Cut21 -- Part 2 -- Concept and Consumer

I know I said I'd do the jacket post first, but then I remembered that I have a some work to show you first.

Consumer

Those among you who are fashion students or professionals will know that we have to have a consumer pinpointed. If no one wants to wear our product then there's no point in making it. We make a consumer board and profile.

Consumer Board

Consumer Profile

If I have done it right, you should be able to get a good idea of who my consumer is and what she likes by looking at the board above. Now, I am aware that I ought not to have labeled it "consumer board"; I did it because I wanted it to be quite clear that it is not a mood board, and that is hard to tell with your own work because you see it differently.

Name: Lily James (I just realised that they are Harry Potter's parent's names)

Age: 27

Profession: Minimalist Photographer

Lives in: London, but travels

My consumer is a minimalist who lives in the City so she gets around by bicycle. This has been taken into consideration with the features of the designs.

If I tell you any more than that it might affect my originality rating on my submitted work, so I'll leave it there until I get my grades. :)

Fabrics and Colours

Fabrics Board (Please forgive the blurry image; it was taken on my phone on the last day of college.)

Above is my fabrics board. I think it's my best yet. It's definitely different from the others. Somehow the hand-writing doesn't have the effect I wanted it to (hand-work against neatness); it just looks a bit unprofessional. The fabrics are stitched on. Thankfully excessive neatness was not required for my concept. :)

As you may see, all the fabrics have texture to them, and some are hand-loom. Those that aren't are from France.

We went to Paris to get our fabrics

It is the best place to get fabrics and notions! They had a whole section of a wall just for buckles and buttons! In England I am lucky to find three different buckles in a shop. I think we have the edge on customer service though. Maybe it's a cultural difference and I'm just not use to the French ways, but I found some of the sales assistants unhelpful and rude. Only some of them though. There were, of course, some very nice ones. The waiters in the restaurants and cafés are delightfully cheerful there. :)

The fabric shopping is incredible! You can find almost anything! It was so good that some of us were talking of relocating after college! :)

Charlie got her black denim there. She had tried and tried to get it in England to no avail and was so excited to get her lovely black denim. She also got some burnt orange linen for her shirt.

Alice found "the button" that inspired her collection's final designs, and fabrics to go with it. (Imagine how excited she was when we found an exhibition will over 900 different buttons!)

I got my shirting, linen, and bias binding. If I remember correctly, it totted up to about €75. The shirting is unfortunately polyester, but it was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted. I had planned to use Khadi Cotton but it was too similar to the linen I got for the jacket. I wanted a heavier weight for the jacket, nothing affordable was quite right. So I worked with what I could get. (I said you could find almost anything.)

The denim I got was 11oz Indigo denim from Merchant and Mills. It's so nice to work with! It's soft, it eases round curves for felled seams, and it's a good weight for jeans. It's just so nice! Especially after working with calico.

Next we'll get onto the jacket. :)

Sabrina