Meet the Maker talk @ ADC

Last Saturday we have the pleasure of making a talk at the Australian Design Centre about Backburn, and the creative process behind it. We talked through our initial inspiration, concept development, colour choices and discussed our collaboration with illustrator Ayla Meridian. Click through to see a small exert from what was covered!

To chart the journey of the Backburn collection we must go back to January 2015. Fresh out of Tafe, and  keen to keep up our skills of design and making, myself and a good friend James swapped mood boards and ideas. We would meet locally every week to try and push each other into creating new work.
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The original mood board was called "Sacred Geometry", and involved images related to the golden ratio and quick structured garments. After working on this mood board for a while, I decided to integrate an experience I had with an ex boyfirend, and create the theme of ridding yourself of excess baggage in your life.

Original mood board for collection

Print design mood board

After deciding upon the concept and beginning ideas for garments, I engaged a friend of mine Ayla Meridian to collaborate with me on the prints for the collection. Ayla's digital painting style was fluid and detailed, and exactly what I wanted to portray the ideas in my head. 

Progress images for prints

We started emailing abck and forth in May of '15, and after 3 months of iteration we came up with the final print story. Ayla's background in design and unique view on the collection gave us the idea of the two colour ways, one for 'Before" and the other for "After" the fire.

I was then able to take these prints and finally start getting fabric printed and progress from pattern making into garment sampling. As I sewed all these samples myself, it took until May '16 for the collection to be ready to photograph. Then I engaged my photographic collaborator Hellene Algie to help turn my vision of how to portray the collection into the images made. We engaged model Gloria Koly, who nailed the sassy, f*ck you attitude of the shoot. After shooting the collection in October '16, I embarked on a crowd fund to help push the collection into reality. Once this was achieved, we moved into the printing and production  stage which was complete March '17, over two years after it all began!

Its interesting for me to look back at the progress Backburn, especially to see what from the original mood board made it all the way to the end. You can see where the spiral influence made it in through the wrap around Memories dress, as well as how the colour pallet adapted to the fabric prints.