Group B (Alice Chan, Lauren Davis, Anya Bailey, Emily Otchie)

In the DKNY collaborative brief, as a group we decided to take on a sportswear approach, capturing the youthful feel of the brand. Our customer is a 25 year old, working in the marketing department of a fashion company. As a typical city girl, she gets the subway every day and goes to the bar for cocktails after work. Her life is extremely busy, matching the fast paced environment of New York.  Lastly of course she is very active; jogging every morning, walking the dog and playing basketball in her spare time. Thus she prefers comfortable yet stylish outfits for her daily wear.

Having a sports look, we automatically considered elastic, drawstrings, mesh and loose, oversized garments. We were particularly drawn to the use of mesh, especially as one of the members of the group looked into sports trainers as an initial inspiration for the project. To take this further, I went to Dover Street Market to conduct some market research where I discovered the Commes des Garcon range. In this range, Comme des Garcon incorporates intelligent pattern cutting and complex panelling with mesh insertions as a reoccurring design feature. We really like the idea of the mesh insertions and therefore decided to bring this into our collection.

Individually, we all started off looking at different concepts. I researched into The Crysler building in New York which then led me to look at Art Deco designs, visiting the V&A for some primary research. I also took a vintage garment as a starting point where I analysed its construction. Two prominent features of the garment stood out for me; the draping work on the sides of the garment and the gathered pleats at the back.

I went on to create samples by using the same draping and pleating techniques and by looking at the shapes of some of the Art Deco images that I researched. To develop these samples into fashion designs, I experimented with different placements of them on the mannequin. Furthermore, I used some of my Art Deco research images and played around with them in the form of collage.

 

The two samples that I made are one of the elements that feature in our lineup. However as well as this, we also needed some textile based ideas. This is where the knitters in the group came in. Emily created a striped knit sample which looked very sporty, matching our sportswear concept.  We ended up using the colours in her sample as our main colour palette as we liked the combination of the colours that she used. On the other hand, Lauren made an innovative sample where she incorporated mesh with knit. We really liked this sample and it became one of the main motifs in our range.

In the design selection, it was decided that our twelve looks will be oversized with big silhouettes and no bodycon garments. This came out successful, although Paul would like to see an even more oversized look. Blue and grey are the key colours that we used with highlights of neon pink. Paul liked this idea especially pointing out the down jacket which was all white except for a strip of pink zip showing through. Our collection as a whole was too overly designed because we tried to include a bit of everyone’s work into it. Paul also wasn’t very keen on our illustration of the customer and said that it was too distracting, maybe because of the cartoon-like appearance of it. He stated that we should have kept it simple by using Cara’s face.

The most successful of our work were our textiles samples, which including a padded knit sample and a sample made with padding with stitching decoration on the surface. These were the ones that Paul particularly liked and adviced us to feature them in our range. In addition, he liked the New York Skyline drawing that we used as a front cover of our presentation folder. This was an original drawing done by Lauren and Paul suggested that it could have worked as a print on a basic t-shirt design.