St Patrick's Day in Milano

Paddy's day is a big thing at home, and for the last two years i have dedicated myself fully to the day!
A Paddy's day hat and several pints of Guinness are essential! This year i was sure it was going to be a disappointment - how could anybody in the center of Milan celebrate St Patrick's Day?! Well you just have to look in the right places, an Irish pub is usually a good place to start...

My friend and i managed to find a glorious little irish pub names 'Murphey's Law' through the streets of Porta Genova. When we arrived, it appeared that any efforts to get inside the pub would put you at risk of losing limbs. However, we spent the night outide next to the popcorn machine and the pop-up bar! It was amazing! And a real chance to meet fellow English and Irish people!

Our new friend Simone and I

My friend Kayleigh and Simone

Luckily we have made lots of friends at university in Milan, some of them Mexican, German and Turkish. We invited them to come along and we showed them a great time! By the end of the night everybody (including ourselves) were up dancing on the bar until 3am! ... And yes, i made class at 9am!

The Ballet - Teatre Alla Scala

Let me just start by saying i have never been to the ballet or the opera, and have never wanted to go to the ballet or the opera. But for some strange reason, now that i'm in Milan and perhaps feeling a little classy, i really want to go to the ballet! Here in Milan there are theaters everywhere, most of them are small but very accessible and anyone can go!
I was walking along the street one day and saw an advertisment for the Swan Lake ballet and raced home to book tickets. Sadly they were either sold out or way out of my price range - but i did find tickets to a ballet called 'Jewels' at the Teatre Alla Scala, which is right beside the Duomo. I went with one of my friends unsure of what to expect but i loved it! The show was in four parts so you escaped the danger of becoming bored and had the chance to run to the bar for another glass of wine in between!

Jewels Ballet - Teatre Alla Scala

Me at the ballet

After the show my friend and I had a steady walk back to our apartment which allows us to pass through the Duomo and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. These areas are usually packed throughout the day so there was something quite eary about the fact nobody was there. Naturally, as two students would, we took this as a photo opportunity with the lion statues that sit right outside the Duomo.
Inside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a newlywed couple were having their photograph taken!

Cultural differences

Whilst living in a foreign country for the first time, i have noticed that it is the smaller things in life that make a big difference...

This post is mainly going to be filled with photography and images i have taken during my Erasmus experience to capture cultural differences.

The Streets
Graffiti is huge in Milan, when i first moved out to Milan i had this image in my mind of a pristine city, high class and full of interesting people. To be honest with you i couldn't have been more wrong! Graffiti is on EVERY wall in the city - i love street art and use the influence in a lot of my work, but i feel there is a big difference between street art and graffiti. Some pieces around the city are wonderful and very inspiring but there is a lot of mess on the streets that bring down the cities class.

What i love most about living in a new country is experiencing their way of live everyday. Here in Milan we don't have much of a skyline but the streets are narrow and cobbled which means the lighting throughout the day is so different to back home in England. I have experienced some beautiful sunsets and weather out here so here is some examples...

Bars
I don't know what it is about Italy, but they seem to just throw food at you constantly! (not literally, of course)
For instance- you fancy going to a bar for a couple of cheeky wines. You arrive at the bar of your choice, you sit down, you order your drinks and they bring out a plate of food! Usually ham and cheeses or bread with some sort of topping. Don't get me wrong i'm not complaining, I love me some food! (especially when it's free) but joking aside this is actually a really cool way of understanding the types of food that they eat in Italy.
My mum and dad came out to visit recently and i took them to a bar where they have this kind of service so we had been nibbling on bready bits for a couple of hours. We spent so long catching up that we were in this bar until they served aperitivo and we were so full from eating steadily throughout the day that we didn't have room for dinner that night!
The best bar I have been to which catered for this kind of service was a bar called MAG. The bar itself is a dark, quirky, jazz bar with a great atmosphere. We sat at a tall table with high bar stools drinking prosecco (mum was paying, obviously) and the waitress brought out a plate of ham and cheese - as soon as the plate looks a bit sparse, they bring out another one!

