Day to London and Exhibitions

Visiting exhibitions will benefit both our PPRD unit and our Fashion as a Forum unit.

We first went to the V&A Museum, we hadbeen there quite a few times before so we felt we knew the way around a bit and liked the museum itself previously. While we were there we saw loads!! There were so many exhibitions on but unfortunately the Fashion, Photography and textiles departments were closed. Typically!

Our next stop was Somerset House. This was a bit more successful, although the travelling there on the tube was entertaining and a lovely surprise to be very close to the museum once of the tube when we originally expect to have to walk a lot to find it.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in nearly all of the exhibitions but we took notes on everything we saw and took some pictures outside which I will include.

The exhibitions we saw were:

Jewellery- V&A Museum:

This was an exhibition that took you through all the decades of jewellery from as early as 1620 to 2000. This was a very interesting exhibition as our professional project is about revolution this also echoed the change in the times and how the jewellery has changed over the time. I made notes on the pieces that caught my eye. For example;

1960-1720- vibrant enamelled gem set stones...it was all about that gem stones and bling in these days.

Rings: memorable and official 1700-1800 rings given to friends and relatives. This era was all about the Berlin iron work.

Naturalism- 1790-1840- love for nature most universal and respected sentiments in the 19^th century. This era was all about naturalistic jewellery influenced by romantic movement.

Matthew Williamson- Somerset house:

This was my favourite exhibition of that day! If not ever. I have always found Matthew Williamson’s work so brilliant and inspiring. I love his work and his whole story of his career. The photos in this exhibition were gorgeous.

I made some notes in the exhibitions on all the things I found interesting.

· ‘Matthew Williamson’s brand represented uplifting colours, light and optimism. Openness and ability to collaborate and evolve his brand and he is all about vitality and vibrance.’- Vanessa Coyle, Fashion editor, Harpers Bazaar UK.

· Matthew has been designing for 13 years now and his first show was modelled by friends who are now famous in their own right.

· Colour and texture always has been the focus of Williamson’s collections, they make the wearer feel uplifted.

· Bright bubbly prints.

· Follower in the footsteps of Celia Birtwell and Zandra Rhodes.

· Vogue played a vital role in his early days

· He has made collections for H&M which sell out in 48s at a time.

BRILLIANT!!!

Joy Division- Somerset house:

I loved this exhibition as well because I previously studied Joy Division in Media studies at A Level and I found their story amazing, with Ian Curtis’ struggle with epilepsy and trying to be famous and the struggle with friends, it really brings you down to earth and makes you put your problems in perspective.

The exhibition itself was placed as soon as you entered the front door of the museum and was empty when we went in so we could spend as much time as we wanted in there and take our time to read everything about it. It was interesting to be able to view someone’s life in such detail. The images taken of the men performing and just in their every day environments were beautiful and the black and white presentation just finished the whole exhibition.

We saw so many other exhibitions while we were going around but these were the ones that I found the most interesting and inspiring. What a great, productive day J