At the start of this project I was given the era 1850-1900, I started to gather images of clothing, accessories, household objects and prints from my era that I really liked, picking them for the colours or shapes that were used for each piece. From the clothing images I tried making samples of the techniques that were used, some of these included: smocking, embroidery and shearing.
Next I decided on a print theme that I wanted to take further and explore in a modern way, so I chose the paisley print – I loved that the print had shapes inside shapes and thought that this could be really interesting on garments. I found images of the paisley from my era and also modern examples too. I started to draw some of my own paisley prints and developed these into embroidery samples and digital print. I then started playing with the paisley on the stand and seeing how it would fit onto the body. I really liked the shapes I was creating but still wanted to incorporate some of the Victorian dress shapes into my shirt too.
Whilst researching I found images of knit and crochet from my era and some of the pieces were amazing, after learning to crochet during this project I really wanted to incorporate it into my work, I found some paisley patterns online and tried making them myself. I really liked the outcome of this and decided that this would be my main focus. I made 4 different styles of paisley using multiple colours.
I was also given a shop to consider when designing my 34-piece collection, this was All Saints. I looked into the shop and put together a customer profile. I liked the shapes of the collection and some of the details that I thought made the All Saints brand I incorporated into my designs. I decided to change my colour scheme to fit in with the All Saints collection, as I couldn’t see any of their customers buying my bright paisley!
After my initial designs I made my 34 pieces in illustrator as flat drawings, I found this hard as I hadn’t used the programme much before and learning how to use all of the tools was difficult! Once I had got the hang of it I really enjoyed putting my garments together and I was so pleased with the finished pages! I used colour to show my crochet garments so that they looked different to the others and added crochet samples next to each one.
From these I put together my 6 outfits choosing my best pieces, I did my illustrations of these in Photoshop – I loved adding the colour and fabrics to these as it really brought my designs to life! I am very happy with the colour scheme that I have picked as I think it complements the garments and All Saints well.