Branding Project

Sonia Rykiel

As an external brief for this unit I have chosen to design and produce a range of knitted samples for the French fashion knitwear brand Sonia Rykiel. Named 'Queen of knits', Sonia Rykiel has been generating ready-to-wear, beautifully feminine garments since the late sixties, creating innovative collections that were both fun and alluring. the brand strongly believes in generating clothes that enable the women to have freedom of movement, and encourages all to be comfortable in their own style and be unique.

"Sonia Rykiel urged women to be eccentric, seductive, mysterious, and to create their own style".

The concept of this live brief is different to my self initiated brief as I wanted to keep them seperate in order to push myself into creating work that differenciates from what I would normally produce. In terms of my practice I believe that having a versatile body of work and proving to myself that I can work in both a conceptual way that is personal to me, and for a client or brand.

 The key words that I associate with Sonia Rykiel's brand is femininity, fluidity and freedom to wear light knitwear that is shaped to fit the body perfectly. From these words I thought of the concept of floating feathers, bird's wings and the elegance of these forms.  

 Researching a brand and generating work that is relevant to that brand is important and I intend on conducting research based on previous collections, who my consumer is and what is the market level. All of these elements will enable me to produce samples that represent the brand as a whole.

I have decided to design a collection of samples for spring/summer 2016 as I believe that this season will be best suited for the delicacy and lightness of my concept.

Locating

Concept and ideas

 

As this brief asked us to write our own project proposals, I was eager to create a concept that interested me, an idea that had depth and potential to be developed further. I started by researching political issues such as feminism, identity politics and relevant issues that concern our society today such as consumerism and capitalism. These particular areas interested me however I found it difficult to conduct primary research and produce drawings that represented a political concept.

In terms of context I found myself concetrating too much on what other artists and designers were creating instead of starting too create individual work of my own that related to my initial ideas. I conducted research on artists such as Grayson Perry and Frida Kahlo as their worked involves a range of political issues, howvever I felt that I was simply regurgitating the history of their art instead of taking away from it what was appropriate for my research.  Between thinking of an appropriate concept and trying to relate it to a context was a difficult process. Over the Christmas period I will need to think of a concept that enables me to generate research that does not involve recreating a certain artist's style or ideas. I want my concept to be individual and creatively challenging.