Styling options

Thought I would try out some hats for the styling of the Kinetic Fashion parade.

Interactive Clothing

I found this T-shirt online. I could not find who it was by but I did find a website where they give you step by step instructions on how to make one. It is a T-shirt with a car track on it designed so that an adult can lie down and the children can play cars on the back. 

This is designed to be fun for the kids and give a massage for the adult. This is a simple yet great example of clothing designed for children to interact with.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Potential Consumer

Orlando Higginbottom, known professionally as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (TEED), is an English electronic dance music record producerand DJ.

I think that Orlando could be one of my consumers. His clothing is out there. It is fun yet sophisticated.

Walter Van Beirendonck

Walter Van Beirendonck (Brecht, 4 February 1957) is a Belgian fashion designer. He graduated in 1980 from the Royal Arts Academy in Antwerp. Together withDirk Van Saene, Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee (graduated in 1981) and Dirk Bikkembergs (graduated in 1982) they became known as theAntwerp Six.

Since 1983, he issues his own collections. They are inspired by the visual arts, literature, nature and ethnic influences. His unusual color combinations and a strong graphic influence are characteristic for his collections.

Walter also designs for a children's collection called ZULUPAPUWA for JBC. His range of creative and artistic talents shines when it comes to children, as he constructed a reclining teddy bear chair that was close to thirty feet long incorporating a change room, so that he could display and sell his childrenswear. 

His work speaks of his passion for life. Often, his exhibits offer a message about his views on social issues. What is great, though, is that the displays are fun in nature. The message is important, but you can get someones attention without being too deep and morbid.

Sophisticated Prints

My graphic designer also produced some prints with a more sophisticated colour-way.

These colours were based on the current trends that she found through designers such as Marc Jacobs and Paul Smith

Collaboration with graphic designer - Dinah Pollard

I met with Dinah Pollard a graphic designer at ZOO Advertising to help collaborate with me for my fabric designs.

I informed Dinah of what I am trying to achieve with the prints whilst also showing her some of my designs.

Dinah was happy with my original print designs but thought that some of the colour combinations needed some work.

Dinah thought that it would be best to create vibrant colourful prints to reflect the imagination of the child and also to achieve promotional designs.

Together we sat down and worked out my colour-way and tried to refine my prints. Below are the prints that we came up with:

Mambo Graphics

Mambo. It's fresh, colourful, ever changing and sometimes rude. 

The founder of the label, Dare Jennings, commissions artists to do work to be reproduced on Mambo fabrics. The artists include a famous maker of ceramics and jewellery (Gerry Wedd), a pop star from the band Mental as Anything (Reg Mombassa) and a cartoonist (Matthew Martin). Their art features surreal suburban landscapes populated by vomiting dogs, horned bulls, boxy fibro houses and Australian insects such as Bogong moth

Their prints are iconic and very successful. Below are some examples of prints which I think are highly inspirational. They work very well as they represent the Mambo brand and can stand out in the crowd.

Flight of the Conchords - Feel Inside (and stuff like that) + Interviews

Flight of the Conchords have used children as inspiration to write a song for charity. This video is a great example of the amazing ideas that can come out of children's imagination. 

Sophisticated Colour Combinations

Looking at some more sophisticated colour combinations that are currently on trend in menswear.

ANCA Gallery - My Favourite...

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Fabric Design.

Below are the beginning designs of my prints. I have used the children's drawings and created them in Illustrator. The repeat patterns were designed by just moving the images around until I created a pattern which worked. I am happy with the majority of the prints. 

After seeking feedback I am now going to collaborate with a graphic designer to work on colourways, scale and communication of the prints. This is a way to improve the designs and create something that will flow with my concept of creating fun sophisticated menswear.

London Men's Fahion Week

London Men's Fashion Week has produced exciting menswear pieces in 2012. Below are a selection which I have found inspiring and whom are doing great things for menswear. Digitally printed fabrics are a trend as well as contrasting colours and materials.

Digital Fabric Printing

I am looking at digital fabric printing for my collection in stage 6. I have searched around online and sourced feedback from people whom have sourced digitally printed fabrics and the two companies below are what seem to be the most affordable and viable for my collection. I found also that ANU school of arts also print digitally on fabrics which could be an option I explore further as it could be useful being located in Canberra.

DFP were my first initial source as they do student prices and I already have access to their fabric samples here at school. However, they only print onto synthetic fabrics. There is one option the canvas, which could work well for my collection.

I then came across Spoonflower after speaking with Cohen from Zoo Advertising. They are located in America but they are at least half the price of anyone I found here in Australia. Cohen has informed me that they are very professional and their turnaround is very fast. The great thing about Spoonflower is that they print onto a wide variety of natural fabrics. Also if you design your own print you automatically get a 10% discount. I think this option will work well for me this semester. Although it is a risk ordering fabrics from overseas I believe that if I get my designs to them in the next few weeks they will be here in time for me when I start on my final garments. 

I also think it would be a good idea to also work with both companies to compare them both and work with both natural and synthetic fabrics.