Second Collection

I started to research geometric prints and garments for my second collection when I came across Holly Fulton. I have loved her as a designer for a long time and her prints are very bold and geometric. Furthermore they sometimes consist of only one or two colours, which is one of the skills I wanted to challenge myself with during this unit. She is a designer for a high end audience, and as I am taking inspiration from her my designs could end up for a high end market too. I normally aim for a high street audience so this could be an exciting change for me and encourage me to think differently about my context.

Holly Fulton draws the designs herself and then digitally manipulates them into patterns that mimic Art Deco inspirations. I want to take inspiration from this as I haven't worked on such a strong, geometric shaped print theme before. I am going to use the same visual research as my digital collection in order to keep my work related to my digital designs.

With Holly Fulton designs as inspiration, I drew up some simple black and white geometric designs from my distortion visual research. Although there are similarities with my digital collection I feel these drawings are different enough to produce a very different outcome. The thicker and bolder lines will hopefully help me imitate Fulton's theme. Furthermore, I am excited to make use of different techniques such as foiling which digital printing cannot do for me.

Unit X | Final Collection

Our presentation to Tom went well last week, and the main point to improve on was the presentation of the samples, and to provide pictures of the knits as they are too complicated to draw. We were really happy with the feedback we got from him and the other groups.

Now that the group work is done we had a week to focus on our individual projects. We have continued to work together in the studio to help each other out until the deadline. Me and Pipp have been taking advice from Nicole on things we haven't had to do before, like garment flats, breakdowns of each design and other things we need to create a final collection file. I'm glad we have had this unit to learn things that are needed to design for the fashion industry, such as technical drawings and range plans. I feel like learning these skills is going to benefit me in future units.

I finally put together my final collection. I made decisions based on people's opinions and I also tried to incorporate as many of my best samples as I could. I wanted to make use of both my print and embroidery samples so that there was a mix of texture through my collection. 

I am happy with the way my collections looks, however if I could go back and change one thing it would be to be less safe with my designs. As this is the first fashion unit I have done I was focused on the new processes we had to do. In the future, I would like to me more experimental and out-going with my final collections. 

Unit X | Group Presentation

This week we have been working on the group collection for the presentation to Tom from James Long.

Although we have been going into the studio and working around each other while we talk through ideas, we have been working on our own collections, just keeping links between them. Our drawing styles really vary so we worked together to create 12 final garments that incorporate everyone's designs.

We all sat and decided on what outfits we were going to create before drawing them out. This really helped us to not throw garments together for the sake of it, and we thought a lot about placement, colour and texture. Elle and I drew the garment shapes, then each of us filled in the area which was taken from our designs. This worked really well for us as our drawing styles came together successfully without the job being left to one person. I am proud of our final line up and I think we worked really well as a team.

Locating | Final Collections

This week I made the finishing touches to both my high end and high street collections.

I'm really happy with how they both turned out. My main fear was that the garments wouldn't be appropriate for the audience intended, as in the Intentions unit I aimed my collection at high street and although it was still high street in the end, the collection was more suited to high end high street, which was technically a different consumer.
Overall I am happy with the final garments and the prints themselves. This week I will be attending to finishing touches such as presentation of samples, consumer boards and finalising my submission for the Bradford Textiles project.

 

 As my final collections are finished I had to choose fabrics for each print to be printed on. This process is very limited for me as I don't have the budget to buy my own fabric rolls, which means I have to use the ones available to me in the studio. I have experienced these fabrics from the previous unit so I already have knowledge of which ones will or won't work for this units prints.

Luckily, most of the fabrics weren't too different to what I imagined the garment to be in which was a plus. After choosing the most suitable fabrics for each print, I had three different materials being printed on; Habotai, Cotton Optic and Cotton Satin. I am really looking forward to seeing how these turn out this week.

 The only major change I would have liked would be the sweatshirt and tshirt in the high street collection, I would have preferred those to be in a more stretchy Jersey material.

Locating | Fashion Illustrations

Part of my self initiated brief for this Unit stated that I wanted to develop my fashion illustrations and make them more outgoing and playful. Because of the colourful and lively nature of my prints I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to create crazy illustrations to go with them.

I began with photographs of my friend's faces and altered them in an app to give perfect complexion and increase the size of their eyes, overall making them look strange. I found an artist on Pinterest called Niky Roehreke, who's collage work inspired me to collage peculiar hair onto my faces using marbling photocopies. I loved the results because of how ridiculous they look.

After showing these in my weekly tutorial it was suggested that I also add block colour features like eyebrows and lips to make them even more bizarre. At first when I did this I wasn't sure if I liked them or not because they really were strange, however I have definitely warmed to them and think they go perfectly with my print designs. They are particularly suitable for my high-end print collection.

