the design inspiration rant (please bear with me)

Ok, so this will be yet another post without pictures, but that is what tends to happen when you own an archaic computer, and don't have the 'take your camera everywhere philosophy'. But I'm not going to post about my own work this time round. I'm going to talk about some design inspiration, simply beause thats what I'm looking for. I'm in two minds about those 'inspiration blogs', you know by people who are A. Well connected "my friend is a designer..."; and B. Seem have good taste in everything. Sometimes after a while they just seem to be a bit same-y, especially if you go through stages of reading lots of them. You might not like me saying that... But in the end it can take a little more now to impress or inspire me thats all.

So today I took a bit a backtrack to to 2005 when I did a couple of weeks fashion student-y internship (thats right- internship usually means handsewing) at Akira in Sydney. Akira is this Japanese designer based in Sydney who has been in my favourite books since, I'm guessing (gasp!) the late '90's. Lots of textile work and quite a distinctive silhouette. I remember a cloud print fabric that was in shades of golden yellow and purple, and somehow that translated into my line-y clouds that tend to pop up everywhere. Going overseas for what was essentially a uni assignment was quite a good idea in my books- I got to know a different city, and meet some new people. I left with a good dose of inspiration, yet when I checked out the website for the first time in a long long while, I found that the same sense of inspiration is still there. My graduate range was very Japanese inspired, but not necessarily in a beautiful, fragile way. A sense of softness and fragility is what I'm wanting to pursue more in my creative work, like embroidery on fine fabric and muted colours. I like the craft world and its community-mindedness, but sometimes I just want to create something that is beautiful, not necessarily kooky and crafty. I understand that what is considered 'beautiful' is incredibly subjective and not worth arguing about. All I would like to do now is get back into that creative frame of mind again. And perhaps make some beautiful clothes.