Colour Board

Having conducted research and begun to produce paintings of china porcelain the above colour palette was made. Including the traditional colours of blue and white.  

V&A Alexander McQueen Exhibition

 Yesterday the Victoria & Albert museum in London was visited, in order to view the highly recommended and promoted exhibition of the couture designer Alexander McQueen. Having grown up in London a lot of his inspiration came from the capital and therefore was the chosen city to host an exhibition showcasing some of the labels best work.

Working on the stand

At the beginning of the design process design work was also conducted on the stand. Meaning fabric was used to play around with different shapes and ideas directly onto the mannequin, the fabric could then be marked and a paper pattern made. After finding the image below it was decided to try and create a coat collar. 

https://pleasurephotoroom.wordpress.com/tag/50s/page/9/ [27/03/15]

Coat Fabric sourcing

From the early stages in the design process fabric samples were sourced in order to select the final fabric and place orders in time for the final garment manufacture. Sourcing fabric at an early stage also helps to gain an understanding if your chosen design would work in that material. For example a woollen coat may not work with a more 3D design as the wool is more likely to drape than hold a strong structure. Meaning fabric sourcing can help aid your design choices.

Samples were sourced online from Dragonfly fabrics, My fabrics and also in local fabric stores in Manchester.

The fabric chosen for the final coat is the first blue fabric shown on the second picture. The fabric is boiled wool, chosen for its soft feel and its potential to drape / fold nicely with the garment. The fabric will be sourced from Dragonfly Fabrics. 

Further Coat designs

The previous design work was drawn onto a simple figure showing the back side and front views of the designs. However this was a more controlled way of working, in order to make the design work freer and more continuous free hand drawings were produced. Drawing the figures as very simple outlines allowed more focus to be on coming up with different and creative ideas which could then be tamed / revised to meet technical developments later on.Here are some of the free hand initial idea designs...

Coat Initial Designs

After collecting images of different coat details, silhouettes, collars and pattern cutting ideas initial designs were drawn onto figure templates. The two images below provided inspiration for the designs due to their volume and large pleated/ overlapping effect. This is a design detail which was then tamed to fit into coat designs.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/50-gorgeous-wedding-dress-details-that-are-utterly-to-die-fo?sub=2906500_2282863#.fqVagvZOQ [26/3/15]

Trend Research

Having decided upon the season for the designs (Autumn/ Winter 2016) trend research was conducted, finding the predicted trends for colour, silhouettes, textiles and print.
Research was undertook on Pinterest into different print trends as print is to be a big part of the outfit. The following image inspired the choice of the Chinese Porcelain print. Further research was undertook on WGSN to see if this wouold be an appropriate theme. 

http://seekingthemuse.com/category/mood-boards/page/2/ [25/03/2015]