Kime Buzzelli

Kime Buzzelli, is one of the fashion illustrators who has inspired me for a long time, I am not overly keen on heavy CAD generated illustrations so her mixed media methods are perfect for my taste! Buzzelli was a major influence in producing my graduate collection. Buzzelli has been experimenting with various media to "transform the hideous into something with glamour." Her choice of materials are as diverse as, make up, watercolour, thread, fabric and a variety of decomposing materials. Buzzelli confesses she is obsessed with lost innocence, teen lust - that making out in a back seat kinda feeling. Amazing inspiration for her illustrations and she captures it well, and I'm thinking the perfect soundtrack to all this must be Katy Perry's latest album Teenage Dream, with adolescent gems such as 'Last Friday Night' and 'The One that got Away'.

Not only is Kime Buzzelli producing these amazing illustrations and commissions, since 2009 she has been the Costume Designer for US teen drama (and my biggest guilty pleasure) '90210'. Surely the most 'unreal' job like ever?! She also owns and runs iconic shop 'Showpony' in L.A.

Buzzelli's work and career is sure one to watch.

Drawing Fashion.

I visited the Design Museum, London to see the exhibition 'Drawing Fashion', a lovely little museum right next to Tower Bridge. I was very excited for this exhibition, purely focused on Fashion Illustration AND curated by Colin McDowell, certainly worth a trip down from the north. I enjoyed the exhibition as the stark modern layout wheeled you through the decades, and particularly enjoyed the focus on the 50/60/70's with Antonio Lopez. Yet overall felt the exhibition was a little flat, in particular the era from 2000 - 2010, an era where fashion illustration has been resurrected and revisited with a bang, of mixed media, experimentation, naivety, and fun. However, this exhibition chose to focus on only a few illustrators all with rather block, solid styles, where were the works of Kime Buzzelli, Elisabeth Arkhipoff and Kate Gibb?

Despite my discontentment at the end of the exhibition, it is worth seeing and the Design Museum is a charming little museum.