What Is Concept Design in Fashion

Ever idea of starting a fashion label? Many do – every day and as before long equally they think well-nigh it, their heads get inundated with questions…

Questions about the pattern process in general like… Do ideas come from inspiration or from materials? What is the best way to go about designing a collection?

Style, by its very nature, is about current populism – and the fashion designer expresses the spirit of the times, or zeitgeist, in their piece of work.

In an manufacture that is constantly changing, the designer is expected to reinvent the wheel seasonally. Due to the public's need for the new, and with ever-increasing pressure placed on them, designers have to dig deeper and search farther for means of interpreting new inspiration into their collections.

The office of the fashion designer could be compared to that of a magpie, obsessively collecting objects and always existence on the hunt for new and heady things to inspire them. This compulsion to source and collate material for use in the creative design process is essential for feeding the imagination.

So allow's take a await at the steps one takes to translate an idea into a finished product.

Stride 1: The Brief

One of the easiest ways to start whatever creative design endeavour is to follow a Brief. These are commonly set up by a tutor at fashion school, by a company that is running a competition or by a client.

If yous're a solo designer, it's worth considering setting yourself a Brief especially if designing is new to you lot. Your Brief should accept very specific aims and objectives that should consider a number of things:

Occasion and Flavour: An awareness of when yous are designing for, will impact your choice of fabrics and colours.

Muse: Many designers are inspired by a historical or modernistic muse. They will base their research on deciphering the lifestyle of this friend, celebrity or doyenne of mode.

Customer: If you have compiled a target customer profile y'all can consider elements such every bit groundwork, lifestyle, piece of work and income.

Target Marketplace: Consider using your market sector, such as mid, loftier-street or high-finish price points to determine the direction you volition take your design projection.

Textile and Material: Does your brand focus on the use of sustainable materials? If so, how will this dictate the management your Brief goes?

Costing: This should be a large consideration, as the materials you may want to use will have a huge touch on the price points of your finished designs.

Applied Outcomes: What will your range consist of? Will yous be designing separates, lingerie, suiting or accessories?

Pace 2: Enquiry

Ideas for designing new collections can come from many different random sources. All good pattern starts with research, as it enables you to investigate and to learn something new or discover something from the by. It's comparable to a journey which involves visiting, reading and viewing; above all, inquiry is most the recording of information.

However, in society to make sense of what you lot're doing, there is a unproblematic formula which you could follow by focussing on the 2 types of inquiry for the design process:

Gathering the materials, which forms the tangible, practical elements for your drove, such as fabrics, trims and fastenings; and
Setting the concept, which is the visual inspiration for a design process. This volition assistance you to develop an identity for your creative work.

Research, in order for it to work well for you, must be in-depth and broad, as this leads to innovation.

Poor, uninspiring inquiry tin can only lead to simulated.

What Should Your Design Process Inquiry Entail?

We know that research is about the investigation and recording of data. For the fashion designer, this information can be cleaved down into dissever categories that tin can provide the many-faceted components of a collection'due south direction.

Structure & Shape

When you lot get-go embark on designing a drove, y'all should call back most shape, as this informs the structure of an detail. The shape of a three-dimensional object, such as a garment, shoe or accompaniment should be at the forefront of your mind and will determine how the item should be constructed. Without shape, there would be no silhouettes in fashion design.

A good instance of this is the crinoline, common in the mid- to late-1800s. The crinoline was an underskirt with an infrastructure fabricated from hoops of wire connected together with cotton fiber tape.

Color

Colour is such an important aspect to consider in the research and blueprint process. Your palette choice can be based on something every bit unproblematic as an inspiring painting or period in the history of fine art.

Colour can often be the starting point of a collection and tin set up the tone for the mood and season y'all are designing for. It's of import to assemble primary and secondary colours so that you tin mix a variety of combinations to play with.

Texture

Add another element to your products past considering their texture. This can be brought to life by the discovery of an astonishing embossed cloth.

Explore farther by looking at the surfaces of natural objects, such every bit shells or feathers, and emulate their texture through textile manipulation. Through the incorporation of texture in your designs, you will provide visual stimulation for the consumer without the need to actually bear on the object.

