When my invitation count ended up being, in spite of my utter lack of importance, pitiful, I decided to do something a bit different this season. I went to the art store and bought a travel easel so weather willing, I can set up studio in the courtyard of Somerset House and make my marks alongside the photobloggers as the beautiful people enter or exit or go blithely wherever they’re invited. This setup allows me to sketch bigger than I ever can on my knee at a fashion show, and unlike my fellow courtyard rats, I’m not chained to reality.

The sun has blessed me with a couple beautiful days and I’ve been burning through more ££s of paper than I care to contemplate. Here’s a selection of what looks good enough to post so far. Show sketches are on their way too – and I’m getting ready for another courtyard session this afternoon.

Moda Uomo was my first fashion week this year. It was also my first time in Milan, and I thought that perhaps the menswear week would be a little bit calmer and easier to penetrate than Moda Donna. Milan intimidates me, to be honest. It seems very corporate and not as indie-blogger-friendly as other cities, and my Italian is non-existent. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that these fears were, if not unfounded, unnecessary, as I picked up five invitations in Milan just for the trouble of asking.

My first show was Corneliani – the morning was chilly and we got off at the wrong bus stop so we hustled through frosty streets to get to the venue – a design museum. The runway was one of the longest I’ve ever seen and curved, with watery blue projections along the curved wall. The clothing was very clean and careful, grey clusters of grown-up wool suits and handsome, substantial bags.

I have to admit that during Frankie Morello, I was so distracted by the show I forgot to draw it. I love seeing showmanship (literally) on the runway – it’s too rare. Morello sent out punky clubbers bristling with nails and fur and cool downtown boys in beanies, which gradually relaxed into hippie-dudes with bindis and sarongs. For the finale the model’s sarong hung dangerously low until it was dropped with a flourish. Morello literally had the entire crowd leaning forward in their seats and practically salivating. Now that’s runway.

The John Varvatos show was another highlight. Inside a shabby church with chipped plaster and a faded painted angels on the walls and ceiling, they reproduced a bit of Central Park and sent down a series of exquisite New-York-style imaginary boyfriends. I loved drawing this show. The other fun part of this show was getting to sit with the team from Holt Renfrew and for the first time having the opportunity to introduce myself to a Canadian fashion inspiration, Barb Atkin. I was not expecting to see a familiar face in Milan, so this made me smile.

Iceberg had a modern-times backdrop and a bit of Charlie Chaplin rumpled flair. Bowler hats tipped-back, big cardigans and hands in pleated pants-pockets. As a proposal for menswear it was charming – but somehow it didn’t inspire my best work. Perhaps because I switched to markers from watercolours at this point, I was still getting a handle on a new medium.

The final show, Gazzarrini, was the show that was perhaps the most peculiar. It doesn’t take much in menswear to cross over from interesting to implausible. If I met someone wearing these clothes in real life, I would find this person a somewhat strange character. Pin curl pompadours, funnel necks, very high-waisted trousers, and a pop-o-flouro palette.

As usual, you can see the development of sketching over the course of the week – stiffer at Corneliani and very loose and abstract by Gazzarrini.

I did find my first menswear week to be much more chilled out than any womenswear week I’ve attended – perhaps giving a taste of what fashion weeks were like in the pre-blogger days. I saw only a small handful of street style photographers and met only a couple other bloggers – though of course the shows I attended were not the hottest tickets. It did feel like there was space for everyone that wanted to be there. And of course, the people-watching was wonderful – folks were well-dressed and well-groomed, and there were very few show-ponies.

My whirlwind tour of Italy  is concluded, and I’m sifting through a pile of sketches at my desk now. To place-hold while I catch up, here is the most successful live sketch, completed while the show was in session. John Varvatos presented a lineup of New York rock-star crush objects which seemed to inspire some of my better work.

It always seems like the further I get into a fashion week, the more abstract the sketches get. In these two cases, I barely added anything to the original live version.

