LFW day four was buzzing with fashion'sis'tas aswell as fashion'he'stas. Amongst the colourfully arrayed ladies that love to show their favourite garments, where also the boys. They equally came out to play boy!
Topshop's instore label Unique gave us a behind the scenes preview of the day to day run of how the role of a design team comes to fruition. Holly, who works with the outstanding, edgy, fun and freestyle label, gave Topshop customers a brief insight into the 'Evolution of a collection' - which is Topshop Unique. the grueling, yet worthwhile design teams work schedule is as follows. So for those of you that are keen to get into this chaotic world of fashion, read on.
1. Decide on your 'inspiration'.
2. Head designer decides on a 'theme'.
3. Most teams design for core product, which basically are: -
- Knitwear
- Jeans
- Dresses
- Trousers
But unique are free to design a mixture of core products themselves. The ultimate freestylers!
4. Next one needs to put in much leg work researching from blogs, (such as this), vintage, inspiration fromaround the world, observaing with a click of the camera, cultures, fashions, festivals, markets, to collate ideas to inspire the teams ideas and themes.
5. Now once all of the above is completed a package is put togehter and the weekly meetings begin and the designs start to take their shape - well almost.
6. Once the package, including samples of material, prints etc, called swatches are decided upon, Head stylist and blog editor for Unique. Katie Grand, is given the great go ahead another team from Topshop inhouse is called upon - bring on the print and cutting teams.
7. The print team put togehter the colour palette and prints. Style/design contributions also are made by the fabric developers. They say what they want and why.
8. once the design is done the inhouse cutting department get to work putting together the garments and Katie, head designer will give ok as to the fit, casting of models, make-up, hair and other accessories that create the totall package that is 'Unique's Style designs.
9. Finally a team pick a venue and invite the press to view.
Hey presto - you have a show, locked and frocked!
Get through all of that and you can exhale with a mighty grin and say i made it to and through faswion week, now for the next. And on and on the circle goes. The entire process takes about six months to prepare in advance.with lots of luck, buyers and money in the bank!
Eg.s of this can be seen below in photos I took from the seminar. On the board you can see swatches of the pattern, colours and textures that were chosen for 'Unique's LFW catwalk show at Billingsgate on Sun 20th Feb 2011.
The final dress as you can see was a funky, bright, swarovsky crystalled dress, which is amazing. One could imagine the flow of this loose garment, with a place front attached aswell as the glitter from the crystals as the model sashed down the runway. Indeed giving it a disco feel, as stated by Holly.
Check out MORE of my photos for the day, leave comments as they are most welcome. I will be in full attendance at the LFWend, so I hope to light your path to some of the most heavenly designs from the finale on Sunday night. So keep checking for more of my fshionable fantasies.
Below is the back view BCF main tent for show.
More phots to eye and wave a flag to LFW.
Ms Glamourpluss always looking for fun, edgy, classy and of course MORE styles for your fashion files!
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