So where does the season begin? Trend research and shopping trips to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Tokyo to name a few.
Our design team use WGSN, Pinterest, and other sites for research. We collate images and ideas and start to rip and tear to build our themes – looking at catwalks, patterns, yarns, fabrics, prints, appliques, motifs and so on…. We start to build our stories!
We look at trend prediction websites WGSN www.wgsn.co.uk for the upcoming themes and inspiration – this could come from architecture, catwalks, events, celeb inspiration and more.
We pin images and ideas of all things we like or are inspired by on Pintrest boards and share them amongst the team. Having a team of people with different tastes and personalities means we get a great selection of imagery and ideas to draw from.
Example of WGSN trends
We consider the new yarn developments that are coming through ahead of the season by visiting events such as PV http://www.premierevision.com/en/, Pitti Filati http://www.pittimmagine.com/en/corporate/fairs/filati.html
We have a big collection of yarn books, different qualities; blends all giving different appearances and hand feels, all will perform differently when knitted on the machines. Some have a broad colour palette others are limited so we have to be selective and understand the yarn attributes to know what type of sock we could produce and the colours we want to have in that range. This season we are seeing more glitz, sparkle, high shines, more luxurious sheens to fabrics. Trims with lurex, glitter prints.
We use all our research as inspiration together with photos and bought samples during our trips to create mood boards, digital trend packs with themes, patterns, prints, colours, shapes to share with our clients. A development meeting then takes place where we present our trends, discuss ideas and concepts they would like cadding. Cads are then designed into,colours selected, swatches attached and submitted to the client for selection.
Whilst working on a season we then start looking ahead at inspiration, themes, catwalk trends emerging and start to pin and save imagery for the next season and so the cycle goes…