As part of my primary research I went to London to see exhibitions. The Balenciaga ‘Shaping Fashion’ V&A exhibition was incredibly inspiring and I was absorbed by the many dresses exposed, and it actually fueled me to write my dissertation about the designer and the sculptural, architectural clothes of his late creative phase in the late 50s and 60s.

I went to a talk in the Fashion & Textile Museum that was about the influence of music in Fashion, presented by Katie Baron, the author of the book ‘Fashion + Music: Fashion creatives shaping Pop Culture’. It was very interactive as we could directly ask questions to the author and I found it really thought provoking. Then I went to see the ‘World of Anna Sui’, which linked with the talk, as music and culture were her main points of interest for her work. In her designs we could see her different influences and inspirations for her collections throughout the years, such as the exotic, decorative qualities of indigenous, the Victorian dress and Art Nouveau, the Ballet russes, the 60s Mod, Britain’s youth and subculture -punk and grunge- (where she captured the style and essence of the movement in a positive, colorful way). For Sui, the music scene was the major force in the youth culture of the late 1980s and early 90s. Her grunge collection of 1993 was her personal response to the moment and the music, ‘’I think that, with hindsight, this way have been a moment in my career where my own past and present came together, more so than with other collections, which, however much I cherished them, were a carefully stitched-together tapestry of obsessively researched elements. My grunge collection was more ‘felt’ than it was thought’’