Range Planning: From Ideas To Inspiration For A Men’s Casual Line

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blog, bold prints, brand consultant, colorboard, fashion blog, fashion blogger, fashion brand, Fashion Business, fashion consultant, fashion designer, fashion trends, growing demand for streetwear in 2019, inspiration, linear stripes, Men's fashion, mensstyle, mood board, printboard, range planning, street fashion, Street wear trend spotting, street wear trends, Streetwear, Streetwear trend spotting, stripes print

In the previous blog, we discussed range planning and how inspiration boards, color palettes, and sketches can be used in sequence to design a women’s clothing line. This week, we see how the same process can be used to come up with the men’s line.

Fashion designers have superpowers. One of those powers is creativity, while the other is the ability to break creativity down into a process. The most crucial superpower is the ability to find this inspiration and make something of it even before the trend actually hits the shelves.

Without further ado, it is time to exercise some of those powers!

Part 1: The mood board

This is perhaps the single most abstract element in the entire design process. While color and print boards represent those attributes respectively, mood boards reflect what the collection feels like. While designing the mood board, it is worth asking yourself some of these questions:

• What is the objective my mood board wants to achieve?
• What are some key inspiration points for my range?
• What unique ideas am I implementing with this mood board?

The last question is fundamental because we often generalize collections based on the season. For example, summer and men may always mean nautical stripes and pastels. However, adding in a unique element, such as the fact that many people also travel in summers can bring in a new feature to the range. For our casual athletics range, the mood is athleisure. This range is for those people who love being sporty and being outdoors but also don’t take themselves too seriously. A bomber jacket over tracks takes them from the gym to the streets in next to no time. The mood is casual, carefree, outdoorsy and charming.

Part 2: The color board

The color board, as the name suggests, is a collection of at least five colors you’d like to see represented in your range. Picking out colors is heavily dependent on the theme. For our casual athletics theme, we chose urban, outdoor colors like shades of brown, grey and green.

How do we come up with these colors? You can save images of clothes you like and use a digital color picker to identify the different shades. You can also use the Pantone color guide to spot the exact tone you’re looking for. Moreover, you can also use color mapping tools to help you pick colors that complement all others.

In any case, be sure to pick at least five base colors and two shades for each color that you’d like to work with.

Part 3: The print board

If there is one street trend that is taking over the world, it is the idea of prominent prints in menswear. Small, inconspicuous origami doves are giving way to large, placement prints and even outfits that are printed all over. Neon highlights are an excellent option for the colors we have chosen, as are geometric prints and stripes in a variety of sizes.

Part 4: The concept board

This is the stage at which all of your work comes together. A concept board is centered primarily around the main sketch it represents. The sketches themselves are inspired from all of the other boards and incorporate aspects from each of them.

 Around the sketch are images of what the style would look like in real life as well as the primary colors that make up that particular outfit. Long jackets are the staple in our range, keeping with the global trend and K-pop sensation. Our pants are loose, drawstring and aimed at people who want to move freely. It is both casual and athletic, perfect for today’s city dweller.

From here, the sketches are followed by choosing the fabric and picking the colors that closely match your original palette. This is followed by designing a few prototypes which then go into manufacture.

What is your menswear design inspiration this time around? How are you using the range planning process to come up with the collection?

Tell us in the comments. Need a hand? Book a 30 mins free session for an in-depth consultation and help with range planning.

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer and Brand Consultant helping fashion brands to create great products from idea to launch. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

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Range Planning: From Inspiration To Product For A Women’s Clothing Line

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#moodboard, blog, bold prints, brand consultant, colorboard, fashion blog, fashion blogger, fashion brand, Fashion Business, fashion consultant, fashion designer, fashion trends, growing demand for streetwear in 2019, inspiration, linear stripes, mood board, printboard, range planning, street fashion, Street wear trend spotting, street wear trends, Streetwear, Streetwear trend spotting, stripes print

Planning well is a job half done, the saying goes. For most professions needing creativity, it is hard to pin down a process. We don’t often know whether the inspiration comes first or the process. However, having a linear process in place is useful for those occasions when the time is short and it is imperative that you get results in a short period.

