Fashion Design: Process, Innovation and Practice

Fashion design seems to be a glamorous mystery for which only the fortunate few have sufficient talent to succeed. In reality, commercial success can be achieved if the right processes are followed in the early design stages.

Fashion Design shows how the design process can be successfully applied to satisfy market needs and trends. It sets out basic principles and exercises in order to make fashion design a logical process and provides a framework from which you can expand your skills steadily. With its problem solving approach, practical design projects and portfolio exercises, you are encouraged to develop your innovation, experimentation and versatility.

Special attention is paid to computer–aided design (CAD) and employment opportunities, including an overview of what is involved in studying and becoming a designer in the contemporary fashion industry.

FASHION DESIGN:

Uses a problem solving approach to encourage students′ versatility. Shows how to use prediction information, themes, and market level breakdown. Includes a detailed case study that runs throughout the book. Looks at the entire design process, from concept to finished product.

Acknowledgements iii

Contents iv

Preface vi

Introduction 1

Flow chart 2

Analysing the brief 3

Innovation   exercises 5

Developing designs  quick start exercise13

Research 14

Design process 34

Specialist markets 114

Collections 121

Decision making 128

Design using the computer 132

Promotion 138

Promotion – styling 146

The Portfolio 148

Fashion careers 156

Case studies 175

Bibliography 224

Index 225

Kathryn McKelvey is a Reader at Northumbria University, in the School of Design. She teaches drawing and visual communication to Motion Graphics and Animation students, but fashion remains a key component for her own research. Kathryn has worked in the fashion forecasting industry in New York as an illustrator and designer.

Janine Munslow is the head of fashion at Northumbria University. Previously, Janine worked as a fashion and textile designer in London, before setting up her own design label partnership, Guerilla Farm, wholesaling in Europe, USA and the Far East, and with established fashion outlets in London.