Fashion Design , 101.......

Excited and Honored.  How else can I sum up what I feel about being asked, for a second year, to guest teach at Vacaville High School, in Vacaville, within the Home Economics program. Currently being taught by Patti Taylor, an alumni of UC Davis herself,  Patti allowed me to develop a 6- week curriculum in which I introduce the concept of design in the fashion world to students who are being taught the construction end of the desing process.

Design requires more than just the technical end of producing any given product, "x", but also an inspiration of content and form, with form following function.

Starting with the idea of the designers, I instruct the class on how designers start by observing the world, getting inspiration for future collections from past fashion trends, cultures, and street style.  Keeping a croquis book and scrapping any source of inspiration such as colors, textures, or lines, a designer is constantly thinking and collection inspirational data. 

I then break up the class into design "teams", in which the members are required to develop a design "house" label, and go though current and older Vogue magazines where they cut and collect any source of inspiration- color palettes of make up, jewelry, detailing, etc.  From there, I have the teams mutually agree upon what would be a line based on color and form, and to be sure that there is continuity in the look.  We then glue these clippings onto a design/ presentation board and call it their "collection" inspiration.

Handing out to them a fashion-form sketch and tracing paper, each team member is required to draw and design, with fine tip black markers and colored pencils ,between 3 to 5 outfits that work within the boundaries of their collection.  5 designs earn them an "A", 4 a "B",  and so on... Students were required to pay attention to details, such as making sure their sketches have accessories....handbags, shoes, hats- whatever makes the design complete. We would take paint chips from hardware stores and collage them onto the designs to outline the color palette that the designs would be produced in.

The team is then required to make up a marketing plan in which they determine WHO their target market is, WHAT the pricepoints would be based on fabrication and details, and WHERE they would sell their line at.

I required the teams to look at labels and how actual designers use branding , down to fonts, to represent and sell the name appropriately.  I encouraged them to look at the choice of curvy fonts for "Victoria's Secret", for example, and why that font is much more suited to what they sell, then, let's say "Times New Roman". From that point, they made actual labels thast would be attached to all their lines.

What came out of these young students was amazing and inspiring in itself.....

See for yourself.....