online journeys into fashion design: skills, creation, expression.

SUPPORT, FEEDBACK, RESOURCES

Discussion boxes are built into courses.for sharing, asking, support are essential to your progress! You are not alone!
ADD-ON COACHING PACKAGES for deeper 1:1 work with Laura

FLEXIBILITY AND MOTIVATION FROM WITHIN

No commuting. NO B.S. Login on your schedule, and benefit from my 27 years of fashion design teaching -- I've created a unique approach that focuses on learning through inspiration, encouragement and personal motivation to imagine, express and create.

FIND YOUR VOICE THROUGH Exercises, Projects and Practices

will walk you through each new technique and build intentionally to take you from beginner to experienced and fluent.
Watch and rewatch videos, until you incoporate the concept.

FLUENCY through Experiential Learning

Discover your questions. Ask . Try each new technique.., as you FILL YOUR SKETCHBOOK and PORTFOLIO in the process.
These skills are creative AND professional. Credentials are one thing, real SKILL is another

"CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE"

Soulful, inspired fashion design and illustration education for creatives, students and professionals to bring out your individual voice through processes, projects and techniques-based learning.

Based on my 27 years teaching at one of the world’s top fashion schools inspired me to create this much needed space for learning with heart, vibrance, and encouragement -focused on joy, color, vibrance, craft, color, and deep love for the art of fashion design, sketching, draping/patternmaking.

“CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE”

Learn on YOUR terms- schedule, at YOUR pace. Start where you are at. No prerequisites. My courses are designed to meet you wherever you are at.

THE GOAL IS TO BE CREATING, EXPRESSING AND GROWING, releasing your unique voice and style.

MY Online fashion design Education course suite includes individual courses based on decades of teaching fashion design in NYC:

COURSE EXPERIENCES TO BUILD YOUR PORFOLIO:

MODEL DRAWING METHOD PROGRAM

for all body types, not body distortion. Learn lively, dynamic, flowing, accurate figure drawing with vitality, depth, flexibility and personal style.

PROFESSIONAL PATTERNMAKING AND DRAPING TECHNIQUES FOR FASHION DESIGN

Get familiar with the technical lessons that will make your drawings and ideas more developed , build your vocabulary of words, styles, concepts, finishes, and design processes.

FREEHAND FASHION ILLUSTRATION USING ART APPS

Use your digital device and learn creative apps for fashion illustration! Creative freehand art tools that are totally portable and intuitive on iPad or other digital tablet. Express and share your work beautifully.

FASHION ILLUSTRATION TECHNIQUE TO PRESENT YOUR COLLECTIONS WITH GOUACHE AND PENCIL

Mood Boards, line sheets, design research and sketchbooks, flats, fabric boards, Croquis books, print development, fabric types....Step by step, immerse yourself in one process at a time, so you can bring them all together with joy.

EXPLORE DIGITAL, GOUACHe, AND MARKER TECHNIQUES for special fabrics and Dramatic silhouettes- in one course journey

GET STARTED TODAY! uncover, deepen and learn to present your individual style THROUGH ILLUSTRATION AND DESIGN sketching techniques

My beginners are amazed how quickly they can dive in deep to skills and information they always wanted. IT’S A MINDSET TO REALIze you have everything you need already within you.

"Teaching isn’t just skill….Laura, your personality makes me feel like I can do anything. I’ve never done this before, and I’ve amazed myself"

Tatiana R

Australia

"The videos are so helpful!…And, I was just thinking how lucky I am to be gleaning all of these insights with kids asleep in bed from the comfort of my home”

Melissa D

Canada

"Laura, your course really inspired me to do all I’m doing now. Up to date it was my most valuable class. ... you as you inspire me so much! I still reference all my drawings from your class!!

