A simple question, but not always an easy one to grasp and over come. You see, for one of my Fundamentals of Design projects we needed to design collections (3-4 pieces will be submitted) so we could learn the creative processes, the marketing process (who's your customer), how to choose fabrics, colors, etc. Now I decided I wanted to do something very wearable: wool pencil skirts, cable knit sweaters... very J. Crew/Ann Taylor/Ralph Lauren. But that was the problem... there was nothing new or spectacular about the pieces. I wanted them to be marketable; she wanted something "New". In fact she told me she just didn't like the designs. SAD PANDA!!! But by this time I've become attached to the designs, so revamping was a hard idea to wrap my mind around. There were a few pieces I wanted to keep, but how? So for a week I sat an stewed over new ideas, and decided on a Lolita concept. Showed my teacher some of the ideas, and she loved it. Great! But what do I do when I still have the other sketches on the brain?!?! So I went to Jerry (my Fashion Product Evaluation teacher, and the Owner/Head Designer of the XOXO brand) and freaked out on him, begging for advice. After explaining what I had done, and what I thought about doing I said "but I don't think I can do that" - in reference to the Lolita style - and he said "Why not?" I was so caught off guard. Of all the people I thought would look at me and say I was right to assume it was a bad idea, he did anything but. Instead he pulled out some older fashion forcast books and some historically themed paper dolls and said: "Here. Do research." To make a long story short I took a few books home (trains and large amounts of books don't compute ladies and gentlemen) and have since revamped everything, and it's 100 times better. Only stipulation: I show him the designs on Monday. I'm kind of excited.
Here are a few of the preliminary sketches...
These two were from the original batch, and the ones I loved most:
And these are some of my new ones:
No colors yet, but I'm getting there.
Here are a few of the preliminary sketches...
These two were from the original batch, and the ones I loved most:
One of my major forms of inspiration for this venture was actually the Art Deco fashion designer Erte. Wait... Lolita and Art Deco?!?! What?!?! Believe it or not, what that man used to do with fastening, especially buttons, on his coats was AMAZING!
Here are some pics of the paper dolls I used:
Another inspiration was the designer Schiaparelli. What that woman did for suits...:
Bye, Bye y'all! Have a stylishly fantastic week!
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