Under such circumstances, a process keeps you from losing track and helps you come up with styles that can actually work in stores.

In today’s article, we talk about range planning from start to finish- from the mood board to the final sketches. We will take you through each step and give you tips on making that step work for you, for a women’s clothing line.

1. The Inspiration:

With a whole host of fashion weeks and their accompanying streetwear trends behind us, there is no shortage of inspiration to choose from. For this collection, our theme is Modern Fairytales. In the literal sense, this theme is all about making a strong, bold statement. Empowerment is the word, as stories like Moana and Brave have shown us in recent times. Moreover, tulle as a fabric is in vogue because it is so easy to pair with absolutely anything to create a look of your own.

Pinterest is a powerful tool for gathering all of your inspiration in one place. Create a separate board for each inspiration path that you want to follow, and start gathering material around it.

2. The Moodboard:

We’re feeling whimsical, but we’re also looking at functionality. Textured earrings are just a reference point for things that are both practical and statement-making. For flowing fabrics with a hint of sheer, it is only right that we use as many pastels as possible. Flowy silhouettes and interesting detailing add to the magical feeling. The overall mood of this collection is telling a story that is aspirational and good to have. We all want to be a Disney Princess, even if it is just a little bit!

Use adjectives to describe the mood of your collection. Print them out in big, bold letters. Find reference images for the ideas you’re trying to express. You can read more about designing a moodboard here. 

3. The Colorboard:

Pastels rule the collection, and we love all shades of nature, muted just a bit. Think clouds, the sky on a damp morning, powder pinks, blues, and yellows, off-white. These colors are just about there- not too jarring, not to mute. They have a subtle, graceful voice of their own, and boy do they get heard!

Make the most of the colors you want to incorporate-choose five- and adapt them into all of your ensembles.

4. The Printboard:

What’s life without a few prints? Everyday ensembles are brought to life with a dash of prints. We’ve seen everything from doodles to emojis and retro themes find their place in the sun. For our Modern Fairytales collection, we’ve chosen stripes and checks. These linear elements help us add every day, friendly vibe to clothing and give us a chance to bring in some versatility into the collection. In fact, plain outfits are very often paired with printed ones, so you need to think carefully about what your prints represent.

Choose a print based on how it blends with your colors and ideas. For example, a floral theme for this collection would have made it too feminine, which is not what we’re looking for in everyday wear and functional designs. Likewise, you need to decide what these prints represent to you and your audience.

5. The Ensembles:

Now, if we’ve done our job well, we should have clothes! We’ve created three ensemble sketches basis our inspiration, and we feel like these designs would be run(a)way hits.

Ensemble 1 :

In the first ensemble, the focus is on creating volume at the bottom and balancing it out at the top. The pastels stand out better because of darker shades, and the ruffles make this outfit perfect for Friday workwear, lunches, evening meet-ups and even for traveling long distances.

Ensemble 2 :

The second one is a personal favorite because an asymmetric hemline is not for the faint of heart. Add peplum to the mix, and we’re taking it one notch higher. We’re thinking of a warrior-princess who conquers the world with her attitude, and of course with her clothing.

Ensemble 3 : 

The third and last image is power dressing in all its essence- stylish, comfortable and full of utility. Culottes are in- in fact, we don’t know why they took so long to take off in the first place! A culotte jumpsuit with frills is the perfect urban dream. A hoodie adds to its streetwear appeal and is very, very suggestive of Red Riding Hood. For us, this is Once Upon A Time with a generous helping of happily ever after.

Which design inspiration are you going with for your women’s wear collection?

Need a hand? Book a 30 mins free session for an in-depth consultation and help with range planning.

