Fashion Design Is: Research Into Your Mind and What’s Already Out There
Yes, design is scary because it is a form of art and art is vulnerable, placing your personal and creative thoughts into the real world for those to admire- or lack appreciation. Yet, by immersing yourself heavily into the very beginning stage of the design process will leave little room in your heart for hurtful comments later.
What a lot of prospective students or anyone not studying fashion aren’t aware of is in order to stay relevant with your designs, no matter how special you’re convinced that they are, the basic essential dictating everything else is research.
The research you will be doing won’t be purely quantitative (thank gosh). Instead:
- Designer research is vast. It stems from many a method but the most engaging one of them all is mind-maps: putting the fundamentals of your ideas into being by thinking outside the box, letting intuition/feeling/colors/instinct cloud your judgment.
- Start with an intimidating blank page, placing merely the name of your collection (subject to change, of course) in dead center.
- Then, you attack it. Draw lines to bridge your collection with other associations that revolve around it (using the 6 senses, people you know, etc). You are creating an aesthetic.
Pinterest, maybe Tumblr, but NOT Google Images:
- Pinterest will become your best friend in displaying a plethora of aesthetics. Type in the words you placed inside your mind-map and I can almost guarantee that Pinterest will have a matching aesthetic for it. Be as vague or specific as you please and these curated images you might not have even initially imagined flood your screen.
- Save images by Pinning them to your board (title the board the name of your developing collection).
- Be open AND MOST CRUCIALLY: find images that are details/textures/abstracts and NOT ALL OF THEM FEATURING A PERSON. Been there, seen that, do better.
Decide on a trend forecast as a whole or choose an element from it using the best resource out there, “WGSN.”
- It is a site where fellow visionaries compile trend reports for $$$. Your university library may grant you access to the resource for free (it certainly is at the University of Delaware).
- Choose your collection’s season, as it typically follows: Fall/Winter, Spring/Summer and ___ year. These highly detail oriented story boards for at least three years ahead of current trends will appear. They will also feature Pantone colors for the given season (colors are important, too, but worry about them later). WGSN is OCD heaven- super duper organized and oh-so aesthetically pleasing.
- If you want your collection to be relevant (always think in terms of marketing + competitors), choose one seasonal trend report or aspect from a report to get inspired and incorporate. Your collection should remember to focus on this essential you choose and continuously trace back to it. You may have to go back to Pinterest to find more images suiting this additional “thing.”
Have big D(ream) energy but know when to downsize.
- The best advice I’ve been told is, “it’s not about reinventing the wheel and everything to do with being realistic.” Designers we know today have succeeded in the past because their designs were functional, relevant to societal / consumer behaviors / preferences at that point in time, and mixed the old with only a little bit of new. Staying practical may come with some unintended reinvention but that shouldn’t necessarily be your end goal.
- Circling back to competitors- market research and data analytics is just as pertinent (find these through your university's databases). When laying all of your ideas out, look at what has already been done, is striving, and what popular designers are selling out as we speak. Focus on one or two key components to set your designs (competitively) different than those in existence- tweak sleeve volume, incorporate a subtle change in silhouette, add color blocking, etc.
Last, and certainly not least, focus on your potential clients.
- Question: who is going to buy your clothes and ultimately fund your dreams? The more focused you are on targeting your market to a specific, ideal client/sector/group, the more likely your chips (and profits) will fall into the right place (your pockets).
- Layout out your target client and plan to know everything about him/her/them. Cater towards his/her/their needs, wants, and interests. What is something new you can introduce to their market that they always wished they had?
- Your collection should speak monuments to someone but that will be contingent on your strategized and prioritized goals.
You have completed “Research Into Your Mind and What’s Already Out There.” By the end of your collection’s finished production (via presentation + mood boards), you may feature a blurb or entire page explaining your ideas from your data. Keep it primarily visual. Include images from the process if applicable. Design is all about the journey; the process is messy and not just the pretty dress everyone guffaws at in the end. Your next step is compiling all of your information into visually pleasing order via mood boards.
*Here are some examples of my works. Note that these instances are from both trend reports and seasonal collections. The same R+D (research+design) processes occurred*
