Applied Fashion Design- Briefing

We were fully briefed at the beginning of 2nd year.
The brief consisted of a brand evaluation on a chosen contemporary brand.
Creating a trend book (for designers) inspired by our summer research and relevant WGSN information.
We were then to design from our trend book for our chosen brand and produce a final collection of six outfits (including 6 tailored or denim pieces.)
6 stylised fashion illustrations were to be produced to illustrate each outfit, technical flats of garments to accompany the illustrations.
Finally we were to give a presentation to the 'head of design' at our chosen brand using PowerPoint, informing them about our trend and collection and why it should go in store.

I chose French Connection to produce my Brand Evaluation on and produced a very thorough evaluation including:
Brand History, Customer Profile, Shop layout, Trends and colours, Key silhouettes and fabrics, Pricing and labelling and finally, Marketing and Advertisement. This helped enormously when designing for their brand as I achieved a huge amount of knowledge and understanding of their brand.

I am very proud of my trend book and the majority of imagery used was my own; this stemmed from the thorough research I produced. The majority of my trend book was hand crafted and overall it looked professional, however I would like to improve the quality of professionalism in future projects (further use of CAD.)

Designing from my trend book came easier than I predicted, After producing my trend book I had a clear vision of the collection I wanted to produce. I do find designing quite taxing, as its easy to loose focus and go off on a tangent. However producing a 'collection action plan' beforehand was most helpful.

I was daunted at the idea of producing 6 fashion illustrations, as drawing is not a strong area of mine. However I researched into this and adopted a child-like style (Rodarte) to reinforce my trend. I am pleased with my illustrations and the way in which they are presented simplistically. Improvements on the rendering of my fabrics is something I should be working on in future modules.

Finally, my presentation went smoothly, i was nervous beforehand but had a clear vision of my trend and confidence in my collection. I merely shared this information with my audience and answered any criticisms I thought they would have (for example the light cotton fabrics for winter use were justified with the use of layering.)

A few of my research pages...

Applied Fashion Design- Summer Task

During the summer 2010, we were set a pre-module task to be completed during summer and before the beginning of 2nd year.

The tasks consisted of: 6 or more A3 research pages on a chosen word and including 'cool hunting.' A fabric swatch file with swatches relevant to my research, detailing fabric suppliers and prices and details of all swatches. The final task was to illustrate a dynamic 'cool hunting' image taken from the research in 3 different styles.

I chose the word 'Modern-rural' and thoroughly enjoyed the research stage. Because I had the summer and the luxury of time to complete my research I was able to collate ample imagery and sift through to pick which was relevant. I explored farmyard living and scenery, the modern farmers wife, afternoon tea and today's brands which are inspired by these; mainly Cath Kidston and Jack Wills.

I am very proud of my research and produced 9 pages, I have struggled with research in the past, however I steered the term 'Modern rural' to incorporate a theme I am very passionate about (the world of cake baking and afternoon tea!)

I found the 'cool hunting' a struggle, as it is extremely time consuming looking for people dressed in a certain trend and not always possible to take their picture. However I used my initiative and styled a friend using the new autumn/winter stock available.