The Real Issue With Me Recreating That Dress For You Is…

…it’s killing my creativity.

The truth is, I didn’t become a fashion designer for lack of career options, or because I needed to learn a skill or even because I wanted to live a life of pomp and circumstance. I became a fashion designer because from the moment I realised that being a designer was ‘a thing’ I KNEW it would be my thing. I was captivated by the idea of taking seemingly ordinary clothes and spinning them into a medium used to tell the most alluring, exquisite and often fantastic of stories. I too wanted to master the art of using clothing to tell stories,, but what I wanted to do and what I’m doing at the moment are vastly different.

Designers typically use collections not just to tell the stories of the season but more importantly to sell clothes. When I came back to Barbados 5 years ago, after studying design in London for 3 years, I created my first and only solo capsule collection. It didn’t take me very long to realise that while people liked the collection, what they liked even more was the fact that I was a person with sewing ability. A few pieces sold but after that I never saw the value in creating collections for this market. 5 years later 70% of my work is based in recreating pieces usually found on Pinterest or on some celebrity and I keep fighting bouts of depression because I seldom have the time to flex my creative muscles.

Now when ya say a ya gotta say b.

When I was in school, I had a conversation with one of my tutors at the time who is truly a patternmaking genius. She told me that one of the ways she grew and still grows as a designer and patternmaker was by visiting high end boutiques, examining the clothes and recreating them in her own time. I took her advice to heart, and have found that recreating clothes has expanded my knowledge of construction, cut and in many cases even design. However recreating clothes has also made me forget the reason I decided to become a designer,  and is in fact one of the reasons I no longer call myself a designer.

“Fashion designer”  has become a fancy title for anybody who makes clothes (in Barbados at least) no creativity or innovation necessary. Funny enough one of the most career-altering moments I’ve had over the last two years was hearing John Galliano, fashion design GENIUS, refer to himself as a dressmaker. In that moment I realised just how fickle the title really is and I remembered what really matters. But that’s another post.

So what’s next?
Hopefully, a collection. I have stories for the last 3 years shut up in my bones that I am literally aching to tell. However this time creating a collection will take on a completely different meaning. My sole intention will be to express myself first and concern myself with selling the pieces afterward because I have spent and sacrificed TOO much to get here and settle for ordinary.

Will I ever stop recreating clothes?

Probably not. Like I said I know first hand the benefits of doing so and I will probably accept pieces that I believe will help me grow in the areas of pattern making and construction.
The goal really is to show more of where and who I am as a designer and most importantly to fully express myself creatively.

Until the next post, thanks for coming to my TED talk. lol

xx

Kat