At the beginning of this internship, we started off talking about the colors of next spring season. We researched by going through old and new magazines, looking at past color stories, and even looking at some of our own past personal projects. It was a process, but we ended up agreeing with a fun and vibrant mood board, we would later refer to for inspiration as we continued with our process.
Once things started getting crazy with fall production getting closer and closer, we sort of pushed things to the back burner and started focusing on more of our hardware materials. before we knew it, there was only about a week to get together the finalized leather swatches for spring 2017.
We already had an idea of the colors we were thinking about, but to actually finalize 15+ colors into only 6 is quite the challenge. and to assure they’re in stock is even more of a challenge. After a few days of weighing our options and looking at the pros and cons of each leather swatch, we finally came up with the 6 colors for spring that we were all in love with.
At the time, it was terrific that there weren’t as many lining options to choose from, so that part came easy. We found a few coral colors but decided on a more rustic one. It wasn’t until we were a week away from ordering all materials for production that we ran into a big problem.
Not only did the lining we fell so in love with and were so excited to use for spring become unavailable, but so was the perfect pink leather for fall production that was already made into samples. We were sent a similar swatch but it just wasn’t the same leaving us with the samples we made and left over leather to make less bags than planned. This is just one of the many things that makes running a design business so unpredictable. You try to pick out leather that is always available, knowing sample bags are usually made six months in advance of the season. This goes for everything; lining, hardware, thread, the list goes on.
I’ve learned that it’s always best to have a backup plan. and it wouldn’t hurt to have another backup plan for your backup plan. now with production starting in a few short days, we had to improvise and head in a different direction for our lining going from a subtle coral to a vibrant hot pink. This wasn’t the initial plan, and caused a lot of stress considering everything is organized and ready for the contractors, but it kept us design interns on our toes. even though we quickly started researching new companies and contacting new suppliers, we ended up going in a direction I’m even more excited for than before!
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