Roots. Part Six: My First Fashion Photo Shoot and Design School. 2005-2008.

in two-thousand-five, i was still dating and living with the man i mentioned in the last "roots" post. i wasn't happy but had grown too dependent to make a change. i had begun working in real estate and assisted a real estate agent in selling prefab condos, which had begun to sprout all over montreal like weed. i didn't believe in my work but it paid for some bills. i decided that real estate was probably the best route for me to take, seeing as i was good at it and i stood a chance at making a decent salary. began taking courses by correspondence and took out student loans to do so. 

 

as far as my designing was concerned, this was the first year i started coming up with clothing that didn't cater to a subculture. i decided to stick to the name "khimera kreationz" because i was still spinning under the name dj khimera, even if the frequency was dwindling and this would end up being the last year that i mixed in a club or for other people at all. i hired two people to work for me; someone who would handle patterns and someone who would handle the sewing. i lacked the equipment and was mostly focused on my real estate courses, my kids, and managing the enormous, five-bedroom apartment we lived in, in st-henri. i wanted to design, market and manage a small crew so i did.

i started out with one girl who did the patterns and sample assembly for my first shoot. the seams were crooked and she admitted to having watched movies and to talking on the phone while working on my dime. nonetheless, the shoot went really well. one of the models was also a make-up artist so she helped out with all of that and we had a great time. the photographer in all of these was a frenchman who now lives in england, named stephane bourgeois (my kids liked to call him "steven burger") and the make-up artist was angie boudreau, from montreal.

my cousin is (once more) modelling a corset i had designed for the khimera kreationz fashion show of two-thousand-three. 

here, angie is wearing a dress i had made for our friend who was in a local band called the scroll. they're still around. check 'em out.

here angie is wearing a dress that had also been featured in the fashion show. she is so tiny and it was hard to make it fit. in the end, i think it looks good, even if it was a bit too large in some places.

this is one of the new peices i'd designed for this shoot.

my baby cousin is also weaing a dress i had designed that year.

and here she is wearing the vest and shorts combo that ended up being different from what i had designed (it's not the right fabric or colour but the structure is close enough). she had worn this outfit in the fashion show for me, two years prior, as well.

when i hired a second woman, thanks to a subvention from the local ywca and hired both women full-time, the first girl flaked out and the second one spent her whole first day of work struggling with simple ties i had asked her to make. everything unraveled during the few months that followed  the man i had almost left my daughter's father for and who had become a great friend hung himself, my boyfriend moved out and my wretched boss (the woman was miss havisham in a suv) convinced me to drop all of my real estate courses, claiming that i couldn't handle it and be a mom at the same time and that i didn't have the right personality for it. our project closed and i ended working at a gym, overweight and hating everything about my life.

the last drop, and i do believe i needed this, was when my boyfriend moved out and i found myself in the spacious apartment, alone with my two kids, again. we continued to date but the separation, even though neither of us had been happy in a while, made something within me snap. i was twenty-six with a high school diploma, a failed business attempt, two small children and a bunch of dreams i needed to turn into goals. on a whim, i called up college lasalle and asked them about their fashion design program. two days later, not knowing how in the hell i had never thought of really doing this before, i was enrolled for the fall semester and student loans were scheduled to come in.

college lasalle was quite the experience. i racked up a ridiculous amount of debt , given how affordable our schooling normally is here, but i learned what i needed to. it also made me feel so much better about how far i'd come along, alone. for someone considered self-taught (with help from my grandmother, of course!), i had been doing pretty well! the pattern drafting courses were helpful, as i'd always improvised and used my own form of draping. the draping courses, given this last point, were a nightmare. my teacher asked us to drape an a-line skirt and i did. my finished product was fine but, because i had not applied the same techniques we'd been shown, she gave a failing mark on the skirt and i never returned (but i'm going to suck it up and go back this fall, in the evenings). the illustration classes definitely helped because that's not where the bulk of talent lies, to say the least, textiles was interesting and fashion history was absolutely fascinating. studying alongside seventeen-year-olds was a huge pain in the ass but the thing that bothered me the most about college lasalle were the teachers. i have no idea how the hell they go about hiring their faculty members but the teacher that was supposed to be teaching us about the industry had spent her whole career, up until that moment, behind a desk, working for sears, and i know of another teacher who does ridiculous amounts of drugs for a grown-up and this on a regular basis and i felt that only a few of our instructors were actually prepared to answer our questions, teach us and put us out in the world. if i had known then what i know now, i would have looked into other schools. anyhow, i walked away a more skilled designer and was lucky enough to have met one of my best friends, amanda, there. 

during the summer between my first and second years and when i was hanging out with amanda and another girl, shannon, on a regular basis, i broke up with michael. months later, i ditched shannon, her judgemental remarks, negative outlook and depressive moods. amanda and i are still friends, she's doing quite well, back in toronto and i love and miss that girl.

sadly, the only pictures i have from my days at lasalle are of people sleeping in class (the workload was unbelievable and people stole winks whenever they could and of us drinking pints and doing shots at the bar, one block over. even if i had small children and i was older than most of my classmates, i finally got to experience college life and it was a blast while it lasted.

i had to reduce my course load during the second semester and, by year two, i was with a newer group for most of my classes. i couldn't connect with anyone anymore and the financial stress got to be a lot. i was working for the aforementioned miss havisham part-time to make ends meet and my personal life took a wild turn. i started dating the singer of a local but well-known psychobilly band and was completely and utterly smitten and therefore terribly distracted. i finished most of my second year courses and then stopped going, knowing that my third year would be all about learning how to put together a collection and a fashion show and i couldn't borrow another twelve grand to do that, when i felt like life and my two-thousand-three show had taught me plenty. right around the time i finished at lasalle, i moved out of the gay village and back to montreal's southwest but, this time, with the new boyfriend and to the flat i still live in, today.

Posted in: amanda,asian inspired fashion,college lasalle,corset,fashion,fashion design,khimera kreations,montreal,photo shoot,roots,styling,velvet corset