We went to the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.  Now that I went to an old textile mill and reasons why houses are made the way they are is because of the factories around. I look at things in a more different perspective now. That’s why I seriously love history, it takes me to a place I would like to know how it was and think about the steps people took and their daily life schedules. We went inside a recreation of an Quebec 1800′s farm house. it was tiny and sorta dark but very cozy but like 10 people would live in this tiny farm home with no privacy and working everyday, I think that must have been frustrating but at the same time I don’t think so because they were so used to that environment so they probably didn’t think much of it at the time. A lot of French-Canadians moved to the US to have a better life and so many migrated to the US because many family members would send each other letters and the families who moved to the us would talk about how wonderful living in the US is and how they have so much money that they don’t know how to spend it all so that convinced many French-Canadians to move to the US. The French did not lose their traditions like Catholicism or stop speaking French. After we went inside a 1800′s friend church and they are a colored glass thing of an angel holding a fallen soldier (It was made when World War 1 happened). Then we saw an old class room and the chairs were comfortable to be honest but it was kinda weird and strange because the desks where tiny and the compartment was small but it could fit 2 books and when I lift up the desks there was stuff inside them like the stuff kids today would usually have inside their desk except the technology part. After that we went to see a normal Woonsocket apartment in the late 1920′s. I seriously fell in love with the interior of the house, I’m old fashion so looking at the house was so beautiful. I really want to live like that. I loved the wallpaper, rugs, chairs, radio, lamps, and the piano that was even self played since everyone was kinda rich back then they would be able to afford it. 

Today we were all finishing up our fabrics, some of us are making pillows and the others are making purses. I chose a pillow because I like pillows and I use pillows more than purses. We  watched a documentary about haute couture (Haute couture is a french word for “high sewing” or “high dressmaking” or “high fashion”), it’s about custom made outfits just for you by high end fashion companies such as Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier, and many more. Some of the outfits are absurd but they get ideas from those absurd outfits and create it so people can wear it. I love the outfits but some where ugly, I sometimes don’t get what’s so amazing about ugly dresses but I learned that it’s mainly about the designs, the way it was made, and even the fabric they use to make the clothing so I understand why people get so excited over weird looking dresses.

Today we went to RISD’s museum. I feel in love withe place because it’s all about history and history is obviously my most favorite subject of all time! 

We got to see George Washington’s real painting and it was probably the best thing I’ve ever seen. I learned that Gilbert Stuart was born in Rhode Island and was the greatest painter of his time, so great he painted George Washington’s face. George Washington was annoyed by Gilbert because Gilbert would constantly talk and he was a very out there man and George was serious since he had a lot going on. George Washington actually hated the portrait and one fact about it is that George has false teeth so he had to take his false teeth out and George was revealed because now Gilbert wouldn’t talk to him since he couldn’t talk. We also seen a real huge statue of a Buddhist and the story is that it was found in a barn and had maggots and a woodpecker living inside of it but after it was found it was taken to RISD and it’s rare because there’s barely any sculptures that are the same as the real person. We also saw a lot of Asian culture art but my favorite was seeing the American history and the clothing like the 1800′s fashions. I feel in love with the stuff but the clothing look very heavy and it seemed to only fit extremely tiny women who probably barely ate anything…

Today we did more embroidering with our fabrics, soon they are going to become either purses or pillows (Which ever you prefer), I prefer pillows because I’m not a big fan of purses and pillows are fun cause I like stuffing stuff inside. We got to learn more about the 60′s and we watched music videos because a lot of music videos and musicians influenced fashion.

 We watched:

 The Beatles - And I Love Her

The Supreme - Baby Love

The Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb

David Bowie - Space Oddity

I enjoy watching music videos because I of course love the 60′s and the trends and fads that comes with the 60′s plus all the songs were catchy. We talked about how this first Indian prime minister (Jawaharla Nehru) was the first person to wear a something different.

The jacket was named after him (Nehru Jacket). It became a fashion thing in the 60′s where the first James Bond wore it and band members like The Beatles and The Monkees.

Today we talked a bit about the late 50′s but today’s topic was on the early 60′s and how in the 60′s everything changed a lot. 

