A successful, that is a financially viable collection requires a great amount of research, investigation and planning. Successful designers, manufacturers and retailers have a clear understanding of their customer and their needs, as well as understanding their position relative to their competition.  

Besides creating the concept of a collection and manufacturing it, one have to consider a range of issues like construction and retail prices, as well as a sufficient customer base. Also, whether the garments are delivered at the right time to the stores and the stores pay for the stock at an agreed time frame. Then, there is a good chance to start a fashion business.

By offering a product that is not currently available, or one with an added value quality, fashion buyers will consider stocking pieces from the collection. If the pieces sell quickly and at the full retail price, the buyer will reorder and replace the stock, or plan to order the following season.

Having all this information in mind, think about ways of creating market demand and stay tuned for further details regarding developing fashion collections. 

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You might also like:

What is a collection

Persuading retailers to stock your designs

One day, I have discovered a pleasant surprise on the Fashionurbia’s Facebook page: a tutorial on how to manipulate various colors and texture effects on your fashion illustrations using Photoshop. It was posted by Chetna Shetty, fashion designer and illustrator from Mumbai, India.

As I found it very useful, I decided to share here the link to the post on her blog, where she describes, step by step, how you can get from here:

To here:

So, have fun! 

One of the most fashionable and debated topics among fashion lovers and sympathizers is how to become a fashion designer. There are those who say that you don’t need to attend a fashion school in order to make your dream come true. And there are those who support the opposite point of view. If you ask me, none of them are wrong. Yet, it’s a matter of personal choice, aspiration and persistence.

I choose the fashion school accompanied by all other means you can only imagine, like self learning, learning by doing, internships, etc.

If you are not sure yet which of the two ways is for you, and even if you do, it’s worth seeing more points of view, and then choose the strategy that fits you best.

Among others, here’s an interesting material that includes some arguments and explanations on this matter.

Which one do you believe is best?

There are numerous techniques for adding a great design to your T-shirt. Paint, dye, color spray or print to make your own innovative textile creations. But, I think that the most adorable and exclusive T-shirts are the ones painted.

So, today I invited artist and illustrator Maryanne Oliver, to write a guest post, an useful guide that will help you to prepare the T-shirt, to choose the correct fabric paint and provide guides and tips to create for yourself the perfect hand painted T-shirt.

Prepare yourself, get your paints and pens ready! It’s time to create something beautiful for you to wear!

In this photo, artist Maryanne Oliver and her amazing illustrations.

* STEP 1 * Choose the materials you’ll need *

• T-Shirt - 100% cotton will get fabulous results, avoid lycra based fabrics for painting.
• Fabric Paints - Invest in a high quality fabric paint. It will make a huge difference. I use Pebeo
• Fabric Pens - I use “Y & C FabricMate” pens
• Thick piece of cardboard
• Paint brushes
• Hair Dryer
• Iron
• Paper Towels
• Piece of scrap fabric - for ironing

* STEP 2 * Prepare your materials and find some inspiration *

Place your shirt on a nice flat surface, with the cardboard placed inside the shirt to allow you to paint on (without paint going through to other side). Select your colors you wish to paint with. I have used black only on this shirt, not only to keep the process simple, but it looks stunning also! Pick out a picture you wish you use or your design for your shirt. It can be a fashion photo from a magazine, a picture, something that you like.

* STEP 3 * Outline a rough sketch on the T-shirt

It’s time to draw a rough sketch of your design or idea on to the shirt, either with a fabric pencil or a lead pencil is fine as you will be painting over it anyway.  Do not be too precious, its just a rough sketch. Pour paints on to your palette ready to go, make sure you water the paint down as much as possible as the lighter the paint the easier it will be to work with and you can always build the tone up as you go along. But it’s better to start light.

Remember don’t be afraid of making mistakes! There are no mistakes in art! You can always cover it up or work around it, so removing that fear from the start will make the process so much more enjoyable and easier!

* STEP 4 * Start to paint the tones and shadows to your sketch *

The most important thing is to not worry about paint spilling during this process. Have your paper towels ready on hand, and if you really are not happy with the paint running then just blotch it hard with paper towels and you will find that will absorb the paint.

