Hi all! Today I will be briefly discussing the design process when it comes to culminating a clothing collection, and using my own clothing lines as examples. I would like to educate people on the time and hard work it takes to get clothing out on the retail sales floor or online site; producing clothing is not as easy as it seems.
For my undergraduate capstone, I emulated the entire design process and created my original menswear collection through that experience, and thus marketed the collection online and in an in-person exhibit/mock store-front at ASU. While my new womenswear collection - Raine 2.0 - will not be presented in a physical form as I am not fortunate enough to have an exhibit to present the pieces in, I will be releasing that collection online. I want to be as transparent as I can about the design process to further educate my peers on the fashion industry, and show how passionate I am about what I create.
Firstly, a clothing collection starts with an idea. Like any major project, a theme and purpose must be decided upon. Raine is about streetwear clothing curated from breathable and athletic textiles so musicians can wear the pieces on and offstage. My clothing is geared towards performers and an edgier audience.
After deciding on a “why” and a target audience, the design process then leads me to creating a mood board, or a big photoshop document with clip art and inspiring images that give off the idea or “mood” of the collection. A mood board gives the designer a steady direction for where the designs will go.
I then move on to my original rough sketches, where I sketch out silhouette and design ideas for my pieces. Most of the time these concepts come to me at the most random of times and I store the ideas in notes on my phone and then sloppily transcribe them into my sketchpad to keep the idea. From here I create a color board, which is a digital picture showcasing the color scheme and tones I want to use for my collection. I will look back at this color board throughout the rest of my design process.
From here, I create stylized fashion illustrations with water colors as well as graphic Adobe Illustrator renderings of my designs, called “technical flats”. Fashion illustrations are great for showing the attitude of the garment as well as showcasing the movement and everyday function of the outfits created. Technical flats are precise graphic images of clothing made typically through Adobe Illustrator or CAD to show where seams will go, specific technical details, and how the garment will ultimately be designed and built.
So far with my Raine 2.0 collection, I have come this far. I have also rendered some graphics for printed tees that will accompany my handmade pieces for my sophomore collection.
After the pre-design work is finished, I then will source patterns and fabrics that will best suit my designs, and then I will go to work at building them. Building garments is a long process but is quite rewarding. From cutting patterns, cutting fabric from the patterns, pinning, sewing, pressing, and serging, building a garment is no easy feat.
After my garments are built, I typically like to market them. Typically, in the big leagues, prototype garments created and designed by the designers will be sent off to mills to mass-produce (once they are approved by a board of designers for whatever company it would be for). For me, I have no formal retailer to mass-produce for and most of the time, my garments are one-of-a-kind pieces. With the help of my supportive friends, my garments market themselves across the local scene I create and network in, and I am incredibly thankful to get such opportunities.
Maybe one day my designs will hit the “big leagues”, but until then I will remain creating and writing about it in this blog. Thanks for reading! I hope you learned a bit about the fashion design process because of my words.