Rachel E. Pollock's Blog: La Bricoleuse aggregate and more..., page 36

Period pattern class: 20s day dresses! Plus bonus shoes.

Judy Adamson's period pattern class presented 1920s day dresses last week (this semester is 20th century womenswear).

Here's some pix, plus a bonus footwear project!



Left to Right: linen half-drape by third year grad Corinne Hodges, jacquard full-drape by third year grad Denise Chukhina, georgette half-drape by second year grad Erin Abbenante, cotton two-tone half-drape by third year grad Colleen Dobson, crepe half-drape jumper/blouse by second year grad Katie Keener.





Detail view of the...

blocked hats from my millinery class!

Millinery class presented blocked hat projects today, all felts of various styles, all super-fabulous!

Check them out...



Second-year grad Erin Abbenante created this hand-draped fur felt cloche.


Undergraduate Alex Ruba created this hand-dyed wool felt leaf-inspired cap.


FIrst year grad Max Hilsabeck created this pink wool felt hand-draped cloche.


Side view of same.


First-year grad Emily Plonski created this wool felt hand-draped fedora-inspired brimmed style.


Second-year grad Katie Keener created th...

The Right to Reinvention

You might wonder what this has to do with my writing, but bear with me.

The Drag Queen Debacle might be what finally cuts the Facebook cord, not just for me, but for many of my friends and acquaintances and colleagues.

I've seen five of my good friends, faraway friends that i stay in touch with only on Facebook, have their accounts suspended for pseudonymous nicks. For all of them, using their legal name is non-negotiable, not gonna happen, and they are all angry and heartbroken and scrambling for other social media outlets to stay in touch with faraway friends--email blasting their Skype nicks, quickly setting up FB pages for their pets (because FB will allow your fucking CAT to have a page that's unverified, but god forbid you function as an actual human with a stage name or an alias), reactivating Google+ or tweeting like mad now.

I read a quote from Mark Zuckerberg in which he said that using an alias on social media belied a lack of "integrity." How glorious and warm and fuzzy it must be to live in that insulated a bubble of privilege and presumed safety, to where you cannot fathom a reason for using a pseudonym other than shady behavior. (Nevermind the fact that it grosses me out for Facebook as a company to hide their actual motives--more effective datamining--by paying public lip-service to passing some kind of ethical judgement on others using aliases. Because you know, everyone on Facebook under their drivers-license names is just teeming with fucking integrity. Gimme a break.

Read the rest of this post on my author website...

Millinery class buckrams it up!

This semester, i'm teaching my graduate level millinery class, and today my students presented their first round of projects--buckram forms!

Here are some of the highlights... (plus also a bonus pair of super-awesome Alexander McQueen-inspired platform shoes!)




Second-year grad Katie Keener made this beautiful 1815 embroidered silk bonnet!


Oblique front view of same.


At left, first-year grad Emily Plonski's sweet pleated ribbon fascinator based on a vintage 1950s hat.
At right, undergraduat...

Period pattern class does the teens!

Judy Adamson's period pattern class is doing 20th Century Women's Wear by decade and they presented their first round of projects last week! Take a look:




From L: Second year grad Katie Keener, third year grad Colleen Dobson,
third year grad Corinne Hodges, third year grad Denise Chukhina, second year grad Erin Abbenante.





Detail of some of the applied bias ornamentation on Corinne Hodges's project.

QueryTracker.net interview

One of the resources and tools i used in my search for a literary agent was the website QueryTracker.net. They're a database of literary agents, through which you can search for agents and publishers who might be interested in representing/publishing your work. You can search on variables like geographical location, genres/types of writing represented, and so forth, and also research who represents whom. (Got a favorite author but don't know who their agent is? QueryTracker is one way you might find out.)

You can join it for free and use it with limited functionality, but membership is only $20/year, and that allows you to rank the agents you might want to query. I paid the fee because in my research, i found dozens of agents who, at first glance, seemed like good prospects, but the more i looked into them, the more i wanted an easy way to see which ones might be first choices, second choices, or maybe-if-i-don't-get-any-interest-from-others. So, i'd put agents on the general list, then i'd Google them for interviews they might have given, look them up in the 2014 Guide to Literary Agents, check into their preferences and bios on their agency websites, etc., and rank them further.

Well, when I checked into QueryTracker.net after signing with Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown, Ltd., updated my status as having accepted an offer of rep and closed out my project's query list on there for THE DECADENCE PAPERS, i agreed to do a "Success Stories" interview for them about how i used their service in my search for literary representation.

That interview went live on their site last night, and you can now read it online here. Lots of great background info about the querying process, THE DECADENCE PAPERS, and even a sample version of the query that yanked me out of the slush pile!

literary agency and flagrant oenophilia

I’m a fairly flagrant and unrepentant oenophile. So, when i was deep in revisions on the manuscript of The Decadence Papers, one of the motivational tactics i used was Carrot-On-a-Stick, except instead of a carrot, it was a bottle of wine.

