AND?

For this textile collection, I was inspired by graffiti on brick in two of the images I took during a study abroad in China. The images are from an artistic area of BeiJing. The target market is a young woman, 20-25, who is in college/ college educated who enjoys showing off her body. She is not someone to mess with and she cares about how she looks especially when working out. These textiles are designed for an active wear collection. The red-purple colorway is energetic and dynamic, while the blue-orange colorway focuses on the relaxed but confident aspect of the patterns.

The theme of this collection is Confident and Comfortable with an edgy, fun, and powerful tone. I named this collection for my target customer to go along with the feeling of confidence and living without fear or limits. My mother raised me to respond to bullies or negative people by saying, “and?” and I wanted my consumer to be someone who ‘brushes off the haters.’

The way I designed them, they should be comfortable performance knits, sport lycra, and poly knits. The textiles are also designed to hide sweat and be more prominent in garments that show more skin like sports bras and spandex shorts. Leggings would also be fun for these textiles.

I wanted to combine the organic feeling of graffiti with the geometry of the bricks it is painted on. Textile 1 Brush Based Mirror Repeat: uses the term “美” which in Chinese means ‘beautiful’. Textile 2 Vector Based Half Drop Repeat: I used the lines from the bars on the window in an inspiration image to show what it was like looking through the bars to see the beautiful and flowing color on every wall. Textile 3 Stripe Repeat: was a more literal reference of the bricks themselves and how they were laid. I used the term “自信” which means ‘self-confidence’ in Chinese. Textile 4 Check Repeat: is how I saw the individual strokes of color and how they blended together.