I then experimented with poses to see if they looked better. However, with the addition of the heads the weirder seemed a little but too much and looked way over the top. Because of this I decided to go back to the original basic standing position with arms by the sides. I feel like this works better because it doesn't take attention away from the faces and also shows the garment well.

 There is a more cartoony-like feel to my illustrations this time, which definitely goes well with the print collection as it is very colourful and reminiscent of pop art.

Intentions | Unit Evaluation

The Intentions Unit has been a huge eye-opener for me in terms of the purpose of my work. I have taken a lot of time and done a lot of research on where exactly I see my work going. For the first time I have been making decisions based on the research I have done on fashion and have taken inspiration from real designers that are already out there. Making Inspiration, Consumer and Concept boards has really helped me get my head around what I am doing and where it is going. I have made myself much more aware of what I need to be producing to target the right audience, which I hope will benefit me a lot for the rest of this year and Level 6.

I have also tried to link everything together in terms of concept. I often find it easy to get lost and stray from my original ideas into something completely unrelated. I have tried hard to back everything up and link it throughout. Although I did start with windows and stray from that into textures which in the end took over a little, I see that more as development because I became stuck with the windows concept by itself. In terms of linking my work to contextual practice, I think I have tried to find artists/designers/photographers along the way that relate to what I am doing and why I am doing it. However, I definitely could have had a few more just to make it crystal clear where all of my ideas are coming from. I've learned that I need to document this from the start so that I don't get confused trying to place them later.
When I first think about the Unit and the new processes I have tried, I feel like I haven't experimented anywhere near enough. However I then think about the fact that I have really come to terms with which processes and media work for me. I have really dedicated this unit to progressing digitally, and I have realised this is what I enjoy the most and it plays to my strengths. In a way I have learned countless Photoshop processes which I have documented in a technical file, but aren't as obvious to see when just looking at my work. Nonetheless, I feel like I should have taken a lot more risks with my drawings beforehand, as the only overtly new process I tried was paper making. In comparison to Level 4 my drawings are a lot more thought about and considered, rather than drawing for the sake of drawing.

 The one thing I would say I have done the most successfully in this unit is refining and fixing. Although I didn't take as many risks as I would have liked to I certainly made enough mistakes. I kept stepping back and thinking "Ok, what's wrong and how am I going to fix it". Mind mapping helped me a lot along with asking other people for their opinions. I learned that to be able to criticise yourself its important to be able to take criticism from other people and work on it accordingly. Overall, this unit has been a learning curve for me. I can feel myself becoming more prepared for the outside world and understanding what it will want from me. The key process for me has been refining again and again and finding solutions to what needs fixing in order to produce the best possible outcome.

Intentions | Consumer

The whole way through this unit I thought that my work was aimed at high street stores like Topshop, River Island, Urban Outfitters etc. Now that I have my collection and it has been refined several times, it looks more like the higher end of high street. For example Whistles, Cos, Reiss, Zara or & Other Stories.

Although my designs are still classified as high street the consumer will be a lot different than it was previously. It is more likely to be someone with more money to spend at their leisure and someone a little less grungy than I thought before. My prints themselves have a grungy feel to them but because of the processes I've put them through, the garments I have chosen to put them on and the fabrics I have printed them on they have become more polished.

I have digitally printed my final collection on a thin silk Habotai and an optic Cotton. I chose which print should go on which fabric based on what it is used for on the final designs. I spent some time in the studio today pinning onto a mannequin to see what the garments might look like physically, seeing how they might drape etc. Overall I am really satisfied, however there were two prints which I feel should be in different fabric.
I sent these off to be printed in the more expensive silk Crep de Chine that I used previously in the project. I thought that this would be too expensive for the audience I am going for but now that I am aiming for higher end high street the price is less of an issue. 

Pinning my designs onto a mannequin has really helped me to visualise what my prints would looks like as actual products, and I am happy with what I have produced for this unit.

Intentions | Addition of lines and grids

I finally put together my final collection this week based on the most popular designs from the tallys, however when I looked at it all together I just wasn't happy. I like all of the individual designs but when they are put together I'm not seeing a collection that fits together well. This has made me realise that the fashion illustrations and seeing the prints on the product is extremely important, as they can look so different. Thankfully I still have time to make improvements to the prints, so I mind mapped what I thought was wrong so that I can fix the issues. 

I needed some inspiration on what to do so I went on WGSN to look and the Print and Pattern trend forecasts. I noticed a lot of stripes for S/S15. I took inspiration from this and added lines to some of the prints I have already rather than creating all new ones.
I found the most popular design previously was the dress with a white grid pattern over the top of the print, I thought that this might be because the white space creates more of a pattern. I tried experimenting with grids too as it proved popular with my audience.

I feel like the newly added lines break up my designs and make them less similar. Looking at the improved collection, I am much happier with it. It looks a lot more refined and thought about, and each print now is individual to all the rest while at the same time fitting together well as a collection.