As part of my Fashion Design Degree, we have to complete a year in the industry, so back in December I applied for a placement at Matalan, highly recommended by our placement team, and every year they take on at least one student from my University. 

Anyway, as part of my interview I had to prepare a presentation. We were asked to create two updates for their 2015 spring collection, choosing from one of their categories, dress, tops, trousers etc. 

Now, I have always had a thing for dresses, they tend to be some of my post worn types of clothing, therefore I thought it would be best for me to go with dresses, as I could design something comerical that I know I'd wear, as a Matalan customer.

I started by looking at what was already available on their website; I had been into my local store, but unfortuantly none of the spring collection was out yet as the sales were still on. So I resorted to the internet to begin my research, and picked out some of the dresses from the new arrivals page.

I noticed that there were lots of these "sports hem dresses", so I kept that in mind, and I tried to find a dress with a nice summery and uplifting colour palette to take inspiration from. That's when I moved on to WGSN to have a look at the trend forecasts, for silhouette, colours and trends.

Once I had completed my research (picking a silhouette to take inspiration from and print trends), I moved on to making a trend board to display my main inspiration. Then I created some digital print patterns using a colour palette similar to the one I created at the beginning on my research. 

As I had to create two updates I wanted to use different silhouettes for each, so one focused on the sports hem that was already popular on the Matalan website, and the tent silhouette that has been popular on the catwalks. So the original designs developed into different adaptations for me to pick my favourite from and then apply my patterns to.

For our presentation our final designs had to be entirely CAD based, so I used a combination of photoshop and illustrator to create my designs (as well as the accompanying flats/specs).

Generally I really liked my presentation and do did my interviewers, but in the end they didn't feel that I was right for their company, however it was my first interview in terms of finding a placement, and you know what they say; practice makes perfect.

I hope you enjoy reading about and looking at my work and if anyone has any advice please feel free to share.

So remember, each day, live a little, laugh a little and love a little. ♥