Final Reflection

Creating the collection the process
To research designing a collection it was important to have a sound understanding of the Miu Miu brand, style significances and inspirations behind each collection and how this all linked in with the colour choices of the designer. After this preliminary research analysis of information could then be applied to the collection. Several separate colour palettes were selected from various collections and then narrowed down by choosing certain hues, tints and tones were which then used to start the initial process of designing the collection and selecting colour proportion. An essential process of development was to primarily sketch out the designs by hand and apply colour using crayon. This would give a better overview and a bird’s eye view of the whole collection; what colours needed to be changed and what tints, shades and tones needed to be added to make the collection flow, how the proportions needed to be altered to reflect the Miu Miu brand and not make the collection appear disjointed in anyway. With this in mind the work was analysed and reflections and alterations were made. One main issue discovered was proportions. Using colours randomly was not statistical enough and made the collection appear segmented; therefore it was important that colours were pulled out strategically to be used as the foundation of the collection and other brighter high chroma hues to be used as accents. As the collection was designed for fall/winter 2009-2010 it was an obvious choice to choose the low chroma, high value hues such as brown, grey, deep red and black as base colours.
Using my adapted colour palette the next set of collections was designed on the computer. This helped establish which colours worked well together and which clashed. This made it easier to analyse select colour theories and apply them to the collection. It was found that a split complementary colour scheme worked well with the collection and added variation to outfits with splashes of high chroma warm hue used for accessories and detailing.
Deciding a theme for the collection was a lot trickier than initially expected. A theme needed to be chosen that would suit the brand Miu Miu and easily be linked with their strong identity, whilst also being on trend and easily adaptable for patterns and prints. After researching various artists, illustrators and future trend predictions, the idea of ‘magical forest’ was created. This linked in nicely with the colour palette and was dominated by browns, soft pastel beige, warm orange and red, colours and tones which worked together to create contrast and difference. Two different mood boards of images that reflected the trend, as well as different approaches and perspectives that could taken were created, for example natural forest imagery such as leaves and feathers; magical creatures such as unicorns and pixies. Each of which could be used to bring ideas and inspirations for pattern and print. As pattern is such a dominate part of Miu Miu’s collections it was important to get ratios of print to plain correct as this would reflect brand significance and identity. Images were collected from magazines and various designers which allowed for inspiration and ideas for the collection.
Shape and Silhouette was also looked at. It was important to get the correct style which represented the Miu Miu brand. Therefore the collection was chosen to be based upon angular shoulders with voluptuous soft curves contrasting heavily with sharp corners and tutu inspired skirts.
Getting the hue intensity and saturation levels of the patterns was a significant part of designing my collection. It was imperative that the colour levels within the pattern blended well with the colour palette. However it was also vital to make the patterns stand out as this is Miu Miu’s trade mark. Miu Miu is well known for fun brightly coloured patterns which link the fairytale world of a child with the grown up world of adulthood. I used prints butterfly wings and unicorns all key features of the ‘magical forest’ trend. However I felt that my matured palette which I created before hand was not as well suited to the collection as I initially thought. As the theme was magical forest, the colours had to reflect the magical enchanting storey which I had created. They also had to appeal to the fun loving youthful Miu Miu customer. Therefore I choose to adapt my colour palette accordingly. I choose to drop the browns, soft beige and black and replace them with pastel green, pastel purples, bright energetic pink and candy pink. This new and improved colour palette gave a unique and inspiring look the collection, transforming it from old and frumpy to new and exciting. I felt it was definitely a better representation of the Miu Miu brand and the colour was now more suitable creating a quirky and fun image.
Overall the colour palette and colour proportions worked really well within the collection. The prints stand out due to their colour alteration and work well within the collection. After the final colour palette was added to, more definition and a better reflection of the theme was created.