The Process.

So, I interned at Elle this summer for college.
And one question I was asked a lot, from friends and family was - How did you come up with a line? How were you inspired? And how did you design them?

Well, design school obviously teaches you a lot. But this was the first time our designs were actualized. It was actually very fascinating. Because I managed to have a hand in the sourcing (obtaining/buying) of the fabrics and actually sat with the tailors making my pieces, I got to see how things were done on a very detailed, small scale.

Of course, export houses and brands work very differently, each design is actualized hundreds of thousands of times and often, machinery plays a very big part in the assembly and construction. But this was a smaller, more well, intimate date with design for me.

So basically, all design houses/brands tend to receive what we call Forecast Reports/Fashion Forecasts/Trend Analysis for the coming seasons. Many different agencies do it, and it is primarily a set of industry based predictions on where they think the colors and moods of the seasons will go.
After analyzing that, and locking down on what has inspired me, I went on to use that ever so important search engine to look at prevalent trends and what was selling in the market in terms of silhouettes and prints.

This all lead to selection of a theme for my collection.
Mine, was a bohemian summer. I wanted to capture the essence of polaroid pictures taken in the summer, or at the beach, and generally revel in a lot of colour which is QUITE unlike me. Free love, the 70's, texture play and freedom. Drugs, weed and gypsies. Whatever. The mood was happy, lazy and effortless yet chic.

Then, I sat down to design a line. It had to be a set of garments that worked well together, yet appealed to a range of women - not too girly, not too tomboyish. Somewhere inbetween where both would work. And I wanted the pieces to be ones that could be dressed up and dressed down. Blah. Loads of sketching later, I came up with the individual garments for my design.


Then, after the necessary approvals, I got the blessings from the various authorities and went around getting fabrics. Remember, these were only sample pieces, so I didn't have the luxury of getting the fabrics that the company really uses for their designs. They get it from much larger mills and vendors. But more or less, I was able to get some really nice lace, crochet and other little trims for the dresses and tops. And the chiffon/georgette/cotton was easily available too.

So, the part after this gets a tad bit technical. Drafting and Pattern Making and such. And then the actual stitching.
It was a little hard getting them to see the design the way I saw it (you can never really really control that every time, sometimes it comes out better than expected, sometimes not so much). But that's how you learn.


And then at the end of it, I was left with around 8 pieces that I used for my final collection.
I learned a lot, through the internship and through this.

But that is, from conceptualization to creation, how shit went down.