So far my time here at Amani has been exciting, and nurturing as a designer. I've been in full design/pattern making mode for the last few weeks and have been (mostly) successful. I'm receiving a lot of positive feedback from the people here, which is so encouraging!
These are some of the samples that have been done, I've decided that if I could make little girls dresses forever that would be okay :) They're so much fun to draft! I've also gotten good reviews from my Target Market, having done very extensive research...
Look how happy she is, wearing a dress over her dress! Overwhelming success!
Reluctantly, however, this week I have moved from little girls to the more dangerous waters of little boys clothes, I'm finding it challenging to bring anything new to the design table for little boys, but I'm doing my best with some feedback from moms and trying to keep the same design elements as the girls stuff. So far it's going okay.
Something more exciting is that my patterns are now bilingual!
I found out this week that some of the women who will be sewing my stuff did not have school in English, and that is was difficult for them to read the patterns, so I decided to learn some designers Swahili! Such useful and practical words as "cut" (kukata) and "fabric" (kitambaa), soon I'll be able to carry on a whole conversation! (ermmm...)
Until then though, this is helpful.
When I haven't been working tirelessly with Amani, I've been seeing a little bit of the amazing things Kenya has to offer. My first weekend here I was able to attend the Naivasha fashion weekend as an "assistant designer" for Amani, I took lots of pictures, and they were all blurry, except this one.
Why yes, that man is wearing roses, thanks for asking. The girls dress is also made of some kind of flowers. I was thinking of seeing how much the rose coat cost, but I was worried about getting it through customs.
I've also become acquainted with some of the locals.
This is Daisy, it was nice to get to know her and her friends at the giraffe sanctuary just outside of Nairobi. I think if there was one animal I really wanted to see, it was giraffes, so this was a very exciting outing, as I didn't only see, but fed and petted some giraffes. You are also able to kiss them, but they got my hands slobbery enough that I decided against it.
Aww...
Giraffes like getting there pictures taken, this one was totally posing for me.
Well, that's life so far here in Nairobi, I'm just trying to soak in every hug and smile, learning a lot about drafting, and about how to work with language barriers. And appreciating every sunny day a little more when I hear about how cold it's getting at home.
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