Details

Information technology is often said that "… the devil is n the detail" and it is truthful. Nothing should exist left to chance when designing your collection.

The details y'all use are as important as the shape and construction methods you volition employ, as these will attract the buyer to examine your collection more closely and could make or break their decision to place an order.

Your inspiration for the finer details can be garnered from the many dissimilar fashion inspiration sources you have researched. These can include only are not express to nature and the organic – or perhaps extremely specific items such as the fastenings used on uniforms from the second earth state of war.

Surface Ornamentation and Impress

During your inquiry menstruation, you lot may observe items that are naturally patterned or decorated, and that lend themselves to be interpreted into textile and print evolution. Objects or images could be bejewelled, mirrored, decorative, repeated and can even provide an opportunity for a motif inside a design concept.

Textile techniques, such every bit beading, embroidery, appliqué or trapunto could as well be used to draw surface qualities derived from your reference material. In addition to this, the wait and feel of fabric tin be altered to reflect the mood of your source of inspiration; such every bit decorative and jewelled qualities translated from vintage native wearing apparel; or distressed, faded and aged, translated from barren land in a hot, dry southern hemisphere.

In social club to effect alter in the present, the by must be scrutinized.

Historical References

In way design, the exploration of historical dress can provide a treasure trove of information in regards to tailoring, shape and surface ornament.

Don't limit yourself to clothing only, every bit historical influences can be found in any design discipline from many cultures. These tin can be as diverse equally studying turn-of-the-century Chinese footwear to armour from the 19^th century.

Cultural Influences

Influences can include an appreciation of the arts and literature from your own culture, to having a keen interest in the cultural proclivities of other countries. Both tin can provide you lot with a wealth of ideas that tin can be translated into a narrative to your drove, also as diversifying into fabric, color and impress, and garment shapes. Art galleries and current exhibitions tin influence your research and spark creativity into your designs.

Contemporary Trends

As a fashion designer, having an ability to develop an awareness of cultural trends and events is of import.

Observing political climates, global changes and social trends volition enable you to create clothes for a specific target market.

No one has time to track trends, that's why Style Trend Forecasting platforms are available – but you must possess an ability to tune into the current climate. Future popular trends tend to first at the grassroots level, so look to the street for subtle changes in tastes and interests.

What Next?

Once you have decided what your inquiry should contain, you will be ready to embark on the creation of a mind-map. This brainstorming action is a useful technique to explore in the early stages of research and tin assistance to generate many ideas that you can delve into more than securely.

Merely put, brainstorming requires yous to list every word you tin can call up of that relates to your Project Brief. Using a thesaurus, the net, and a dictionary will exist fine – but also utilize imagery which tin exist assigned to the words that you write down.

These images could potentially provide you lot with starting points for your collection and besides ideas for a concept or theme. Allow your mind to wander in many different directions, every bit random thoughts and ideas could present new couplings and concepts for your designs.

Footstep 3: Choosing a Concept or Theme

Your theme choice needs to relate to the questions posed in your Brief.

It also needs to stimulate you creatively.

In the brainstorming procedure, you will have written words and collected images which will assist y'all in the collation of ideas into a concept or theme. Without a concept or theme, y'all may notice yourself struggling with the design process and find information technology difficult to create a collection with a common thread.

Explore your own personality and interests and endeavor to fuse them into your work.

There are several different approaches to consider that could drive your theme choice:

Narrative: Consider creating a story with a central character, and base your collection around this.

Conceptual: This can exist based on the exploration of a variety of unrelated visual sources that can be united in a common thread. This could consequence in the development of texture, shape and colours for your drove.

Abstruse: Work with an unrelated description or word, such equally 'cubism' for example, and translate it into a series of ideas. Y'all could too utilize it to atomic number 82 the exploration of your research and pattern process.

Sources of information should include primary and secondary research findings.

The master sources include your own discoveries, such as objects you accept discovered at a museum of which you've made drawings or taken photographs.

The secondary sources are discoveries you brand through other people. These may be found in books, magazines or on the internet, and enable yous to dig deeper into the background story of your primary findings.

It's important to have a balance of both sources – and it's good to remember that your drawing skills will be called upon for the former and your investigative skills for the latter.

Read what to do next: Part two