Fashion flair

Press, 7 November 1978, Page 14

Fashion flair

Home & People

FASHION AND BEAUTY

By Paula Ryan

100 litle thought is given to the flair shown by fashion illustrators who spend many hours putting meticulous detail into fashion sketches for daily newspapers. One such illustrator is Jeanette Park, who works behind the drawing board

in the advertising department of D.1.C.-Beaths. Yesterday I stopped in and chatted with Jeanette, whom I found to be not only extremely talented but a charming and interesting person. Jeanette comes . from a family of artists. Her mother and father were both artistic; and her brother. Lloyd Park, is a well-known creative Christchurch photographer. Jeanette’s interest in art goes back to pre-schooi when her first drawing was of a wee moose. At 13 she was determined to make a career of fashion drawing but discovered there was no formal training available. After several years of studying American “Vogue” , and watching other artists at work, she joined Beaths as a young super-keen trainee artist. Now her studio is full of beautifully illustrated European magazines, although Jeanette favours Italian “Vogue.” “The Italians have such a clever design concept,” she said, “not only in fashion, knitwear and fabric design, but in everything from cars to children’s furniture.”

From these magazines Jeanette keeps up to date with detail in make-up. accessories and style. Her wall is covered with pictures of the girls who demonstrate for major cosmetic houses of the World. While I was there two “dummy models” were clad in summer dresses patiently waiting to be sketched. Originally fashion drawings for newspapers were executed in simple ink lines with halftone. However. reproduction methods have now allowed for more depth and finer detail. Much of Jeanette’s work is done in this way — combining line drawing with pencil shading or. grained paper, giving a textured finish. Jeanette always works to a deadline. Her drawings, some taking manyhours, are generally required for print up to five days in advance of publication. Although her work is mainly- for black and white reproduction, Jeanette loves working with colour and is currently designing children's stationery and gift cards for a children’s book shop. She also belongs to the Canterbury Children’s' Theatre, where she expresses her talents in stage make-ups. Colour fascinates Jeanette. As a teenager she would study the dress of people on the bus and would imagine applying colour. “Colours are like perfumes,” she said. “They are personal and reflect a mood — only those that suit the individual should be worn.”

Occasionally Jeanette has designed special-occasion garments like wedding dresses. She showed me some styles being worn in Europe depicting the 1940 s military look with braided military coats and hats with badges and medals attached — a look we may well see in sketches from Jeanette’s drawingboard next winter.