A Bright Future

As many of you might know, I studied fashion design for a while. During the fall semester of 2011, I was working on a seven-piece collection for school, but I was unable to finish it because I was working and taking classes at two different schools—full time. Recently, however, I unearthed my notebook full of designs for the collection, and I thought I would share them with you.

Just to give you some context, at the time I was working on a collection for the spring fashion show at Salt Lake Community College. I went there after high school to study general education so I could transfer somewhere else later, but I ended up getting sucked into the fashion design classes. By the time I finally transferred to Westminster College, I almost had enough credits to graduate with an associate’s degree in fashion design.

Each year the spring fashion show has a theme that everyone must follow, and this year’s was “speed”. I was really confused and panicked at first (classic Kathleen). It sounded way too esoteric to work. Then it just made me think I would have to end up making clothing for raves with special built-in compartments for meth. Eventually, I started listening to my professor as she explained that the Utah Museum of Fine Arts was installing an exhibit—at the same time the fashion show was going on—with a bunch of beautifully designed cars called Speed. Suddenly, things started to click.

Jaguar XK–SS from the Speed home page.

I played with a few ideas. I started out thinking that James Bond exemplified speed beautifully and I pulled a bunch of material off of the internet of Astin Martins and Bond Girls, but none of them were very inspiring.

A beautiful man with an equally beautiful car. When they brought the original Astin Martin out in Skyfall, I just about fainted.

I also looked at a lot of pictures of time-lapse photography of large cities, but that didn’t take me very far either.

Time-lapse in Vietnam.

Finally, I realized that I had a perfect idea already. For a long time, I had an idea in mind for a collection that was very futuristic. I already had sketches of ideas in a sketchbook, and I had a lot of inspiration from the show Doctor Who (yeah, I know, I’m a nerd).

Here is how I started out:

I initially got this idea from a song. (Positive Contact by Deltron 3030)



It made me think of things like nebulas like this one since I was taking an astronomy class at the time (I think it is being viewed with infrared radiation, but don’t quote me on that).

I also turned it into a textile in Photoshop.

I started to look for futuristic-looking images of space travel.

I think this is Appolo 11, but yet again, I'm not 100% sure.

I looked up pictures of The Doctor and some of the monsters from Doctor Who. I also loved the idea of using “Tardis Blue” (Pantone 2955C). It is kind of a trendy color this year—I even have a coat that is almost that color.

William Hartnell, the original Doctor.

And pictures of Rockstars like Freddy Mercury and the men from Muse (particularly Matthew Bellamy; he dresses the best).

I loved this guy's personality! I also loved the Jacket.

Muse is my favorite band. I particularly like the way that its members dress.

And I came up with these ideas:

This was a reworking of a previously existing piece. I only had a pencil on me before I threw the other one out, so it didn't get illustrated like the others, but you get the idea. The top was going to be made out of an electric blue/green iridescent taffeta and the center panel was going to be black dupioni. The skirt would've been made of the most amazing Vera Wang, silver lamé I have ever seen; I picked it up at Mood Fabrics in LA.

These looks are pretty straightforward. I found some beautiful, black lace with a great geometric pattern for the yokes on the center look and the center look in the illustration below, but I never found suitable silver lace for the dress and skirt on the left. The corset would've been made out of leather, but I think I would re-do this one if I got the chance. I've considered scrapping the look on the right and doing another look with pants, but it'll survive for now.

The men's look on the left needs A LOT of work. You can see some of the ideas that I had for re-doing it. The center look is one of my favorites, and it was the first thing I designed in this collection. The right look was pretty fun to work on. It has the same lamé as the skirt at the top, but there would be leather piping. The pants would have lamé piping. And of course, the men would be wearing converse sneakers as a shout-out to the tenth Doctor.

Understand that these are INCREDIBLY rough ideas and INCREDIBLY rough drawings (I drew them on a plane, thank you very much), and the menswear looks need A LOT of fine-tuning. I still want to work on it and develop it, but that will come when I have more time—the collection is in dire need of some scarves and trench coats.

I’m a little bummed out, however, because some of the ideas I had for this, like lace yokes and Tardis Blue elements, are really popular all of the sudden. I was working on these ideas back before they caught on. Oh well. It probably won't be the last good idea I ever have.

By the way, if you want to see a mood board I'm working on for this, look at my Pinterest page here.

Thanks for not stealing my work!

UPDATE: I’m not writing on Blogger much anymore, but if you would like to follow me and my writing, please sign up through the form below, and also please consider a free or paid subscription. I’d love to see you over at The Charrette. I'll still keep writing things on here, but mostly as a way to keep all of you updated on what's going on with my career currently. You can read more about it here. 

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