Fashion design - inspiration sources

Even if my fashion design course is over, I still have some material from the course that I've been delaying posting it. Some of it is below and the theme would be "inspiration sources".

 This design is inspired from a fabric, a pink cotton silk with a beautiful pattern.

These are inspired from a fashion era, the 20s. There is a wrong idea that there were short dresses in the 20s. There weren't. The day dresses were knee length, the evening or tea dresses were longer.

The design from the right is inspired from a picture in a magazine (left). The idea was to be avant-garde.

The design below is inspired by the Vera Wang ad on the left. 

Let's dance!

Today is 22nd of June and it was the last week of my fashion design course. It is very cliché to say that time flies but it is so true. I missed the post of my ninth week, but I will include it in a retrospective I am preparing, so nothing will be missed. The past three weeks I have been working on my portfolio, or my first collection, which I am sharing here. My inspiration came from all the music, harmony, dance I feel every moment inside me, from my desire to live the life to the fullest (even if I don't necessarily do it), from my longing for something I can't really describe, but I know is there waiting for me. I am just a music listener, and I'm not even a good dancer, but I imagine that if there is another "me" somewhere in this universe, that "me" is a dancer.

Thank you to our dear teacher Dyali who managed to get us from zero to something decent in only 10 classes (30 hours).

Let's dance!

Eighth week of fashion design course - "What you seek is seeking you"

I know I haven't posted anything for the past week, but this is because of one simple reason: I can't unveil my future collection until it's all ready :)

What I would like to do though is to share a little bit about the process of finding my inspiration. So I keep looking for weeks and weeks around me and try to pick that thing that inspires me to create. And I look and look around me and I keep thinking I fount the idea but then it only takes me few hours, days at the most to drop it. So one of the nights, with one theme in mind, I was trying to create and something started to take shape. And had nothing to do with the theme I had chosen. Then I realised, that what I was drawing had a theme of its own.

I leave you guess where was that inspiration coming from.

"What you seek is seeking you" Rumi

Seventh week of fashion design course - Guideline for building a portfolio

Three weeks left from this adventure, and we are now getting to serious things. Finally we discussed how to compile our portfolio with our first collection. Sounds really strange, I feel like I'm at school and we are playing a fashion design game. The truth is, to put together this portfolio in less than 3 weeks is scary but at least I (think) I found my inspiration (which is different from what I thought it was last week). The good thing is I can't afford to change my mind again, so let's get started.

And because we all seemed so helpless in the course, the teacher shared with us the below guideline, which I think works for any kind of artistic project, so I will share it with you.

Where to look for inspiration ?

Nature / environment
Art / Architecture
Culture / country / tribe
Era in history / costume tradition

What to look for?
Colour
Feel
Texture
Form

What are the components of the portfolio?

Moodboard of inspiration
Profile (age group, country or region, season, type of collection)
Colour story (choose 4, 5 colours)
Fabric story
Working drawings
Illustrations of final designs (minimum 8)
Any other support material

And finally few illustrations I worked on during the course (the first is trying an empire silhouette, the second one a combination between a sheath silhouette and different fabric textures, the third one is an outfit for a beach party for an 18 to 20 years old - in the brief was mentioned that it needs to include denim and stripes):

That's all folks, thank you all for reading or at least watching the pictures, this blog has officially crossed the 1000 visits mark :)

Experimenting colour

I've always been "scared" of colour, hence I would stay safe with black, white, red etc, but the good thing about being able to draw an outfit that you have in mind, it makes experimenting so much easier. And while I was experimenting on the paper last night, I think I found that "inspiration" i need to create my portfolio for the end of the fashion design course (Finally!)

Sixth week of fashion design course and still loving it :)

So here we are, six weeks completed, four weeks left. In the last two weeks I tried not to bore anyone with all the details of what we learned, but shortly we have been through rendering different types of fabrics, types of sleeves, collars or neck lines.

We are actually more into practicing and learning by doing now, also discussing the fashion industry, trends, how to find inspiration, designers, fabrics.

Now the stories of the pictures below. The following is what I did in the class while assigned to draw a design that has as inspiration WATER. I thought a sailor collar in a blue shade (using just the only blue marker I have), a top with a tortoise pattern (which I imagine more like a corset, with some kind of applications to build the pattern)  and a pair of grey long pants will do it. While there were many easy options like a flowy blue dress etc,  I wanted to do something in a more unusual contrast of colours and textures. The belt is gold. (There are many markers I can't find, inclusive black, gold, silver and I still miss lots of colours that I would like to use.)

     

The second design is the result of an assignment to draw an outfit which included a jacket. I used a normal black permanent marker for the dress which is not really great. The jacket is a simplified and better version of a sketch I did a couple of weeks ago.

     

The third design story goes back to almost two years ago when I bought this beautiful Korean silk - which is still a piece of fabric at the present moment. I never knew what to do with it, so I am starting to apply my knowledge and skills learned in this course to a very real situation. I kind of like the dress below and is something that would fit my style, however I am still trying to imagine the back: would it be simple, like the front, or with a V line going down lower than the middle of the back? If it's simple, the black belt will be tight in a small bow in the back, if not I would probably have to have it tightened at the base of the shoulders with a bow, so it doesn't fall off the shoulders (or maybe with a fine golden chain?). Anyway, I have to go to the tailor very soon with this one.

   

Milestone - first free hand croquis

This is my first free hand croquis that looks quite close to what a fashion figure should be. No ruler, no measurements, no tracing paper. Milestone, of course.