my fashion school experience
Sommerskole på SAFD!
Last year on June 26 I arrived in Copenhagen. True to form, it was raining, hard. Thus began one of the most influential, educational, and fun months of my life.
Yes, my aforementioned “fashion school experience” was only three weeks. It was too short. By the time the three weeks were up, I wanted three years. I had heard of the Scandinavian Academy of Fashion Design (SAFD) when I lived in Denmark and when I found out they had a Summer program, I made plans to go.
SAFD is positioned in the heart of Copenhagen on Strøget, the largest walking shopping street in Europe. One of my favorite things about Copenhagen is how you can be walking down a busy bustling street one moment, and then suddenly find yourself on a quiet little side street that feels cozy and private. Vines growing on the side of buildings, balconies with tiny chairs and tables, or little bakeries nestled in between crooked stone buildings.
The interior of the school was inspired. Large windows, bright light, very minimalist, classic Danish design.
It was a rich multicultural experience for me. There were about sixty of us and I was one of two Americans. Some of my friends in the class were from France, Portugal, Australia, Norway, and Denmark. The instructors were Danish, but mostly stuck to English to accommodate the whole class.
The course is a much-shortened version of what first-year students complete at SAFD. For a week and a half, we learned about the design process and were taught how to design our own collection. We were given assignments to find inspiration around the city and did figure drawing classes with both live models and statues at the Glyptotek. We looked through their collection of magazines spanning from 1980 to the mid-2000s and created collages. We were told to find two themes that had tension and fuse them together in our work.
I knew I wanted to do something inspired by my Great-grandma’s style. My great grandma, Ruth Tite Biscoff, was a very classy lady who was always dressed to the nines, not a hair out of place. Her style reminds me of Jackie Kennedy’s style, that 1960s American socialite look. The two themes I chose were 1. Tennis and 2. 1960s American socialite. Tennis, coming from my experience playing growing up. I liked the idea of contrasting the intensity and sportiness of Tennis, with the refinement of my great-grandmother’s style.
After significant research, fabric draping, collaging, etc., we defined our looks and then sketched out a five-piece collection. Below are the collages I did for each look and the sketches.
The second week and a half we chose one of the pieces we had designed to sew. I chose the pleated tennis dress.
Before SAFD the extent of my sewing experience was sewing a pillowcase at a group sewing class when I was 8. Just thinking about threading the bobbin was enough to make me sweat. I relayed my concerns to one of the instructors. His response:
“Designing is hard. Sewing is the easy part. you can figure out how to sew anything”
Wow ok.
It was a powerful attitude shift for me. They gave us some tutorials and we did some sewing and pattern-cutting practices. After a couple of days, I made my first sample of the dress pattern I had made out of muslin, with minimal help (!!!!!!!).
Once we had done fittings of the samples and perfected our patterns, we went fabric shopping. We were let loose with a couple of store names to find our fabrics in the city. As a novice fabric shopper, I ended up choosing something that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t terrible, but it was much heavier than I had envisioned. I wanted something light and airy for the pleats, so they’d have lots of movement. Instead, the fabric that I got added weight and structure, which gave the dress more of a casual feel.
One of the instructors taught me how to fold and iron pleats. I hand-pleated and then ironed all three rows of pleats.
At the end of the course, I was really satisfied and proud of my dress. I named her Ruth.
xx,
Addi
I elsker this so much!