In the fashion world, The Brief is what specifications a client gives you to design and complete a project around.
When I start working with a new client, usually they have a general idea of what they want, and we discuss the specific guidelines about appearance and functionality.
I first met up with Key, and later Xiao Hua, to discuss what they wanted, and plan how to execute it.
They gave me their inspiration:
They explained that they wanted to make costumes with LED lights inside. The outfits needed to be stretchy because they were dancers and needed greater flexibility in their movements, as well as being durable enough to be worn for multiple performances. Lycra to the rescue!
To make the suits re-usable and washable, we had to find a solution enabling the lights to be encased inside the outfit, but removable. There needed to be a pocket that held the battery pack, but concealed the connection wires.
The lights chosen were extremely thin, flat, light-weight, had a solid color, and didn’t produce any heat when turned on. The challenge was that they behaved like a thin strip of metal – flexible up and down, but not side to side. Each strip had a fixed length which couldn’t be cut, and only a fixed number could be wired to same battery pack. There were 2 widths, we decided to go for the larger one.
Much like these:
There were also to be 2 teams – red/black (evil) and white/blue (good). Each team was comprised of both male and female dancers, and they had to have their own design that reflected their team and complimented their shape – a total of 4 looks.
(male red/Blk, female red/Blk, male blue/Wht, female blue/Wht)
The end result below – 8 of the 12 dancers.
The next few TS Project posts will show you the patterns – how I achieved the goals of the brief, and the enormous amount of technical construction that went into making them.