Fabric paints watered down will bleed on fabric also, so try to make this work with your design and like I mentioned earlier use the paint lightly. So in small amounts at a time. Use light paint strokes when you are getting started and especially when working on detail on the face. You can load up on paint when you paint the tones and shadows and hair etc. Use light free brush strokes as you paint. Remember what I said about relaxing, this is the key to beautiful brush strokes that flow freely, trust yourself and what you are doing.

* STEP 5 * Dry your painting. Take care of the shadings!

The good thing about a really nice thick piece of cardboard inside the shirt, means you can load up on water and paint as you feel needed. If it gets too wet just dry off with a hairdryer, this is fantastic when you are doing the detail on the face etc, In this way you can take care of your shading, then dry it off and finish the final details without having to wait around or any running of paint.

* STEP 6 * Fix the latest details. Iron the T-shirt.

Your shirt should be starting to look pretty impressive by now! Once all the paint has been dried off you can start to do the final details with your fabric pens. The eyes, nose, detail on the mouth, outer lining and also smaller finishing touches to the hair. Once you have completed all the detail, dry off completely or allow to dry naturally.

After the T-shirt is dried, place your piece of cotton fabric over the top and iron press the shirt to allow the paint to seal further. Once the paint has sealed allow your shirt to sit over night, then iron again the next day.  I always like to hand wash the shirt the next day once all the paint is sealed, and allow shirt to drip dry in the shade. Once dry iron yet again, and your beautiful piece of art will be ready to wear!

Congratulations!

Your shirt is complete and by this time you should feel pretty impressed with yourself. Enjoy!

All photos are copyright Maryanne Oliver

So, dear friend, if you want to try it for yourself, the entire process of painting will take you almost two hours and one day for drying. Then you can wear the beautiful piece.

Thank you my dear Maryanne for your inspiring post! For more fabulous and inspiring artwork of artist Maryanne Oliver check out her website.

Article edited by Iulia Stanescu

You have possibly read about ways or techniques to increase your creativity. I did it, too. But this one, I have experienced myself recently so I decided to share it with you.

You know that sounds, color, smells, tastes, images are able to recall certain memories or states at human beings. So, while working in my class during the fashion drawing for beginners short course at Central Saint Martins in London, they put us several times this song.

After one week, I randomly heard the same song in a different scenery, but I suddenly felt a crazy will to start drawing. I felt a boost of creativity and a will to create.
The same can happen with any kind of set: smell, decor, color.

If you don’t have such a set that could boost your creativity due to previous experience, you can simply create one. If you want it to be a song, train your mind. While working listen for the same song several times. After a while listen again to the same song.

See what happens. Then enjoy your creativity boost!

By Catalina Rusu

The fashion industry is exploding and everyone, it seems, is vying for a part in the action. To get ahead in the business and sit with the ranks of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, you as an aspiring designer should have some of the same qualities as the world’s top designers. Here are some of the qualities you’ll need to succeed as a designer:

1. Strong Business Sense
   A great fashion designer has excellent business skills. You understand budgets, marketing, and sales concepts that are vital to getting designs produced and sold.
2. Good Communication
   A number of people are involved in the creation of a garment, and as designer, you must be able to effectively communicate to everyone involved what he or she expects.
3. Sense of Competition
   You continually strive to do better than your peers to come up with quality innovative designs quickly.
4. Highly Creative
   You have a great sense of style and are constantly coming up with new ideas for fashions.
5. Strong Drawing Skills
   Excellent drawing skills mean you can easily sketch your ideas onto paper to start the production process.
6. Good Eye for Materials
   You have an eye for the materials of a garment, as well as the elements that make it unique, such as color and fabric.
7. Strong Sewing Skills
   You can construct the garments you design. You understand what materials work best in the designs you are developing.
8. Team Player
   Great fashion designers work well as part of a team. Designing a garment for production involves the work of many, from pattern making to sewing to shipping. As designer, you must be able to work well with all involved.
9. Knowledgeable of Current Fashion Trends
   You follows trends and have a good eye for anticipating what your audience will respond to next.
10. Strong Visualization Abilities
    Good fashion designers can visualize a garment before ever putting an idea on paper. You can see the finished product well before production and can put your ideas into words and onto paper so others can grasp the idea as well.

Source: Fashion Schools

by Iulia Stanescu

The beginning. Who are the two pixies?

We are two friends who got tired of searching for the perfect pair of shoes in the colors and the dimensions we wanted and decided to make our own. And, after seeing that people liked the pairs we made for ourselves, we started making shoes for our friends and from that to creating Pixie Shoes was only a step.