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer and Brand Consultant helping fashion brands to create great products from idea to launch. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

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Creating A Successful Fashion Brand

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design team, fabrics, fashion, fashion brands, Fashion Business, fashion illustrations, fashion labels, fashion sketches, freelance fashion designer, mood board, pre-production samples, Product design, product development, proto, selling price, Size sets, Supriya Ghurye, technical designer

Image courtesy : http://www.imodae.com

Today, several professionals from domains other than fashion choose to set up an apparel or accessories business when they look for a switch in careers.

However, starting and running a fashion label is no child’s play. For one, consistency is important as a certain form of apparel attracts and retains customers with specific preferences. Then, there is the actual design process itself. Moreover, you need to make careful choices about every aspect of business such as operations, production and sales.

Given all these elements, is there a way to streamline the process of creating and running a fashion label? We say yes! This article helps you understand some of the basics.

1. What Is Your Plan?

All those adages about failing to plan stand true in the context of fashion design. Plan out every single aspect of your label, including the ‘known unknowns’, or risks. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What is the niche I will be operating in?
• Who is my ideal target consumer?
• How can I stay consistent with design even as trends change?
• Will I launch the entire collection at one go?
• How do I reach my ideal consumer? Which platforms (online/ offline) are they currently present on?
• How is my production team and process going to work?
• How can I gauge interest for my product?
• What is my distribution plan? Which sales channels will I be selling through?

Asking questions and answering them in granular detail helps you plan your business’s finances, your own commitment and exit strategy if any, your pitch to future investors, and most importantly, your parameters for when your creative business is succeeding or failing.

2. Who Is Your Team?

No one can live as an island, and it holds true for creative services too. The business idea may be your vision, but you still need an execution team. Specifically, in the fashion domain, you have several steps to think of- design, production, marketing, sales and analytics.

This is where a team of experienced professionals can come in handy.

Today, it is more a norm than the exception to outsource design to a skilled team that understands your business considerations and your target audience very well. Such a team can help you plug gaps in your own creative process, work with you to design a saleable product and help you understand the nuances of what makes a readymade garment viable.

3. How Are You Making It Happen?

Now that you have a sound plan and an excellent team, you can shift gears up into execution. You can either choose to create and sell in small volumes or you can go big and outsource manufacturing.

In both cases, your design team can help brief the production team about the expected output, tweak the samples and smoothen out any kinks while manufacturing the products.

Every product requires a storage facility, and this is something you need to think of very carefully. Too much inventory can eat into your working capital, while too little can cause you to lose out on sales.

4. What Is Your Selling Price?

In the planning stage, you would already have considered the pricing aspect. It is always good practice to have an optimistic price point (the standard price a few days’ post launch), a moderate price point (your launch price- early bird offer) and a pessimistic price point (your product price during sales season). Ensure that all of these prices stay above your cost price.

Once the manufacturing process is complete, reconsider your price points and adjust for any incidental expenses you may have incurred.

5. Where Are You Selling?

There’s no doubt that your choice of sales channels establishes your label’s position in the market. A product sold at Harrods is expected to be higher in price and better in quality than one sold at Primark.

Sales channels also determine your operational model itself. Do you have stores of your own, or do you stock products in some other store’s aisles? Perhaps, you’d like to ignore the offline channels entirely and sell exclusively through certain marketplaces.

The choices you make determine not just how your fashion label is run, but also the means you employ to reach consumers and bring them to these channels.

Once all of these steps have been completed and your fashion label is a real, quantifiable business, do remember to review and course-correct. Understanding what your consumers want and tweaking your label to suit those needs is the best thing you can do to build a sustainable business model and a fashion label that everyone is waiting to wear.

Stay tuned as we go into detail about each of these business aspects in the coming months. Subscribe to our newsletter and we promise you’ll be the first one to know when we publish. Meanwhile, here’s something to get your brain cells working on the business aspects of fashion.

