First Menswear Collection!

Currently I’m sitting in class trying to find inspiration to design the most important collection to conclude my second year in studying fashion design. However, this blog post is actually about my first ever menswear collection that I’ve been working on for the past one month! I thought I’d reflect upon the collection that I’ve just designed and share it here.

Speaking about one month, it’s been a little over a month since I’ve put up my last blog post…this is terrible! I need to get back to the blogging game and keep this going (note-to-self).

Enough of rambling, let’s get straight to the menswear collection!

Let’s just say, designing menswear clothing isn’t my cup of tea. Since this semester is all about menswear I’m trying really hard to understand how the production and creation of menswear works. Firstly, construction and design wise, menswear is very different to womenswear. The design elements and production methods differ greatly, which is a little hard to adapt to since for the past year and a half we have solely designed womenswear. In order to design this collection, we were already provided with the fabric samples. So, we had to work around them and come up with a suitable theme and concept that would complement the fabrics.

Here they are:

Upon looking at the fabrics, I thought of a concept that revolved around time travel. The inspiration of this concept primarily came from John Varvatos’ Fall 2011 Collection, which emphasized mutability and adjusting to a new lifestyle. After a few discussions with my lecturer, I was advised to also look into steampunk fashion. Thus, the designs that were developed from there are a fusion of steampunk and time travel.

To have chosen the final three looks of the collection wasn’t easy. We drew over 150 designs and constantly received constructive criticism from our lecturer. Menswear is ALL about the details. It’s not like womenswear, where different style lines, embellishments and trimmings can do the trick. The subtle features is what makes designing menswear successful. And that was the challenge. Finding those subtle, minimalistic details that would bring your designs to another level.

Another one of my “firsts” towards putting together this collection was using Adobe Photoshop to draw the fashion illustrations. The process of digitally illustrating was interesting and fun. You get to experiment with skin color, hair color, shading, saturation levels, fabric aesthetics and a lot more because you always have the option to undo something you dislike. Whereas, hand drawn illustrations don’t give you this opportunity. I would definitely want to venture on learning more about illustrating digitally!

Here’s the practice illustration I made in class when we were taught how to illustrate on Photoshop. 

The production of this collection begins this week. We will be creating one look from the three designs presented during our critique. So, the designs that are picked for me are outerwear and shirt from Look 1 and trousers from Look 2. Let’s see how the production process goes…One thing that scares me the most are the bazillion zippers I’ll be sewing! Eeks, tsk, tsk.

To see the full designed collection, here it is:

Anachrotech Menswear Collection Mood/Story Board

Anachrotech Menswear Collection Looks