Industry Day 5 and 6

(Jade Goodwin and Zarah Ahmed's cohesive final collection, Authors Own, 16/11/14)

Wednesday as a group we spent finishing our final collections and creating our presentation.

I was pleased with my four final designs, I presented them using photoshop so I could edit the final designs to include the correct fabric textures as well as my textiles samples from when I scanned them in. In order for me and the other textiles designer Zarah’s work to flow we combined our designs and our textiles to create a joint eight outfit collection. (shown above) They worked well together as we used the same fabrics and colours. The colour palette was off white and neutral tones so we were solely focusing on the fabrics and shapes rather than colour and so we continued Comme des Garçons recent collections of mono colour. We used a mixture of rich and poor fabrics so there were bold contrasts, we chose calico, wool and hessian to mix with silk and leather, they are all fairly heavy weight so the outcomes have a solidity and so that the fabrics can be easily manipulated into the shapes we have designed. Comme des Garçons looks are often distressed and deconstructed which is something we wanted to continue, we did this by having layering of alternative fabrics of which some would have raw seams which has led to the disconnected look and in some asymmetric silhouettes continuing with the important essence of the brand.

In our collection we used our textiles separately linking them through the similar use of fabrics and some silhouettes. The collection could be stronger if we had had more time and we’d have sat down and designed them more thoroughly together by working out which of our textiles compliment each other and could work well together. We could have done this by working on the stand with out textiles samples, looking and recording which of our textiles worked together and discussing how we could then take these into designs.

I found it hard to create our presentation in the end, we decided as we had so many designers in our group to make our work into diffusion lines as well as main lines. From doing the presentation there are defiantly some things that my group could have improved on. We were all very creative individuals and individually I think we created some good outcomes but we defiantly needed to be more cohesive at the beginning of the project. I think if we had picked a more solid concept at the start it would not have led to where we had too many separate ideas. I think this led to us not having a good overall group dynamic which meant our outcome was quite disjointed in places.

From seeing the rest of the presentations I could see what led to a good presentation. A lot of the presentations were very strong on the promotional side which as we had one promotion girl who unfortunately was ill for some of the time was something we didn't have a lot of. I think this high percentage of promotion made the presentations more memorable but then I did find this overshadowed the design element. Our presentation was design focused which made it a bit different to others but I think we could have used promotion to help link everything. I also enjoyed the presentations where I felt there was a story flowing, the Meadham Kirchoff presentation with the ‘Walk of Glory’ theme was fun and led to a very strong project, this is something I could use not just in further presentations but in my own personal work. 

Overall with this project I have found that I really enjoyed working with Comme des Garçons as the brand, I have learnt about fabric manipulation and texture and how this can help create stronger designs that have detail and interest. With the brand it has allowed me to focus on more experimental silhouettes and combinations developing my thought processes and confidence with designing.

(Final Presentation, Authors Own, 16/11/14)