Business, Design & Style

Finding Inspiration for Your Designs

Laura Kim & Fernando Garcia

Lesson time 12:26 min

Every fashion collection tells a story, so being clear on your creative perspective is crucial. Learn how to storyboard, find aesthetic inspiration, and master the ins and outs of crafting a compelling narrative for whomever you are designing.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Finding Inspiration for Your Designs Tell a Story With Fashion Mesh Ideas With Mood Boards Determine Your Hero Print Listen to the Fabric Evolve Your Design

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - With each collection we design, we're telling a specific story It's a form of expression that's inspired by a feeling, a memory, an image, something that sparks passion, creativity, and inspires us to share that point of view to the world. [MUSIC PLAYING] For you to incorporate storytelling, try to let it speak to you. The collection is going to tell you where it wants to go as you develop it. So you want to pick up the front then? - Come look at the front. It's, you see? I think it's important to take a minute to step back and listen to yourself. Because you're the one seeing all the fittings, absorbing all the information. And sometimes you just forget to really listen to what you want. And it gives you an answer where you want to take the collection. I do like to start talking to Fernando about inspirations in the beginning. And he gives me his ideas. I almost feel like I want our client to be going on a trip, like, our imaginary world. It's always in a different form, what we're inspired. I mean, our mood at the time definitely affects the collection. We look back to anything that feels right for us at that moment. So it could be, like, a food I ate when I was little. Or it could be this artist you saw at an exhibition. - And there's also the subconscious level of what you and I do. We don't think that our cultures and our upbringing probably had an influence on us. But it absolutely did. - Yeah. - I think that, for instance, for me, even though I love doing a black dress, my fearlessness with color probably came from the fact that I was surrounded by it in the Dominican Republic. It had an impact in the way I see clothes and color. - I get inspired a lot by just random people walking by. And I'll look good news in the morning. And I'll look at, like, what the weather reporter's wearing. And I'm like, oh, that's actually a really nice dress. So it's everywhere. It's not something you can pin on the board sometimes. And we have a conversation about it. - It can be, like, a cup of coffee and the color of green that it has. It can be-- - A picture of a really cute dog. - Or a hot guy on a beach that I saw, like, anything. But-- - That always helps. - But there's no wrong place of getting inspired from. - So we were watching Fantastic Mr. Fox about three or four months ago. And there was, like, a little rat character. We were like, oh my god, he's wearing Monse. - It's a very good starting point. He had a striped sweater on, which we love. We love stripes. - And he was a little bit naughty. And we're like, oh my god, he's such a cute little inspiration and then-- - So we Monse-fied it. [MUSIC PLAYING] - Usually when we have a mood board, starting in every collection, Laura and I send pictures to each other back and forth. Our team members have things that they want to show us. And we start to...

About the Instructor

As founders of fashion line MONSE and creative directors at Oscar de la Renta, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia have transcended their industry with a partnership that’s more than the sum of its parts. Now they’re teaching you their secrets to creative collaboration. Learn to cultivate strong business relationships, navigate the creative process, and join forces with others to improve the workplace—and the work.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Laura Kim & Fernando Garcia

Fashion luminaries and Oscar de la Renta creative directors Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia teach you how to bring ideas to life through collaboration.

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