I have never really had any problems coming up with ideas, getting round to doing them is another matter. I do think it really helps how my brain is wired however I think I can teach you this so lets try that today.
In the past I have laughed and said "I could get inspired from a crack in the pavement" so today that's just what I'm going to do. I've taken a photo I took of a dirt track and will use this to inspire some ideas for a fashion design.
OK, lets dissect this photo of the dirt-track on the left. The colour alone is not inspiring me so I will now look at the composition for inspiration.
The first thing that I like is the way the bricks are pushing through the sandy, stoney 'cement'. That makes me instantly think about a design where one element is forcing its way out of another layer on an outfit.
Now I turn to the scattering of random shaped pebbles which compared to the strong brick shapes are softer. So I like the juxtapose of the strong fabric next to a weaker, lighter fabric and now I'm thinking about different types of fabrics I could use in my design.
I can also see top right a grey area that looks like a tyre mark which makes me instantly think of McQueen's work ( below) and I may think about including this cross hatch pattern in my design.
I will now go ahead and sketch some designs from the ideas I have explored out of the subject matter.
The design bit I cant teach you directly but you will begin to see how you can get inspiration from using something we all have - our eyes !!
I truly believe you can get an idea from anything at all so keep your eyes and your mind open and the sheets of a sketch book or have a camera always to hand to document something you love the aesthetic of. I describe this as building up your own 'visual alphabet' and something I would be happy to
expand on in another post.
So here is what I came up with straight off the bat. Three items:-
1) a sleeveless, collarless gilet in black Italian wool that crosses over and has a peplum essentially cut into heavy strips (interfaced a lot for strength) so they don't curl ( these were inspired by the shape of the bricks in the dirt-track photo.
2) I have echoed this in the shape of the collar on a crisp white balloon sleeve shirt which represents the white pebbles in the photo and is a softer juxtapose to the heavy black wool as inspired from the photo - heavy and light.
3) a two layer full skirt in tulle that pushes through the split peplum like the stones in the photo did, one layer the sandy colour found in the dirt-track photo and then black tulle over this to dilute the colour, I will also potentially look for a black tulle with a cross-hatch pattern which will tye in with the tyre pattern I saw.
Now Bobs your uncle, Fannys your Aunt.....hope you are inspired ???
Go on now you give it a go........
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