Another reason for starting this business was the fact that we were beginning to go over our budget when it came to shoes and the obvious solution was to share our ideas with our customers and incorporate their wishes in our designs.

We both studied at the Academy of Economic Studies, Eva having a degree in Economic Studies in French and she is now studying for a master degree in Marketing, while I studied Statistics and have a Masters Degree in Communication and Public Relations (French).

I am currently working in Market Research for an automobile company while Eva is still studying and managing the administrative part of Pixie Shoes while I try to take care of promoting our story.

What does the creative process look like?

The models are usually a combination of our ideas, the international trends and improvements made after our friends or us test the “prototypes”.

We collaborate with a workhouse and the lovely people from there do their best to transform all our dreams and wishes into palpable reality, that is our design ideas into shoes.

When we want to create a new model the first question we ask ourselves is: “Would we wear this model?”, followed by: “How comfortable would it be?”

Our goals

Pixie Shoes tries to combine in the best possible way the trend, the comfort and to add some color to the grey city. Even though we try to promote high heels, our shoes are very comfortable and once you try them on you will never want to quit wearing them.

We can offer shoes with numbers from 35 to 40, having the possibility, for certain models, to offer also the numbers 34 and 41. For special orders, or more models for the same client we can make a special number.

Another important aspect, the prices are established keeping in mind the materials that are used and of course the manual labor.

Our muse

We are inspired by what would we wear, what we see on the streets, in magazines, in the shops, on fashion sites and blogs. The colors are carefully chosen to make the shoes stand out but not in an aggressive way. We try to make shoes for all women, shoes that can be worn in the office, on the streets and for special occasions. That is why our shoes are very comfortable.

What about selling shoes online?

We know, shoes and selling online may seem an odd association and probably many women don’t dare to order their shoes on the Internet because they are afraid they won’t match the number or their wishes. The big advantage of selling shoes online is the price which one may keep in reasonable ranges taking into account that they are handmade using the best materials. Also, the customers can send us all the details regarding sizes and a footprint so that we can be able to make the perfect shoes for them. If the pair doesn’t match it can be sent back and replaced with the right number.

Promotion

For promoting our shoes we use mainly the online environment, we try to get as many articles about us as possible in the online versions of magazines. We are active on Facebook and Twitter. We are members of the Romanian fashion bloggers community.

In addition, we participate at hand-made and vintage fairs and we have catalogs in a few selected locations.

Another important thing is word of mouth, our friends being our main spokespeople.

Some advices

Although we adore doing this, there are sometimes difficulties we need to surpass. And the fact that we are quite new to this domain and that we prepared for very different careers can sometimes be a minus. However, we learned from our mistakes. We try to prevent them and nothing can beat the feeling of seeing our ideas being appreciated by others. That is the only boost we need for continuing despite the hard parts of the process.

The problem in this business is the fact that there isn’t a textbook to read or a users’ guide to follow its instructions, you have to learn everything the hard way, if I may say so. That’s why I have a few advices for those who want to start designing shoes the way we did:

-      Establish connections with everybody involved and try to maintain them as close as possible.

-      Never assume that somebody thinks like you or can guess what you want: always specify clearly and very detailed your wishes.

-      Lose any trace of shyness you have left in you. You have to talk to everybody and “brag” about your work.

-      Leave your creativity take control and never create anything only if you think it will sell. Create with your soul, people can see beneath the surface of a product and you are trying to sell creativity and hand made goods.

Guest post by Sinziana Nastase, one of the founders of Pixie Shoes.

I was talking about creativity in a previous post and how it applies in fashion. Just bring into fashion concepts, colors, sounds, patterns from outside the fashion.

This is what the Russian designer Tatyana Parfenova did in her latest Spring Summer 2010 fashion collection show in Moscow this week. Besides the fact that she brought a little bit of ballet in fashion, she also made a statement about the deep connection between the Russian contemporary culture and this form of dance.

“She is not the first to replace models with ballerinas - we’ve seen similar approach from the French born NYC based Malan Breton at his last NY fashion week show. Malan mixed the ballerinas with models, creating a surprising effect, while Parfionova chose to stage the entire show as a runway ballet performance.” (Yuli Ziv on Myitthings.com)

By Catalina Rusu