 

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer and Brand Consultant helping fashion brands to create great products from idea to launch. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

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The Fashion Design Process

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#fashionstartup, apparel manufacturing vendors, blog, brandconsultant, fabric, fashion, fashion designers, fashion illustrations, fashionbiz, fashionbrand, Fashionbusiness, fashionconsultant, fit sample, freelance fashion designer, mood board, pattern, pre-production samples, Product design, product development, proto, Size sets, Supriya Ghurye, tech pack, technical specifications

“To me, fashion is like a mirror. It’s a reflection of the times. And if it doesn’t reflect the times, it’s not fashion. Because people aren’t gonna be wearing it.”  – Anna Sui

Sometimes, it feels like quite the uphill task to design based on themes, preferences and moods, and do the whole thing over and over again every few months. For any process to succeed, the key determinant is empathy.

Consumers look at fashion as wearable art. For most people, a style is a form of expression. Even those who claim not to pay much attention to clothing are still making a statement- with the clothes that they do wear.

The Design Process

Let’s look at the fashion design process from scratch. Integral to success of the process is also how an understanding of your audience can set you up for superior results.

Step by Step explanation of Fuel4Fashion’s Fashion Design Process we religiously follow to ensure quality deliverance to our clients.

1. The Brief: Failing to plan is planning to fail, they say, and so it goes for the brief. The fashion brief includes everything from identifying the target customer, understanding their needs, the season of launch, the price points and size ranges.

2. Trend Forecasting: This is the part where you give consumers what they didn’t know they wanted! This is how new trends are born, and sustained. Understand data from prominent fashion houses and forecast reports from all around the world. Adapt to suit your needs.

3. The Basis: Once you have a list of trends for the upcoming season, you need to drill down to the trends that you do want to focus on. For example, it may not make sense for a bohemian brand to suddenly morph into vibrant athleisure. However, this doesn’t mean that they should entirely stay away from active wear either. Trends need to be adapted to suit your business’s promise.

4. Collection Planning: This is the step where you decide the number of silhouettes and the number of designs you want to showcase per silhouette. As a business, this is the step where budgets come into the picture. Too wide a collection can increase sales but eat into your budgets, while too few options can put people off.

5. Mood Boards: Your designs are almost ready to come to life. This is the phase where sketches become fabric interpretations. Observe the play of light on each garment.

Moodboard created by Fuel4Fashion, inspired from Disruptive theme for SS’19 Activewear category.

6. Inspiration Board: Now, you have all the material you need to be inspired from! The Inspiration Board serves as a style guide of sorts to help everyone on the team refer to when in doubt, and draw from at other times.

7. Garment Flats, and Customization: The book of illustrations with every piece in your collection will serve as a reference point for manufacturers and team members alike. Make it comprehensive. If your products have print and embroidered details on them, now is the time to get started.

Fuel4fashion’s creative design process from idea to sketch explaining the fashion design process.

8. The Tech Pack: This is the blueprint for every piece of clothing that you will design in the collection. It has details ranging from the style description, trims and fabric details, size range to the placement of prints.

9. Feasibility: Once the samples are ready, evaluate the pros and cons of taking this collection into production. Don’t be afraid to drop the pieces that aren’t up to your standards.

Fuel4fashion’s Range Plan for SS’19 Activewear segment for the fashion design process.

The Human Element

Oftentimes, in sales, it is easy to forget that all products are being created for a very specific consumer with very specific tastes. As a business person, you must understand your end consumer very well. Use personas, mock interviews and even real interviews to understand what they do expect, and also that which they want but don’t know of yet.

After all, some of the most stunning trends in fashion have come from a house that knew what its consumers weren’t saying- think miniskirts, punk rock and even power suits!

What new trend are you gearing up to start? Are you following due process?

Don’t forget to sign-up for our newsletter that brings all that’s fashion design and more, right to you!

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer and Brand Consultant helping fashion brands to create great products from idea to launch. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

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