A few weeks ago I was telling you about the inspiration for our upcoming fall collection, and how I had been inspired by a little owl on a bottle of beer. Once I have a starting point for my inspiration, I start making a mood board, pulling together images and sketches, color palettes, even words or phrases that help me to clarify where I’m going with a collection. Sometimes it has a clear and obvious effect, where you can plainly see the inspiration in the final collection. Other times (like this one), it’s a winding road from point A to point B, and there might just be a glimmer of the starting point.
The little beer owl had such a beautiful, rustic quality that it made me think of Russian and Scandinavian wood-block prints in books that my dad had when I was a kid. He studied Folklore and Russian, and we always had these great books of folk tales and Russian literature with magical-looking scenes carved into block prints. Anyway, the owl had that going on, and so I started thinking about folktales and fairy stories, and sketching up images of geese with golden eggs, sly foxes and unicorns. It started to look something like this:
It was a far cry from the darling beer owl, but you can kind of see where I was going with it, right? The problem is, once I get going I just have to follow that lead. The rest of the designs diverted even farther from my inspiration board after this point, and it didn’t feel like a cohesive group anymore. It was time to rethink. I’ll show you the outcome in Part Three soon!
4 COMMENTS
Natasha
10 years agoLove these prints! Especially the little unicorns. Gorgeous!
Jennifer Moore
10 years ago AUTHORThanks, Natasha! I’m glad you like them! They didn’t make it into the final collection this time, but may get their own “enchanted” collection soon.
annie
10 years agoThis may be my favorite of all your work so far. Will any of your fall collection be available in knits?
Jennifer Moore
9 years ago AUTHORHi Annie! Not sure how I missed this, but just wanted to say thank you! The Westwood collection may come out on knit for spring/summer, but for fall we have the Marrakech and Meadow knits in the shop.