Expenses

Living and studying in the UK is fairly cheap and cheerful, we have our weird and wonderful ways of getting by on next to no food, we have endless student bars and nightclubs with discounted prices and it's generally all under our noses. Naturally, I came to Milan thinking there must be some sort of student sub-culture. Long story short - I was wrong. The average price for a pint of beer is 5.50 euros, the same for wine and cocktails begin at 7 euros. On top of all the expenses at university (buying fabric and materials etc.) We just cannot afford to have the student life that we are used to. Don't fear - the supermarket sell wine and it is insanely cheap!! I have never paid more than 2.50 euros for a bottle! And it's good wine too! As you can imagine, my friends and i have managed to salvage our Coventry University student lifestyle by wacking on a great film drinking copious amounts of wine! Happy Days!

And just to make sure you have a nice day, here's some adorable dogs i've spotted along my travels...

Brera / Montenapleone

Brera, Milano

It was only the other day I discovered a gorgeous yet tiny area in Milan named Brera!
Brera is home to Milan's botanical gardens, bars, restaurants and (my favourite) plenty of fortune tellers. The fortune tellers set up their booths along side the colouful cobbly streets and call you over for a card reading. I really want to have my cards read by one of the ladies - not for any particular reason - i just think it would be fun! However, the language barrier looks as though it would cause some problems!

Brera seems to be an area very much aimed at the tourists Milan brings in. They cater for the English with English menus outside restaurants and bars and i even saw a bar that advertised a 'full English breakfast' - i'm not sure on that one.

On the way in to Brera is an amazing coffee shop / cafe / restaurant / bakery / bar - they literally sell under every food and drink catagory you can think of! The place is called 'Princis'. They're a chain store so it's likely to stumble across another one in another district. 

The first time i went with my friend i ordered a hot chocolate (I don't normally drink hot chocolate but maybe i was feeling particularly crazy that day) and a custard doughnut! The cute Italian lady that worked behind the counter suggested we tried this other desert which looked like a white slug wrapped in wafer with a slab of orange tucked in there... she was either blatanly lieing about how good it was to get rid of them or they were actually going to be delicious! We took a chance and oohhh myyyy - I swear, the best deserts i have EVER had. This place has added to my addiction list!

Montenapleone

Montenapleone is a district in Milan that is home to all of the designer stores. I think my friends and I actually stumbled across it by chance, but if you walk the streets of Milan long enough then you soon realise that each district connects very easily!

Of course shopping in Montenapleone isn't something us students can afford to do... or most people for that matter! But for window shopping i love it! The window displays in every store are amazing and its great for inspiration. Here's a few of my favourites including Jeremy Scott's fast food collection for Moshcino...

Like i said - the visual merchandising and shop windows in these stores are incredible. This huge burger rotates! That's right, it rotates.

Prada

Kurt Geiger

The only place I know with a view in Milan.

As part of my travelling experience I love taking photographs at any given opportunity and i don't want to arrive back home after my Erasmus trip is over without some amazing photographs to show off my experience. Anyway - I've been dying to find somewhere in Milan where i can get a beautiful landscape photograph of this gorgeous city that i live in! In many ways i love that Milan is flat, for example - running! Nobody likes a hilly run, NOONE! So in this circumstance, every rare occasion that i put my trainers on, a flat landscape is awesome. However, do not fear, i found a solution to this heartbreaking issue... I WENT UP THE CATHEDRAL! And at a reasonable price of 12euros, who can compain - unless you are the parent of seven eager children.. that guy can complain.

How did i not think of this before?! Here's some pretty cool photographs of my experience!

A panoramic view

Climbing the many stairs...

When my friend and I decided to climb the cathedral it was due to be sunset, I am SO happy that we caught the sunset from up there! The view was so incredible, I'm just disappointed i didn't have a better camera!