See, every week i attend a wine tasting at a local bottle shop [1], at which they pour five wines, and if you buy anything on the tasting roster that day, you get a 10% discount. Back when i first started my revisions, they poured a wine called Tabula Rasa, and I loved it. Because i loved it, and because it was on sale, and because the phrase “tabula rasa” figures symbolically in my book, i bought my Carrot-On-a-Stick—a bottle that i’d put away and only open when revisions were complete [2].

I kept that bottle in my kitchen cupboard for four months. Then, when i finished the revisions, i opened it up and celebrated, and it was fantastic! In fact, i even posted about it in this blog, in a post entitled "wino forever." I mean, fine, it was just a couple glasses of wine, but it was more than that, too. It was a ritual of achievement, a treat. And as a motivator, it worked.

Like, no, i didn’t wake up every day and go, “Must keep revising so i can drink that Tabula Rasa.” It’s not like it was 2000-year-old wine found in a pharaoh tomb, or a cask of burgundy hoisted up from some 18t century shipwreck or something, and it’s not like i didn’t drink OTHER wines in the interim. It wasn’t a teetotally type of situation. Really, the wine’s no better or worse than any other similarly-priced red i bought and drank before or since. But it was special because i designated it as such, and that’s how it really worked for me.

Because of the success of that tactic, i’ve invested in three more wines.

The first is Grapesmith and Crusher, a 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington state with a typewriter on the label. This is the wine that i've planned to open when i sign with a literary agent. Bear with me here on the nerd factor, but the significance here is multileveled. First, i think signing with an agent is entering into a partnership with someone, and i liked that the name of this wine involved words that evoke both craft and asskicking, and that’s what i hope any agent of mine and i would do together. Craft beautiful work and kick a bunch of ass. Second, one of my friends who copyedited an earlier draft of the book hails from Washington state and is herself an oenophile, so it’s a neat little acknowledgement of that fact.

The second is Mollydooker’s Enchanted Path, an Australian Shiraz-based blended red. This is the wine that i’ll be drinking to celebrate a publisher taking us on. I tasted it about two months ago and about lost my mind, i loved it so much. And, really, if a publisher agrees to take up my book, that’s hopefully the beginning of an enchanted path. Or at least, a path with more enchantment than eye-forking, let’s hope.

And the third is another Mollydooker, Carnival of Love, which is 100% Shiraz, same stuff as is used in the Enchanted Path blend. I actually haven’t tasted this one, but I don’t need to, having tasted Enchanted Path. Shiraz is like, my super-favorite [3], so i know it’ll be fan-fucking-tastic when i open this bottle to celebrate the day my book’s released.

Maybe this motivational tactic wouldn't work for everyone. Clearly not for people who hate wine, or AA-style nondrinkers. But, replace wine with whatever might similarly work for you, and give it a shot.

And yes, i've blathered all that before announcing the real joyful news of this post, because yes, i have just opened that bottle of Grapesmith and Crusher and poured myself a glass, because i am now represented by the truly fantastic Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown, and his fantastic assistant Sarah Parillo. Here's to the beginning of a great adventure!

Cheers!


[1] The Hope Valley Bottle Shop in Durham, NC.

[2] This round of revisions, that is. I know there will be more before publication.

[3] Shiraz (albeit a cheap crappy bottle) plays a role in an early scene in the book, too.

Book review: 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling: History & Step-by-Step Techniques, Kendra Van Cleave

I recently received my copy of 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling: History & Step-by-Step Techniques by Kendra Van Cleave, and i seriously can't say enough good things about this fantastic new resource volume. It's a full-color, 298-page, 8"x10" book, very professionally produced and packed full of fantastic information about a range of 18th century hairstyles, including those intimidatingly-large "Marie Antoinette" styles.

Ms. Van Cleave is a costumer, yes, bu...

Exhibit Review--NYC Makers Biennial at the Museum of Art and Design, NYC

While in New York this summer, i also got a chance to check out the NYC Makers exhibit at the Museum of Art and Design, running through October 12, 2014. The exhibit spotlights 100 "Makers" throughout NYC's 5 boroughs, creators of all different types of art and creatively-designed products.

It spans two floors of the museum and extends also into the stairwells and elevator spaces, and really, you name it, and it's represented--art, fashion, food, hand tools, horticulture, nig...

Exhibit Review--Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Last week, i went to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art's current Costume Institute exhibition, "Charles James: Beyond Fashion."

The short version is: if you are at all interested in unusual structure, tailoring, creative draping, and couture construction, find a way to go. I seriously think that if all i had done was fly to NYC, go to the exhibit, and fly right back home, it would have been worth it. The exhibit has been SO well-planned and well-executed. It's probably inter...