A little bit about me

My name is James Brew-Koufie  I am currently studying for a BTEC Extended Fashion Diploma at Tameside College. I am also working part time at the River Island store in Denton.

I enjoy  reading about fashion, carrying out research about the latest fashion and trends and shopping for clothes. I make and customise my own clothes to create my own style.

This is a fashion shoot I did in summer 2013, modeling one of my garment I designed and made for spring summer 2014

 

This is one of the outfits I have designed for me to wear, I was inspired by Dior Homme Spring/Summer 2014. The shoes I am wearing in this picture are ones that I customised myself with silver spikes and were inspired by Christian Louboutin.

Moodboard of 1950 Fashion Illustrations and my imitation

This A2 mood board influenced by the 1950’s shows things inspired me from that decade.  The images of icons and commercial trends were researched from the internet and magazines. The media I used to create my main image was watercolour, which I find helpful to create the effect of florals.

6 Fashion figures inspired by 1950's fashion illustrates

I developed my design ideas by looking at 1950’s fashions and styles ,I also looked at fashion illustrations from this decade to help me with my drawings. This is because I felt that the drawing of my garment suited a figure from that decade instead of a modern style figure. The project also asked me to look at the high street retail fashion for my research,  I feel I have brought this into my designs. Again the media I used was watercolour and this work was produced onto an A2 size sheet.

Final design board – 1950s

Final design board – 1950s

This A2 board is an illustration of my final outfit and was done in the style of the famous illustrator David Downton. The background shows images from that era and was done in the style of a magazine page, I feel this board easily reflects the theme of the project.

Final pictures of 1950's skirt I designed

Photograph  1 – garments of 1950’s project

This is the final  garment, this was modelled by myself and a friend. I produced my 1950's garment on the size of model so I could make it an individual fit. After I made this garment for this project I had time and fabric left over to make another garment so I decided to make a matching outfit for this project,  I made I top and shorts for a male which had the same fabric I used in the ladies wear. 

Photograph 2 – 1950’s project

In my spare time I designed a beach hat and a bag which had a link with the ladies garment I had made.  I wanted my model to have the 1950’s beach look for my college fashion show and from this picture you can see Gemma and me backstage getting ready to go on the catwalk. Although my garment wasn’t design for Gemma, I personally think it fits her perfectly.

My sketch book work on my Gaudi project

For this project I felt  that my work would be better if it was presented in an A3 sketch book. This project was based on the work of  Antoni  Gaudí, the architect from Reus, Spain. In my sketch book I used all kind of media such as paint and mixed media. I tried to interpret his work using different media because it helped me to replicate the textures and shapes.

A few designs of Gaudi inspired skirts

These are a few of my designs of my Gaudi skirts, I designed these skirts on a basic fashion figure I did this because I felt that the main focus of the designs should be the skirts and not the fashion figures. With each fashion figure I used a different kind of media, I used watercolours and acrylic paints because Gaudi’s work is brightly coloured so I used these paints to achieve a similar effect.  I got inspiration for the designs of the skirts from Gaudi architecture, each skirt represents one of his buildings. 

The final picture of my Gaudi skirt

I felt this garment would stand out if it had a 3D effect to it. I got my idea to make this peculiar garment from a famous building in Park Guell, Barcelona  which was designed by  Antoni Gaudí . I used 1500 different coloured  pompoms on my skirt to give it a mixed media look and the kind of look Gaudi would present. This is a picture of my final garment. 

Random Sketches for my nyokitto project

For this project I had a lot of ideas and everytime I had an idea I drew it on an A4 sheet of paper.  I got inspiration from random pictures I had seen  and I decided to merge all of the sketches I had done onto an A3 board. This was assist me in selecting a design to create my final piece. This was the first time I had worked this way. I felt this helped me to create my final design as by seeing all my sketches together on one board I could see more clearly the style I wanted my end garment to be. 

Showing 6 dresses design for my Nyokitto project

These are six of my strongest design sketches for my Nyokitto design project. These designs are drawn based on a Japanese fashion illustration figure. I did not want to use a basic fashion figure because I wanted to reflect the Japanese style design figure for the design of my final garment. From these six designs I chose my favourite one to be developed further. 

Images of my final Nyokotto dress

These are the photographs of the Nyokitto inspired dress which I made, this dress was made to fit the model.   I used two different kinds of fabrics to create the dress, although I used the fabric that college provided for me I felt that to make my garment stand out I wanted to chose my own fabric which nobody else was using. I searched for fabrics  and bought a luxurious sequined material, I added this fabric to the bottom of my dress in a fish tail style. This I feel gives it the glamorous look that I wanted to achieve.  

Historical Illustration Project

For this project we were asked to research historical fashion illustrations and the way they presented their work for each decade and the kind of media they used. This is an illustration board showing my interpretation of fashion illustrators works from history from 1900 to 1950. For each decade I used different media which were similar to the media they used at that time. After drawing an image for each decade I then mounted my work onto and A3 board to present it.  I also did the same thing for 1960 to 1990 decades.

This is based on my favourite historical fashion illustrator David Downton.  I decided to do two pages  based on Downton in my sketch book, I did them in my sketch book as I feel that I present my work better in a sketch book than on paper. I interpreted Downton’s work using the same kind of media he uses which is watercolours.  The reason why I like his work is because most of his illustrations are not fully completed but still paint the picture to the audience of what he is aiming for.

Rainwear moodboard



For this project we were asked to design and make rainwear for a 2014 summer music festival.  This mood board shows my research of fashionable jackets which gave me an idea on how to design a raincoat with a unique twist. This was done on an A2 board and the images I collected were from the internet and fashion magazines.

Rainwear design

These are the sketches for my rainwear project, these are drawn on an A3 sheet and I used a pencil to develop my sketches.  This time I decided to create my design for men’s rainwear as a change from always designing garments for women. For this project I produced 20 sketches, each sketch based on the previous sketch but changing the style a little each time, these are just a few of my sketches. 

Final pictures of my rain wear project

These are photographs of my final rainwear garment shown being modelled by myself. I chose a suitable waterproof material in the colours I wanted to use.  I took my time to produce this garment and did not encounter any difficulties. I chose this design because I felt that it was different from any other rainwear I have seen and yet would still be practical to wear at a festival. 

Marketing theory to my rain wear project

With this project we were asked to sell our garment to a High Street store and this is the marketing theory used to promote it. These images show a web page I designed to promote my rainwear.  The images show the step by step process of how to buy the rainwear as you would find on a normal clothing website. The second image to this marketing shows a press release I did to be published in a newspaper advertising the release of my  garment. 

Spring/Summer 2014 fashion trends

Trends board showing spring and summer 2014

This is the latest  work which I have been producing, which is going to lead to my final major project. At this stage I have been asked to produce four A3 image boards of up and coming fashion trends for Spring/Summer 2014. These boards show the ranges of up and coming trends/colour trends for this period. For each board I used a different kind of media to present these trends, such as spray paint, recycled metal and foam mounting in order to make the images stand out.