Emerging Fervour

Starting my first ever collection for my handbag label CLEMENTS has been a little bit trickier than I initially thought. First of all, where do you begin and when do you call it quits! Well, you can never call it quits is what I have learned but you can finalise and move on with a fresher start once a new season starts. And I’m already so excited to progress with that!

But as all designers know, the labour of production wavers ahead and I must get that running before any new collection starts. Before that I had sampling which is transferring drawn designs into an actual product. This is where things get tricky.

It all starts with a 101 crazy ideas…..

It feels like years ago when I jotted down initial ideas and roughs for developing this collection. My first roughs are laughable but it’s that process that gets you to your finals and creates a story to the collection.

My story began with inventing new shapes and combining contrasting textures and tones. I wanted to be original as possible but appeal to a large trend market. As my label is new and unseen I thought individuality was vital although I would be fighting with classics that often win customers over… Especially in the current climate. Day after day I mulled things over and straight back to the drawing board I went and borrowed a friends old bag that I have always loved. The shape is simple and the bag works well due to the amazing texture of the leather. I played around with the circular shape adding details like chains, gold zips and studs etc to modernise the bag. As all designers do… I slept on the idea for a few days and eventually decided it was not working. Although I’m still keen to re-visit this shape in the future!

So.. A day later, brainwave! I thought of my final collection bag I had produced with my womenswear collection back in 2007, and that’s when the ball started rolling! This bag is rather original and there is nothing similar to it on the market. Plus it’s a brilliant little number to use as an introduction piece to my CLEMENTS label. Another bonus was that I could focus on some classic styles to balance the collection out. Perfect, now all I had to do was a little refining and bag No.1 would be ready for sampling

My initial working drawing for the manufacturer in 2007.

This is where it all began! I cant wait to rework her into a quirky classic! Find out how she and my other bags develop in my blog next week – keep a watch!