Hi there! It’s June 10th, can you believe it? Not when I look out of my window, I don’t… But I hope the sun will come out later today!

Until then, I will show and tell about this month’s Inspired by. Each month Riikka and I challenge each other to create something with a particular theme or thing in mind. This theme or thing can be anything… We’ve done films, materials, art, music and this time the theme was a no-brainer for me…

Last month I went to see The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition in the Kunsthal. It was very busy, only a couple of days before the exhibition would end. Fortunately for me it was also wonderful and amazing, interesting and of course very, VERY inspiring! I highly recommend it, so go and see it if you have the chance. It’s a travelling exhibition and I just saw that it will open in Stockholm this week.

Well, when I told Riikka about the exhibition, it turned out that Jean Paul Gaultier just happens to be one of her most favourite designers… So we had no other choice than to make this month’s Inspired by all about Jean Paul Gaultier!

I took a lot of photos during the exhibition. I didn’t realize it was allowed to take photos, until I saw people carrying camera’s everywhere, even huge DSLR’s. Because the guards said nothing about it, I thought I might as well take (mostly crappy) iPhone photos myself!

I was fascinated by a lot that I saw. And it was a lot! I still can’t get over all the details in each and every one of garments! I tried to capture some of the details, which was very frustrating at times because of the dim lighting or because the mannequins were on rotating platforms…

Not as frustrating though as it would have been if I had to write everything I wanted to remember down, so I’m definitely not complaining! I remember what I tried to capture and that’s all I need for inspiration!

When it was time to create something for the challenge, I took out all kinds of fabric, lace and embellishments that reminded me of stuff I had seen at the exhibition:

A lot of this stuff has been in my stash for some time because I don’t know what to do with it. For this challenge I wanted to do a lay-out and I envisioned a dramatic page with an overdose of white-ish buttons and gold embellishments. But there had to be black and blue/denim too and maybe a touch of red… Oh and don’t forget the sequins!

As for the photos and the story, I didn’t have to think long. I wanted to use photos my brother took at a Madonna concert that we saw a couple of years ago. Some of the costumes from the Confessions tour were designed by Gaultier and there was one room at the exhibition filled with these costumes.

I started to layer all the buttons on the page… And I shoved them around… from one place on the page to another… and back again… And I had the wrong sequins…

In the end I had to admit it: I just couldn’t get it to look right! I love the dramatic look of a Gaultier dress… but I just can’t make it work on a page!!!

Maybe I tried to pull in too much or maybe it would have worked on a lighter background or maybe the composition was all wrong… When I shoved the pile of embellishments aside and I let just a few buttons and sequins come back in, this is what I got:

It’s all still there: the black, the denim, lace, buttons, sequins, pearls… Madonna… Just not as dramatic as I wanted it to be.

I mean: there is nothing really wrong with this page (It lacks a separate title, but the “Have you confessed” in the photo sort of is one). It’s just that I was so inspired and exited at the start of this challenge and now I’m disappointed that it just didn’t reflect into the result. A Gaultier inspired challenge deserved something grander than this…

OK, that’s it: I’m done with pouting over here. I really can’t wait any longer to see Riikka‘s take on this challenge! You can see it here on her blog! (Edited: I just looked… It’s spectacular!!!)