come together, what once was random designs now looked cohesive and put together. I knew I wanted to make clothes that were everyday wear but also mixed in with evening wear. I'm a big fan of streetwear so I wanted to incorporate it into the collection. Above are some photos of my process, I hope you enjoy them! 

BLM Project

When I used to take VCDM 231, our second assignment was to create a BLM poster of our choice. I decided to do a Jay Z poster with a quote. I used the Adobe Express to create this poster, and for the Jay Z picture I actually went on photoshop. This was the first time that I worked on Photoshop so I did have some difficulties, but the vision for this poster truly did come to life. I did get some feedback on what to change, but unfortunately I didn't put in the effort for the second submission. But feel free to check this out and let me know what you think !

Throwback to when I had to record the homecoming concert for my HBCU.

I am apart of the media team for Bowie State, called Experience Bowie State Media. There are a total of 30 members, but for tonights concert it was only 5 of us working due to not having too many people on the stage and sides where the artists would be performing. The artists that came were DaBaby, Vickielo, and Sexxy Red.

My homecoming was a full week of events for the student body and alumni, and this years concert was actually open to people who didn't attend bowie. This was before the storm of course, throughout the night it most definitely got packed and filled with everyone. The overall night was fun and the performers did well, I would say the best performance would be Vickielo and then DaBaby (I only say him second because Vickie went first). Sexxy Red didn't give her best until we all found out that she was actually pregnant! But yeah I would rate the night 8/10, it was cool but not my speed of music.

Come with me to a museum in dc!

So me and my friends decided to take a trip to dc for the day after the craziness from the homecoming tailgate. We used this day to get our minds off of everything that's been happening in our lives and as a form of escape. We ended up going to the American Art museum which displayed artists work, music eras from the 70's to the early 2000's and sculpture pieces. I only have this photo on my laptop but I did take pictures of this room which was full of albums throughout the years (mainly rock and pop ), and headphones that had different sounds. Overall this experience was fun! I always love going to the city and just being there, going with friends is most definitely worth it especially if you are all in college and have nothing to do on a random Thursday!

Life lately consists of me going to school, work, and hanging out with friends. I used these two photos because they're not only my favorite, but capture the moments that happen in my day-to-day life. I work at a sewing studio as my job, and it's something I've been enjoying since working. I started this job over the summer but decided during the semester to pick it back up again for the same change on the side (and also to put funds towards my clothing brand). In the second photo is a vase full of live flowers at Chick-fil-A near my campus. I was going out with one of my friends and decided to treat her to dinner since she was feeling down. I admire flowers a lot especially since it's not only a part of my senior collection, but it holds a deeper meaning to me (that's another post for another time of course!).

Since the beginning of the semester, I have been attending virtual sessions with the Bowie State Fashion Department and the designer brand Coach!! The overall experience of this has been amazing, the people who work at Coach have been so helpful with their words of encouragement and advice on being a fashion designer and on how we can perfect our vision for our collection and designs.

This recent session that we had was about doing our sketches for out collections that we are going to present to them at the end of the spring semester. I was excited about this assignment because I love to sketch and see my ideas come to life with the colors I choose. My collection inspiration is based off of flowers which is why you see a theme going on with the sketches. I've yet to receive feedback but hopefully, it is good!

The very first assignment I did for my VCDM 231 class was Photoshop. Now normally I'm not a big fan of Photoshop since the last time I took VCDM 230 I was confused and did not know what to do. But now getting situated with Photoshop, I do have a better understanding of how to use some of the tools and layers.

The picture above was a tutorial on how to create this "Great American West" landscape that you are seeing right now. But before it was just the landscape with the cows. In the video it showed a step-by-step process on how to get this end result with the sun, logo, and title. It honestly wasn't that hard, but I think for me since I'm still learning how to master Photoshop, it was a little difficult for me to learn and understand. Overall I would rate this experience a 7/10 since it wasn't that bad just a little challenging.

For the 2nd or 3rd assignment in my VCDM 231 class, we were learning how to use Adobe Illustrator. We followed the directions from the tutorials on YouTube, and put our own spin on it in class. For me, I stuck to the script and kept it the same, (except for the euphoria since I wanted mine more pink than how it was in the video).

