Skills used:
illustration
concept presentation
garment construction
fabric sourcing
design specification
The brief:
Design and sample a range of glamorous adult female fancy dress costumes which addressed a gap in the online retail market. Costume spec must meet the desired retail price point and reflect the quality of the Karnival brand.
Create concept drawings for sales presentation.
Work with Far East manufacturer to create prototypes and sales samples for photography.
The outcome:
I brought detailed market research + my knowledge of the online costume retail space together to create a range of commercial adult costumes for manufacture and worldwide distribution. Concept illustrations and mood boards were the starting point for all designs in the range. Used as a sales tool I like to make sure I’ve thought the design through so the concept drawings reflect an honest product in terms of detail and quality, as well as showing my thinking behind the historic references within the design.
I worked directly with the Chinese manufacturer to source fabrics, fit the samples and bring the costumes into the agreed target price point. This was a really enjoyable project to design and I also art-directed the photography for the whole range.
A lot of my costume work is protected by NDAs and can’t be featured on this website. Please get in touch to see more.
Skills in disguise.
Many of the commercial design skills I rely on today were honed throughout a decade designing costumes; managing manufacturers, presenting to global retail buyers, forecasting trends and engineering garments into price points using fabrication and clever print techniques. Innovation was key when working on Licensed products with clients such as Disney, WB and Mattel, to name a few.
The nature of most of these products means they are protected by NDAs and can’t be shown here but I’d be happy to share them so get in touch if you’d like to see more.
See my skills and career history in more detail connect with me on Linkedin
For privacy and copyright reasons many of my costume projects cant be shown here