Last year, this day, right now, I was working on my graduation fashion collection. And it seemed like FOREVER until graduation!
At first, in September of 2010, I had a whole image of my collection. My idea seemed so clear in my head and I knew that was what I wanted to do.
But when the time came to start sketching. My page was empty.
The mood, the muse, the colours, the style was all figured out, but the actual dresses did not exist on paper, and they never did.
After everyone started working on their sketches and designs, I decided to change my whole idea, everything.
I threw away all of the previous collection's little sketches, photos of inspiration, muse, everything. And started all over again with a brand new collection.
Anyways, let me make it shorter.
I related to the second collection way more, I felt it so close to me and I was way more excited to design it.
Here is the process of making a fashion collection inspired by this song.
1- Inspiration/Design.
First of, its the pictures and the things that inspire you.
You look at runway photos, objects for volumes and shapes, attitude, muse, colours, everything.
(I can't post most of the photos that inspired me due to copyright of the artists/photographers)
But this is a hint..
Muse
2- Designing.
Never be afraid of starting over, sometimes one design gets so complicated and you get fed up of editing it, so just throw it away and start a new one..
It wasn't easy. I had to design around 30+ sketches and edit almost all of them to come up with the final designs.
Here I was still editing some and figuring out which ones should be done by the tailor and which ones done by me.
+ ticking off the done parts and seeing what's left!
It seemed impossible back then...
My space was still empty..
These are the doodles I made to use as my main print.. I drew it over a few months, and afterwards I added actual high-school notes into the print with the illustrator.
It took me around one month to find the perfect fabric that will work with the print.
I used it as ''crumbled paper'' print, and the ''black board'' print.
Also took me a week of tries at the fabric print place to figure out which picture file(of the print) worked best and gave the actual colors.
At some point I was thinking of changing my whole collection just cause the print didn't work out.
But it eventually did =)
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This is my mess at Uni, after getting the fabric printed and the other fabrics DYED. Yes the pink ones are all dyed, and it also took me a few weeks to figure out which fabric gives me the colour I wanted since not all fabrics get dyed well!!
3- Creating
Bringing the sketches to life.
Draping white cotton on the mannequin can be frustrating, but when you finally get it right, everything goes smoothly afterwards.
This photo below is the process after the draping and the marking. I take off the fabric and seperate the pieces from each other and place them on paper.
Then I mark and cut the paper.
Then place it on some more white cotton to make samples like these..
The mannequin's sizes are not like the models' sizes, so I needed to make a lot of adjustments!
The adjustments go back all the way to the papers, edit them, cut it again on white cotton, then fit it again on the models.
If every thing's perfect, the next step happens...
Place the paper on the actual fabrics and cut it.
(A picture of the thunder skirt)
then pin the pieces together..
(below is a picture of a corset)
And stitch them..
Then break the pencils and make them small and place them on some of the garments =)
Then its time for the 3rd fittings with the models a few weeks before the show to make sure everything is perfect.
(this shirt didn't make it to the show, it didn't really fit well)
Freaking out.. haha
Sneak peaks into what's still not completely done.
and finally.......
The JURY Day where we present our collection and our sketches..
Then the next day, the fashion SHOW!!!
I hope you enjoyed this very long post!
Best of luck if you are designing a collection right now, and see you in the next post =)