In the image just above you can see the huge RayBan sign light up in red. This is actually the RayBan headquarters, at first i thought it was just a well positioned advertisement for the company when i later learned that actually although RayBan is an American brand, the Italians loved it so much that they were leading the sales in the brand. Eventually the company was shipped off to Italy and is now an Italian brand along with many other leading names.

These images were also taken from the top of the cathedral. 

The architecture is absolutely phenomenal - think of the man hours that went into building this masterpiece!

As the sun set, green and pink lights began to glow around the dark crevices of the baroque features. I was in heaven. When you climb the cathedral you storm up a thousand enclosed steps which feels like a never ending upward tunnel. When you come out into the open you are literally walking along the roof tiles and around the edges of the building which allows you to look closely at the pale stone and the amount of detail in every small feature.

When you come to small staircase that takes you to the highest point, this is where the view is! You can even see the snow on top of the mountains way in the distance!

I would recommend this as an experience to anyone! But if you do, do not ruin it with taking the lift! Walking is part of the fun!

Inside The Duomo

As i have mentioned in a previous post - ladies must be well covered to enter the cathedral for reasons .. i do not know.

On this day i covered up good n' proper and finally had a look around!

Naturally the inside is equally as beautiful as the outside! Emerald and royal tones of coloured glass is everywhere in huge mass - The windows are sky high with coloured, biblical stories. Then you walk along the outskirts and maybe to your surprise (certainly to mine) a few important, very dead dudes laid in white robes wearing black shoes are on display -personally, i'm not into looking at dead people so this was a bit of a weird experience for me - each to their own right?!

Emily Land - Fashion and Textile Designer

During the last term I worked so incredibly hard to impress my tutor - we're talking blood sweat and tears! So it see's fit that i show an example of some work from one of my sketchbooks to give a small insight on the changes that i have made personally and as a designer...

Humanoid is the name of my most recent collection. I designed the collection using a heavy influence of textiles and how i can manipulate them to recreate and mimic the human body in an original way. As a designer i really enjoy a concept that can be taken from many angles, i explore all angles and then work specifically to one component of that concept. I like to keep my concept simple yet interesting and let my textile development be the highlight of the designs. 

Inspiration Board 1

Inspiration Board 2

Above are the two inspiration boards i created for my project Humanoid. As part of the brief we were challenged to design two seperate capsuel collections which both stemmed from the same concept. To make life easy for myself - i developed two seperate smaller concepts within my project title and had them as contrasting yet complimenting collections. If you look at the two boards you can see that one is very clean cut and focuses on shape and how i can make my garments cleverly cover the body and the other is very much based on the development of textiles and how i use them in ways such as layering and 3D printing.

Oil Pastel Drawing - Texture Experimentation

Simple Pencil Drawing - Texture Experimentation

Disperse Fabric Dye and Oil Pastel

Wax, Felt and Devore

Because of the amazing textile classes we are offered and the wonderful Australian lady Angharad that runs them, i was able to try lots of new techniques and experiment with skills i already have. I played around with a range of forms of printing and dying and also fabric manipulation. The techniques i found specifically relevant to my project, and the ones i took a shine to are as follows...

Needle Felting

Needle Felting - Underside

 Needle felting is a felting technique used with a needle. The skill is simple at first glance but it takes patience and persistence to see through a finished and beautiful piece. The idea is to blend two fabrics or fibers together by repeatedly pushing a needle through the two layers. The felting needle has two small ridges on either side that allow the fibers to be pulled through. Needle felting can be used with almost any fabrics imaginable - and it's awesome.

Devore

Devore is another technique i have become obsessed with! Although this isn't a great image to show my experimentation (due to the fact it's stuck in my book) i gained so many samples from using this technique. Basically you screen print whatever your design is with the Devore solution and it burns away the fabric where you print! B-E-A-UUUUTIFUL!