In the beginning The Beat Generation was born. I think in the 1940′s. I don’t actually remember but Beat generation means the men and women poets, writers, thinkers, and philosophers who all emerged in the 1940s. My mentor compared the Beatniks to hipsters and a lot of what they like is the same. Here’s a graph of how alike they are. (I did not make this)

After talking about the beat gen, my teacher started talking about the 1960′s and how it completely changed everything and now everyone had their own subcultures like: 

The Mod

We are still learning about the subcultures but their’s so many. I personally prefer the Mod/Rockers/Hippies. 

The 60′s is one of my all time favorite eras ever. I would gladly go back in time with no thought about it just to experience the 60′s first hand.

We didn’t do much today, we just reviewed what we learned the 2 weeks before vacation, like the 1900′s - 1950′s. My mentor said we are going to RISD’s museum (Rhode Island School of Design), I don’t remember what the museum is about but it seems fun! 

I’m doing a project on making a donation drive to donate dog food to a local animal shelter. My choice of a local animal shelter is PARL (Providence Animal Rescue League), PARL is an animal shelter that rescues unwanted, abused, and neglected pets. They provide care for the sick pets and give food, shelter, water, and toys for the pets in that place. The reason why I chose to do this is because I am a HUGE dog lover and have a passion to work with dogs still. I wanted to do something with fashion history but there wasn’t anything I could do that will help people or animals so I chose to do something with dogs.  I want to give dogs food and possibly toys for them to play and keep their minds occupied but mainly food.

It was the same, we started out by working with our embroidery fabric things and then after we got to learn about the 1940′s which, if you know me well enough I love the 1940′s so much! The clothing is so fascinating and every time my mentor showed us a dress from the 1940′s on her PowerPoint, my eyes would just stare at them until I couldn’t anymore. 

We learned about 

• Rationing of clothing so they can make outfits for the military men.
• The Eisenhower jacket that men use and still use to this day.
• Germany invasion
• African Theater

After that we went back to embroidering. It was a short day and nothing was different.

Today was good and the bus finally arrived at the time it’s supposed to pick me up and not leaving me waiting a few minutes or even a hour.

I continued doing my embroidery. I’m doing a simple embroidery cause since I’m not really good with sewing but I’ve been practicing in the class. We have a few minutes doing sewing and then we go into the lesson which is learning about fashion from a certain decade. I didn’t really learned much 

We talked about the 1930′s, I adore the 1930′s even though that whole decade was just depressing and was probably the most difficult time for many countries especially Americans. Of course my mentor talked about The Great Depression because it impacted fashion a lot. 

I learned

• Flour bags in the 1930′s had printed designs because flour companies noticed that poor people would use the flour bags to make clothing so the flour companies thought it was a good idea to make designs on them so people would look more fashionable. 
• Since times were hard people relied on movies and celebrities to confront them. Many people loved Shirley Temple because she was cute, made everything feel better and also helped people forget about the things they were going through at the time.
  
• Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable influenced fashion for men. They were attractive young men who dressed nice. (Cary Grant is my favorite plus his my old Hollywood husband) Clark Gable was the cool bad boy who would get all the girls and one time in a movie called ‘It happened on night’ with Claudette Colbert in 1934. It’s said that Clark Gable killed the undershirt industry. Reason why this happened was because Clark was removing is clothes so he can put his PJ’s and go to bed but it revealed that he wasn’t wearing an undershirt. It was more like “If Clark Gable doesn’t wear undershirts why should I?” thing. Apparently the undershirt industry dropped 75% ever since that film came out.
• Cary Grant influenced the cuff links but it was always a male accessory since the 1800′s but Cary Grant made it ‘cool’ and cuff links are made in different styles and many people embroidered their initials on their cuff links also.

Here’s a picture of the flour bags with designs on them.

