Collars and the Credit Crunch

The credit crunch has hit me, officially! I haven't been posting/commenting lately (which I apologise for) due to a lot going on in my life - the main one involving my job. It looks like the company I work for may be going into liquidation in the next month or so, after having a bad few months suffering from the tight profit margins set by the clients - the big guns really are pushing out the smaller indies. Turns out I should be able to keep my job, as the company will continue trading. I don't want to go into too much detail, as I'm not sure who actually reads this (and what I'm allowed to say), but it's about time I find a new job.

All of this has obviously left me pondering the contents of my portfolio, realising I haven't properly updated it since leaving university 2 years ago. Obviously I have done reams of work since then, but the task of selecting, re-drawing, collating and presenting said work is a lot harder and more time consuming than you would first imagine. On top of this I eventually decided to do additional projects for the folio, which I could tailor to the retailers/brands I am looking to work for.

The first of which is more conceptual, aimed at the top end high street (Reiss, Bolongaro Trevor etc.) with a theme based loosely around Egon Schiele. I began looking at his paintings, which I have always loved, but then stumbled across a quote by him:

"I wore clothes, shoes and hats cast off by my guardian, all too big for me...baggy and loose on my thin frame...My shirt collars were inherited from my Father and far too big for my neck...so I wore unusual paper collars that I had cut out myself"

Egon Scheile

This quote is perfect for me right now, and encapsulates the feeling in the industry today, with Eco-fashion, vintage galore and the devilish Primark. As most artists do, Scheile was going through his own personal 'credit crunch', forcing him to wear hand-me-downs and unique paper collars. I have taken the simple idea of the collar and adapted and experimented with it, sketching and draping on the stand to enable ideas to form. Collars feature heavily in the catwalk shows of A/W 08-09, in various shapes and sizes as many designers experiment with this beautifully sculptural area of the female form.

I am still designing, and have decided to create 3 'looks' consisting of between 8 and 10 garments for A/W 08-09. This should give my portfolio a fresh update, whilst staying on trend and showing potential employers my ability to design - from concept and research through to choosing a colour palette and designing a capsule collection. Below are a few images of my initial ideas.