This was a good learning experience to have and something to place on my resume as something I do know what to do. I would love to keep perfecting it just in case in my career field (Fashion Design) if I were given the task to use Adobe Illustrator that I would know how.

So this is the design result for the monogram project that I did in class;

and this is a little freestyle I did during my free time with the lessons I took from my VCDM 231 class. Overall this process was fun because it caused me to be creative and really step outside of the box when it comes to designing for yourself and your brand. For my initials, it was a challenge because there were criteria, and with AI being so popular lately, my professor wanted us to be original without the need for help from an AI. So doing that for my initials was hard, but I ended up with this result below!

For my final result for the monogram assignment, we were instructed to have a greyscale one and a color one. For the color, I used a turquoise blue and used the AI filter to inflate the letters so they can have more depth. I went with the cursive monogram because to me it really looked sleek and sophisticated. I would rate this overall assignment an 8/10 only because it was a lot to do, but also fun and creative at the same time.

Here are some sketches I was working on in my VCDM 231 class. This assignment is called monograms and I couldn't be more excited to work on this project! My overall goal in the class was to use these tools for my brand, at first I didn't think I was going to until we got to this assignment. Originally the project was intended for your first and last name initials but for me, I decided to do extra credit and do my brand's name initials "YVL".

My biggest inspiration for sketching out these monograms was graffiti. I always loved seeing graffiti in the city streets of DC or even at train stations. It was always so cool to me to see people free hand design these bubbles, sharp, or extreme cursive letters on trains, buses, concrete walls, or tunnels. So taking inspiration I used it for my clothing brand YVETTELAMONT and also for my initial RJ.

UI/UX Project for VCDM 231.

Creating this website was most definitely a challenge as it is something I haven't done before. Normally I have someone else make the website for me, but it was a learning experience to do on my own!

Overall this project had 3 different submissions, one being the first draft, then the second being the second draft, and then the final draft which is a small clip of what you're seeing right now. It originally started with creating the logo name which is my initials "RJ" From there we were free to create how we wanted our website to look while using 5 products that we placed our initials on. For me, I decided to do a tote bag, hat, t-shirt, marquee, and business card. Only 4 of the 5 showed on the website but in the end, the page itself looked really good and professional. I would most definitely do this shortly for my clothing brand and for my portfolio review class!

I decided to create a post talking about my experience at the senior exhibition. The event itself was really good and I was beyond proud of all the seniors who presented their work and displayed everything they've learned during their 4 years at Bowie State. I attended the advertisement, production, visual art, and short film portion of the event. It wasn't my original plan but it was still good and inspiring to see what they've been working on.

My goal was to attend the fashion show to gain inspiration for my senior collection, but I will say I left the event early feeling motivated to keep pushing and planning for my showcase in the Spring of 2025!

Hey y'all! As my first post, I wanted to upload some things I've been working on during this fall semester. One is the prototype for my clothing brand YVETTELAMONT and the upcoming drop called: "Modesty". I was assigned for the 3D Art class to create a project with mass meaning and emotion; so I decided to create this look because it has a deeper meaning to me. My overall goal for this project and the brand was to redefine what modesty looks like. In a world that is big on revealing skin and showing off what God made it seems as though modesty can look "plain" or "boring" but really it can be another version of sexy and sleek. Modesty to mean does go back to scripture where it says in the Book of Corinthians that your body is a temple and that God dwells in you. So by creating this project piece the goal in mind was to combine an ordinary t-shirt with a twist.

Normally the shoulder top would be by itself, showing skin and your stomach. But I decided to redefine it by using a plain black long sleeve as the base and sewing the off-the-shoulder top on top of the shirt. Sounds like a lot but it really wasn't! The process overall was fun and exciting to see the design come to life. The purple flowers you see on the shirt were hand-painted and are supposed to be violets; this is supposed to represent the rib since Eve is the first woman that God created (out of the rib is a woman) in the Book of Genesis when He realized for Adam that it was not good for man to be alone. The diagonal hand painting is the key to this piece and the theme for the whole collection. I'm overall glad I created this piece and challenged myself! I can't wait to see how the rest of the collection comes out!