Hi our brand is ‘Amethyst’, working on the live t-shirt project in Croydon College. We all agreed on this name as it sounded cool and vibrant. The group members are Tohminah, Amrit, Papia, Mary (pattern cutters and designers), Karen (Business), and Shahenah (Graphics).  

1st week

• Each member of the group has done a shop report in their own area of the fashion industry looking at low budget stores, Papia did this, Karen looked at High street stores, Mary looked at Designer stores, I looked at catwalk and Amrit looked at people on the streets. Shahenah looked at swing tags, bags and styling in all the stores. In our own area of research we looked at price ranges, colour, theme, shape and design features

• We also explored the styles of t-shirts that are out and are coming out from catwalk to high street.
• From the research we have gathered we created a mood board each showing what we found.
• We then met up and discussed our findings, which we saw there were a lot of t-shirts out in stores with face prints that led us to decide on a theme, colour palette, fabrics, and a range. We decided to go for a mixture of trend linking to face illustration with hint of Punk, soft Goth, 80’s electrics, and femininity. Our colour palette is black, white, greys, pinks, blues, purple, 80’s electrics and metallic.

2nd week

• We all bought in our own mood boards and then created a group mood board displaying our theme, colour, range and our ideas.

• We all produced a customise t-shirts each and did one in a group.

•  We discussed logo ideas, how it should look and what type writing we are going to use.
• Each member of group designed about 20-30 ideas of t-shirts, and then we chose two final ones to make up or customise.
• Each member produced technical flat drawings for their final t-shirts

3rd week

• Pattern cutters went out and bought fabric for our range and it was very difficult to find the right places, we found it at Hussein fabric and it was a bargain, 70p per yard for soft jersey, although they were only in pink and teal blue, we still had an idea as we could dye it. I found a beautiful silvery net fabric that cost £4 per metre, expensive but I got it as I need it for my designs.
• Pattern cutters started to draft patterns for the design ideas

• Shahenah worked on the logo ideas and swing tags, trying different look for the group to agree on, as they were disagreeing a lot about the logo look.
• Karen worked on the Business side doing the costing, checking we stayed in budget

4th week

• Designers got their drafts checked by Naurin (pattern cutter tutor) ready to be cut and put on fabric.
• Pattern cutter started to construct their design on to fabric
• Amrit kept taking photos of us doing work it was so annoying because none of us could concentrate when we had a camera sticking up on our face.
• Karen worked on her marketing plan
• Shahenah did the posters which we liked as it looked brilliant.

5th week

• We all are stressed out as deadline is approaching but staying in control to get the work done.
• The pattern cutters are sewing and getting the t-shirts done for the photo shoot, we manage to get one done each so we gave about 6 in for the shoot, the models looked pretty and did a great job.

• Shahenah got the swing tags done and it looks pretty, she also got the hangers and bags done too, and they look good and go with our brand name.

• Six of our t-shits went in to the exhibition at Fashion enter prize week, held in central in Croydon. And I have to say they are looking good and getting a good response from the customers, this gave us a boost of energy to get the rest six done by next week.

6th week

• Karen is working the costing and presentation of the work.
• Shahenah is doing the press pack and the brochures for the group.
• Designers are busy getting the t-shirts done, for the deadline, and so far they came out good, we did a mini shoot for the rest of tees that wasn’t at the main shoot, Karen and Papia modelled it, and they looked so pretty in our collections. We are now getting everything done for the launch party for our range to be sold in fashion enter boutique, next week, hopefully our collection gets sold, as I know it should, as our entire collection look beautiful.

7th week

• Every member of the group has done a good job completing the tasks ahead; we have now given 12 finished t-shirts to be shown at the launch date on the 23rd November 2006, at Fashion Enter boutique at Central shopping centre in East Croydon.
• Here’s a poster showing the promotion side of our company ‘Amethyst’, we hope to see everyone at the Launch date.