Lookbook — Grandmother Swag

Shooting my own grandmother for a school project is definitely one of the most noteworthy and intimate experience ever. Maybe that's an understatement, but I'm just at a loss for words to describe how the whole shoot was haha.

So in lieu of my year two first semester's project, we had to come up with our own brand (and range of products) under the theme of Modest Fashion. Of which, we can branch out into the sub-theme of Uniformity, which was what my group members and myself did.

Under the umbrella of uniforms and modesty, there's a lot which we can explore, such as military garments, Japanese kimonos and the likes. But we wanted to explore something a little unconventional from what our seniors and the fashion scene has already done, so we looked at our own roots and decided to do something very local: The Ahma Uniform.
The Ahma uniform is basically what most of us already know since our childhood days — remember the floral printed set garments, jade bracelets, reddish-brown sandals and free cloth tote bags that Singapore Chinese grandmothers always seem to carry around? Despite living vastly different lives, how is that many of them wore attires with an uncanny resemblance?

So yeap. That was our main motivation as we began on our research to find out why, and developed our own brand. Our brand, ahma (yeah okay I get it zero points for brand name creativity), came up with a range of bold, eclectic sliders that were inspired by the anti-slip sandals that ahmas are frequently seen wearing at home or at the wet market.







Each slider design is crafted according to a particular ahma character, as you can see in the photos. The red slider is the market ahma, the yellow one is the atas ahma, and the last one is the green thumb ahma. The shoe production process was craaaazy because it's not like any of us had any sewing background whatsoever. We just did what we could haha and it turned out amazing!

And since the ahma was our main inspiration, we decided to get someone's grandmother to be the model for the shoot. So I called up my grandmother, and she was more than willing to help me out since it was a school assignment. She had fun at the shoot too, since she got the chance to be dressed extravagantly in clothes that she would otherwise, avoid at her age haha.

The art direction and planning of the shoot was insane. It was running around from place to place, trying to find props and rent accessories or what not just so we can get everything that you see in the photos. Just imagine how much we spent on the food items alone...
Point is: Photoshoots are never as glamorous as you see in the photos. It's just a lot of effort, mess and mistakes to get that polished image.

The whole project was tedious (like always), but I actually enjoyed myself a lot throughout the making of this assignment. I'd say my group members felt equally enthusiastic about our whole work this semester too.




If you're keen to see our works, you can head down to LASALLE School of Fashion's exhibition to see more! Many other works will be there as well. More information can be found here (yes that is my photograph on the link!!)

While you're there, you can also get your hands on our free postcards! While stocks last. :)



I've been meaning to update my blog but the amount of work and assignments just make it impossible. Two months of inactivity on the blog means two months of grinding at school at my end. :')

The holidays are almost here! If I can find the time, I'll want to update on another project (a photobook) which I worked on this semester. And then after that, off I go to my month-long holiday/his post-ORD vacation with Han hehehe.