Here’s Clark Gable taking of his dress shirt

Cary Grant and his cuff links

The first day was kind of terrifying since I don’t know anyone but I found out that my cousin is joining the class so I’m super relieved to hear about it. It was different since the fashion history teacher this year in 12th grade is a different teacher and not the same one I had last year, the fashion history teacher has the same interests as I. She also majored in History so she’s a professional historian. We are soon going to learn about the 20th century and I find that very exciting because I love the 20th century fashion from the 1900′s - 1970′s. I’m not really into the 80′s or especially the 90′s, the 90′s is my very least decade of the century.

I did my LTI in Fashion History. It’s actually a class but it was considered an LTI, I’m glad though.

The hands-on activities we did in Fashion History class were:

• Sewing house wife kit
  
• Tie Dying cloth
  
• Dipping Wool inside water
  

We also did a lot of research on clothing on:

• Middle ages and Renaissance
  
• 17th and 18th centuries
• 19th century
• 20th century

The 20th century is my most favorite century for music, dances, cars and especially fashion! I enjoyed my LTI a lot because it was exactly related to my passion and that’s fashion and history!

Lately all we’ve been doing these past couple Tuesdays is researching about specific clothing pieces like I’m researching more about pleated skirts and it started in late renaissance in England and it was a male fashion thing to wear pleated skirts. Other people in my class are doing sewing, I didn’t take that challenge because I’m not too good at sewing yet and I think that would stress me out if I take on a big thing like sewing a under dress or a cloak. I’m seeing a few people in my class having troubling with their cloaks and the ones that are actually good, they are advanced and been sewing for long time now. I think researching is fun and I love learning about the history of skirts or something like that. 

I’m doing a project on trends that happened during the 1920’s, 50’s and 40’s. It will have fashions, society expectations during those times, celebrities and clothing designers who impact the fashion, and maybe dancing and music. I’ll maybe show a quick video of the times, but I’m definitely show a PowerPoint since I’m good at it and it’s easy for me to talk and explain without feeling awkward and standing there while a video is playing… I’ll show clothing from the 20’s, 40’s, and 50’s because I know that not everyone knows what they wore… except the 50’s since it’s really known. I’ll also show the people who influenced the fashion like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Jean Patou, and many more. 

I was actually the funnest field trip I had since I really really love 19th century and 20th century clothing. It got me more into the whole historical side of things. I wasn’t really sure about being focus on history for the rest of my life but lately everything is very exciting and interesting, I’ve gotten more into the 20th century pop culture and the 1800’s clothing and how they use to live. When I went to Slater Mill it made me so much more interested in how they lived and kept themselves live without dying from the cold or heat. Well so we went inside the Quinn Hall at URI, it looked like a normal traditional school but most rooms are filled with very expensive and rare collectibles. 

First we had to stop by our mentor Rachel’s room, we got to see an inside look of how wool and silk looks really close up from a microscope, wool looks all wrinkly and silk looks very smooth with dots on it, the reason why silk has dots on it is to help it make it look shiny. 

Later we got to meet this very nice lady who showed us URI’s most valuable collection. They had clothing from the 1800’s - 1980’s. I wish I could use them all but most are expensive and rare to find like the late 1800’s baby boy overalls.

After a few minutes later, the lady (Who I forgot her name) took us to where they store the fabric of many different countries from different eras like Guatemala, India, and many other different coutnries. I got so excited to see something from Guatemala since I’m Guatemalan. The lady then took us where they study the fabric of the eras and she showed us a very old 1880’s fireman logo thing from a town in Rhode Island, it was very cool but it was so worn out that you couldn’t even touch it due to it being very sensitive.

Lastly they invited us to see the mini museum in URI that had 1800’s clothing, corsets, men wear, 1800’s wedding dress, and a 1930’s swimming suit for women that I thought was very cute and I wish I had it but it had pants so it was strange.

Overall it was very fun and it made me realize, that I may have found what I’ve been wanting to do and it has to do something related to fashion and history. I hope I get more chances like this in the future.

1. What are your are your interests and passions? History, animals, and fashion. I’m interested in interning at a vintage fashion shop. 
2. What are your goals after you earning a diploma? Going to college here or at California.
3. What are your strengths? My knowledge on history.
4. How do you learn best? I think visual or hands-on.
5. What obstacles have you overcome? Talking to adults and my new teacher Erica.