Selina S

Nigeria

Student Praise:

Don’t take my word for it– my students speak for me

“Laura is the most open-minded, precise, and caring teacher I’ve ever had. Her guidance was never vague or generic — every piece of feedback she gave was clear, insightful, and exactly what I needed to grow. In just half a month, I went from not being able to draw a proper figure to sketching confidently, illustrating clothing, adding color, and even exploring fabrics at the market. If I hadn’t taken Laura’s summer program, I don’t think I would have found the courage or direction to pursue fashion design today.”

“I have nothing but good things to say about your portfolio class.

You helped me in many ways but one of the most valuable holes you filled for me was on how to organize my thoughts when sketching....

Your drawing and the Portfolio are some of the most valuable things I got from Parsons as a whole. So thanks a bunch.

You revved up my engine and Im still travelling on that momentum”

Lauren Utter-Jones

fashion Illustrator, Designer, Print Designer

“I was fortunate to have such a wonderful professor for my Fashion Industry Design class.

Laura is a talented designer/ illustrator, amazing tutor, and deep personality.

Her open-mindedness, support, warm and kind attitude creates absolutely magical atmosphere in class.

Laura is so alive, sincere, joyful and creative, it touches everyone.

There is no chance a student can stay away from such great energy!”-. NYC

Ev Bessar

Fashion Knitwear Designer

"To find a teacher in the arts who offers up everything they know and more, and whose sole purpose is to see you ‘fly’- … is extremely rare.

Laura is one of those teachers.

She set us up for success in so many ways. Generosity, creativity, and encouragement– plus a solid foundation in basic art– were all part of her teaching.

I created some of my best work in her Fashion Drawing 1 class and still rely on many of the techniques. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been her student.” -

J. Heloise

Fashion Illustrator

3 decades learning and teaching

(and writing and working) in the field of fashion design. FOR ME, there are many courses of study available. AND YET, whether it’s patterning, draping, sewing, sketching, illustrating, or bringing a sketch into life as a final garment, there is a certain area of priority that not every fashion design student gets to experience.

To get one-to-one help over bumps. To not be taking so many classes at once that you can’t dive deep into any single one. Many students feel indundated and overwhelmed and have to let a lot slide. Which is fine.

But many finish with a degree and feel like they can’t sketch, or drape, or which they new more about fabrics, color theory, drawing, draping, designing…..

The new approaches to fashion design education have obviously had to make room for so many digital software courses (all which require monthly subscriptions to even use). Every one of those classes has had to take up and “replace” the time that used to be devoted to Color Theory, Drawing, Model drawing, manual techniques of sketching, pattern drafting, draping on a dress form, hand and machine stitching techniques.

Most of the timeless, embodied skills that fashion designers tailorsl couturiers and makers have used for decades (and some for centuries) have been tossed aside my many programs.

Some of us still want to learn with our skin, hands, breath, body. We want to touch and manipulate, craft and create, experience, experiment, and express with fashion, following our curiosity and building in 3D from the heart.

Clicking at the screen doesn’t do it for everyone.

My courses use manual (and freehand digital) techniqeus to take the ideas you’ve been brewing up and start drawing them out of you.

Onto the page.

Onto the muslin.

Translating sketches into final collections.

Building skills, building confidence, widening your vocabulary, deepening your expression, honing your accuracty.

And getting support along the way.

When I came to study fashion design, I didn’t really realize yet that I was an artist, and how learning to see in new ways brought me home to myself and taught me that there were new ways to see the same things I had looked at all my life. AND THAT I HAD A VOICE INSIDE ME that was as unique as my own fingerprint.

As do you.

LET’S DISCOVER YOUR VOICE TOGETHER. I’m here to help over the bumps. But fashion is a whole world beyond the corporate structures that try to harness it into being something else.

The most important thing HERE AT FASHION ILLUSTRATION TRIBE is to truly develop your skills and your voice. Everything else is secondary.

THIS IS THE PLACE TO UNWIND AND EXPLORE YOUR EDGES.

Love,

Laura