This project was about taking a famous design house and working in groups to have complete creative control of one collection, ours being a/w 15 at J.W Anderson. I decided to be in charge of menswear as this is the area I want to go into in the future. We began the first day by getting into our groups and coming up with our concept based on two quotes we had been given and also discussing what J.W Anderson's aesthetic and design ethos was. We discovered he likes to reject the notions of gender in terms of design and making garments that he likes as oppose to what is deemed appropriate for men. Our group chose the first quote which involved words like broken and essay however it was the word traveller which initiated my idea of using travel but in and around London hence my name choice of our collection, Concrete Traveller. In terms of the colour scheme, we decided to use greys resembling the concrete but with flashes of colour that emulates the neon shop fronts and traffic lights that punctuate London streets. We created a group concept board which can be seen to the right including other motifs we chose to include such as that of safaris and maps. I chose to use elements of the safari style jacket in my designs without referencing it explicitly as I wanted the designs to be dissimilar from what has already been seen before. The use of maps was incorporated within Rosie's patterns along with the use of animal prints but using British and London based animals along with ones found in Africa. My random suggestion of including animals such as pigeons turned out to be quite a strong idea that became a symbol of our collection. After creating our group concept board, everybody moved onto their individual research and so I created an individual concept board for my designs. I first found images of J.W Anderson's menswear so I could get a sense of his aesthetic in order for our collection to look cohesive with his previous collections. My concept board uses found imagery but the majority of London shots were my own as I frequently take images of things that inspire me in my hometown. I also included a few of my favourite images from the designer's menswear collections and also some images of bands that inspire me in terms of style as they do not confine themselves to menswear but draw influence from glam rock and the peacock revolution.
I also decided to place Rosie's prints onto a picture of the designer himself and garments from his previous collections in order to see how they would work with the designs myself and Yasmin (the womenswear designer) had created.
I then did a selection of rough design ideas and further developed them in my sketchbook which lead to my final designs that I then added Rosie's prints to, I also added the prints to Yasmin's final designs as she was unable to do so. Before completing my final designs, I handmade a piece which was inspired by the designs I had already done. Images of this can be seen below:
My final designs with the pattern can be seen below on the mockup of our catwalk which also features my illustrations of the crowd which Sherlaine then enhanced on photoshop:
Along with my design duties, I also took a role in the promotion tasks due to group issues meaning I had to balance both tasks. We decided to give a gift bag out in our presentation, mirroring that which happens at fashion shows, which was actually quite laborious in terms of organisation. We wanted to use brown paper bags which were reminiscent of childhood trips to the sweet shop and so we ordered these from amazon. We also wanted to use luggage tags for our invitations and so we ordered card versions also from amazon however disappointingly these did not arrive in time to be used. The items within the gift bag were sourced by myself and Lewis from the 99p store and these were sweets, crayons, hairbands and fake money. We wanted the bags to humorous and lighthearted with a theme of survival running through, hence the inclusion of the survival guide to London Fashion Week designed by myself and Lewis. The most time consuming part of the gift bags was the filling of them and ensuring they were all equal in their contents. We all (but two group members) came together on this task in order to ensure they were finished in time.
As part of the lookbook that Lewis and Sherlaine created we also included a photo shoot that Iona and Lewis modelled in, that myself and Lewis styled using a mix of our clothes, Sherlaine did the makeup for and Shanice took the photographs. These images can be seen below and we were really happy with the results in terms of styling as they were really in keeping with the aesthetic of J .W Anderson and provided inspiration for my designs.
Iona's accessory designs:
Rosie's patterns:
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