Here is a copy of my little journal with my details that I have sketched out for the beginning of the Golden empress Peony jacket. As I said earlier, this is going to be the beginning of the design process to make this little jacket, and a break down of the design process that will go into it’s inception and execution! I am sounding a business like here, because I am a bona fide designer with the letters after my name to prove it. I tend to take this stuff seriously (well, not too seriously). I have decide that I am going to turn this jacket into a pattern that I will develop with my sister into a commercial product to sell. So not only will you get to see the jacket grow, but you will see what steps we take to get the pattern out and sold, and how we go about building our little, tiny, wee business into something hopefully a bit bigger, with customers, and everything!Okay sport fans, we’re off! How did I decide what to do and how do the professional alteliers and studios decide to do what they do. Firstly, the big guys. Everything is finely controlled, it’s nuts, everything is planned out normally 18 months to 2 years in advance. The shortest time being 12 months. Trends and colours are determined by a central body in Paris, which then filters down through every part of the industry until it hits the studios. So everyone is told what the look is going to be, what colours to use, and what inspired those choices.This is all good if you earn over a million dollars a year and lick stamps three times a day instead of eating. It’s also why every season everything looks the same. And no matter how ugly something is, you’re bound to see fifty other really ugly things just like it. Then there is the whole issue about just who has knitted the sweater you are wearing, and if a dollar a garment is enough for someone in a sweat shop or in another country to live on (I am being serious here, the out worker situation in the fashion biz is nothing short of an international disgrace).I just thought the other day when I posted that I would like to make something for my girl. So I asked her what colour she wanted and what she wanted on it, and that’s it. There’s a cafe au’lait drinking Maurice Chevalier in Paris at the moment twitching and he doesn’t know why. Huzzah! Vive le jo design! Anyhoo, so I got my design brief, which was :”Yellow mine favourite color mama, me like it. Me want woses and wosey tea too mummy, me like it.” And I have to say that it has to be one of the most direct design briefs I have ever been given.I knew right away that it would have Chinese styling, my baby is from China, so style is sorted out. Now comes the hard part, she told me what she wanted, and it would look silly on a chinese style sweater to have motifs that look like they have come from a spread in “Town & Country”. So I hit the net and some of my books. I made a rough sketch in my journal and made a couple of notes about motifs so I could see how it would roughly look. That’s what I have got here for you to see. Now what I am going to do, is add some colour to the sketch and start getting the feel for the motifs right. Next post I’ll tell you why I made a wee change in the “woses” and what else I have decided to add to the piece. I may also get my sense of humour back as well, assuming I get a full night sleep.Ashford Joy = pending
