An Illustrated Arch Window

The Arch Window is a gallery within the premises of gpstudio - a retail design agency based in Southwark, SE1 who use their glass façade as a unique exhibition space. Jacqueline spent a day embellishing the window with her fashion drawings, using beauty, colour and luscious lines to attract attention to the space. Jacqueline writes of the experience -

"Each season for as long as I can remember,  I've worked on a reportage of the catwalks to familiarise myself with new colours, trends and styling details to assist with commissions and keep relevance in my fashion work. When I was asked to do something for the Arch windows with the possibility of working on the actual glass, I jumped at the chance to transfer this idea on a large scale. It's been years since I worked on this scale and never on a window so it was a pretty daunting task. The idea was to coincide with London Fashion Week but unfortunately I had work commitments in the Middle East so I had to postpone for a week or so. As a result I was able to look at photographs from LFW on The Strand (main arena) and see some of the collections to work on my reportage. My favourites were House of Holland- an amazing collection from Henry Holland's team which was vibrant and fun involving fun fur, Stetsons and thigh high 'Woody Woodpecker' boots- really 'out there' stuff! I deliberately chose garments that I'm not usually commissioned to draw so I could be totally self-indulgent whilst showing some of the newer designers with Global brands such as Armani, Miu Miu and Sportmax. I sketched out in rough format on the outside of the windows so I could amend the overall look without committing myself. There was only 1 figure that I changed from my layout in the end. I then moved inside (away from the biting winds!) to warm up and start the colour work. I had to work fast to finalise in one day so I kept it loose and sketchy and hopefully looking spontaneous. The hardest part was actually the writing which is harder than you think to write backwards! Drawing back to front is also a challenge but after the first few figures the style started to flow and strengthen. The whole thing took approx. 7 hours, just before the light started to fade!"