The Issey Miyake invitation was a truly pleasant surprise. It was a hot dusty Sunday in the Tuileries and I had been walking around carrying a heavy bag all morning, so I took an hour and a half nap in those heavy metal chairs they have under the trees outside the tent. When I woke up, a crowd was surrounding me waiting to get into the show. I had ended up in a cluster of lovely ladies who work in the Issey Miyake showrooms all over Europe, and as I did my warm-up sketches they took an interest in me and gave me a bit of inside track into the company and the backstage happenings. The show was running very late.

The scene was pretty hot – lots of dress-upwomanship going on under the sun. I was snapped while sketching by Bill Cunningham, which I tried to appear oblivious to, while being quite chuffed. I never get asked to pose for street style – could care less, really – but to merit even an offhand snap by the godfather of street style photography was a pleasant moment. I like to think it was because I was sketching, but it could have just as easily been because I was wearing a white shirt.

Going from the bright scene outside to the the pitch inside the tent couldn’t have been more dramatic transition. Over a thousand souls inside a hot black tent on a scorching day created an airless atmosphere that was less than ideal for absorbing a collection properly. I managed to squeeze into a back-bench seat and squeeze out almost a dozen sketches from my squeezy-brush.

The show was appropriately light for spring, both in the sense that lights were used in the staging and the looks themselves appeared light and literally botanical. As the first collection under the creative control of designer, Yoshiyuki Miyamae, the sense of renewal came across.

When making show requests in Paris, I gave out two mailing addresses in case for whatever reason, one didn’t work out. After going to the first address and finding nothing (like Charlie Brown on Valentine’s Day) I was ready to resign myself to a tourist’s-eye-view of fashion week. Luckily at the second address, I found a few chunky envelopes with my own name on them, including Amaya Arzuaga.

I had seen the Amaya Arzuaga show last season – the style is very technically interesting, sculptural treatment of fabrics with a lot of bounce and body. A terrific show to sketch, even if it’s not exactly obvious where anyone could wear these creations. I did see a couple of the PR girls wear a somewhat tricky multi-layered pegged skirt from a previous season.

Getting a good spot to sketch while carrying a standing ticket is the eternal challenge, but for some reason the show wasn’t well attended. So I ended up sitting in the front row, which felt strange considering I’m such a foreigner in Paris. The venue was beautiful, an airy, wooden, windowed space overlooking the Seine. The clothes were studies in undulating organza and stiff taffeta. Abstract pastel things that obscured the slight shapes of the models.

I did about 7 or 8 loose sketches in quick succession at the show, the image below is an example.  I take them back to the office and try different treatments out on the ones that didn’t turn out to warm up, and then a more considered splash of colour on the ones I think did work out. The result is a single finished drawing, above.

It is beautiful and sunny in Paris. I don’t have any show tix (yet?), so yesterday I did the watching-the-arrivals thing outside of Carven and later, Balmain.

Lou Doillon

I don’t know who this is, but she looked important.

As far as illustrating goes, it seems much more pleasant than photography, eh? Shooting the arrivals has become an epic swarming. If I find a good vantage, I can sit back, take my time, and enjoy.

Thanks to Colin McDowell and the Design Museum, I had the lucky chance to sketch at the Fashion Fringe show. The live version is on the left – the more polished version is on the right. Click for big.

Fyodor Golan was the night’s award winner.

Heidi Leung, my personal favourite. (See a slide of the rough overlaid with the final here.)

Nabil El-Nayal, the crowd favourite.

Cristina Sabaiduc‘s audacious London debut. This is an image of the rehearsal. You can see the magnetic garments clinging to the back wall there. Cristina dressed her models in these modular effects as they walked around the block. Check out her full collection here.

The video is off the hook.

CRISTINA SABAIDUC SS12 Motion from Cristina Sabaiduc on Vimeo.

My sketches and notes from the show are here.

This wonderful candid was captured by Lynsie Roberts. See more of Lynsie’s shots at her site.  Emma and I were absorbed in sketching by Cristina’s runway. Emma Block does brilliant illustration with a delightful collage technique.