Van Journal - Designing with a direction
I often talk about this, designing with a direction, with clarity to your designs. I use to work on season with Vanjo, and although I know longer work on the size that I use to produce, I still work with direction. Nowadays it’s in collections.
Why? Because it keeps me being able to track what I need for the collection, for example, sitting on my shelves, are many a fabrics and trims and I often add to them, so if I were to just design I would end up with a very mis-mashed looking range. I love colour and often find that I get pulled in the direction of colour, so I need the discipline of what I’m looking at, what to leave in and what to leave out.
This range direction is all about colour, the shine of satins, and the delicacy of tulle and lace.
The latest trend board
Your direction could be the fabrics you use, for example if you use all satin, then making all different colours would fit together as the would have something all in common. By designing with a narrow end point, it allows you to realise that you don’t need to add everything into your collection, there will be time to add it into another range and you end up choosing your strongest pieces, and don’t waste your time with the other pieces.
How I design for myself and other, is that I always start with a mood board, or trends that they want to incorporate, that could be certain fabrics, straps, gaps or a particular look they wish to emulate.
Once a concrete starting point has been established I then look at fabrics, what will work for the range and also colours, and then only at that point do I design, there may have been some rough drafts of lingerie shapes, along the way, but nothing is confirmed until the fabrics are sorted sitting alongside one another.
I then begin to cull if I have spiralled with the designs, I make sure the shapes I include where possible can be repeated in different colours later or even in the same range. So I then draw out the range so I have something to work towards and know what other fabrics or trims I need, usually at this point it may be the width of the hook and eye, or what edge I want the elastic to have, all the finer details that probably doesn’t get thought about when originally planning your design.
And from that the the sewing or the making of patterns begins.
The last range was completely different , all about the darks or shimmer, with transparency in the fabric so mesh featured a lot.
For those who wish to know more about lingerie direction and mood boards, this is covered in How to be a lingerie designer. It will also be one of the lingeri-e-courses released later this year.
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