Color is almost everything in my opinion. So, you need to understand it at least a little bit. I am self-taught so anything I know it's because I have decided to learn about it. I am not saying the color theory is FUN to learn about, but it's pretty helpful. Color is the first thing someone notices in a collection. The details, and textures, and silhouettes usually come in a couple of seconds later. So if you want your collection to portray whatever it is you want, your color story needs to align with that.
I will not be giving you a full lesson on color theory, because I do not think I am qualified for that... but here are the basic basic basics that helped me.
What's color? Value. Saturation. Temperature.
What's value? The lightness and darkness of a color.
What's saturation? The brightness or intensity of a color.
Desaturation:
Color+white= tint
Color+black= shade
Color+gray= tone
Color+complement=mute
What's temperature? Warmness or coolness of a color.
Done with the basics. Knowing that will help you when it comes to talking about your collection and color story, and help you create it.
Collections deal with cohesiveness. Going back to the idea that it is not supposed to be random loose designs. You want something to be conveyed. An easy way to maintain cohesiveness in a multi-color collection is to stick to an undertone family. This makes sure that all the colors will look good together. Again. COHESIVENESS. It's not about a singular color is about how they work together. The color looks different depending on what it's next to. I definitely had issues when it came to this. I would be in love with a certain color, but sometimes it wasn't worth using if it was messing up how I wanted the rest to look.
Colors should represent the collection's mood. Mood. Moodboard. Yes, go back to the mood board. Refresh in your mind what you want to be associated with or assumed about your collection.
I began by pulling colors from my visual research. My idea is to interpret the contrast between "man-made" or manufactured vs organic. My first thought was "Manufactured is neutrals and organic is vibrant". Yes, that is true, but it's also not limited to that. I began to also explore the intersectionality of the two. Which I translated into a 3rd section. A combo section almost. Colors that are deep and bold enough to not be neutrals, but not colorful enough to be vibrant. This was done in order to represent the idea of the similarities between two opposites. The idea for my collection had further developed.
I played around with color proportions, different shades, and tones of similar colors trying to find my final pick! Obviously, the contrasting colors are prominent throughout. I decided to keep an even proportion in my color story between the "dull" or neutral colors, and the "pop" vibrant colors, plus the minimal "mix" colors. I wanted to represent how both extremes represent an obvious "man-made" for the neutral colors and "organic" aspects with the poppy colors, YET they also intertwine with one other- the "mix". The pop colors although all vibrant they come from very different parts of the color wheel, while the neutrals look like pretty similar shades of grey. This is on purpose, and I think I've talked about my ideas long enough for one to be able to figure it out. No? Okayyyy well "man-made"= patterns, repetition, everything looks very very similar, hence the lack of diversity. I wanted the colors to obviously stand out as similar, and also obviously stand out as original.
My next step was heading to the paint store, hardware store? Wherever they have paint chips. You're gonna need to see the physical colors because your color story is still in its brainstorm process. I cut up paint chips, made mini color stories, and spent A LOT of time picking between extremely similar (yet different colors). Now, originally I was going to keep all of the colors seen in the image, even though the vibrant were basically just repetitions of each other. Then I realized that It didn't match up with what I wanted to have an overbearing amount of strong colors. Oh! and notes are important. Write down everything, because if you thought of it, probably means it's important. I have a terrible memory so maybe I'm biased.
After much deliberation... my color story is complete! If I'm being honest I'm very behind on blog posts and have A LOT more done.
As you can see there is some symmetry in proportions that I want to replicate with the collection (we will see how that works out). The two darker colors-black and brown- add the depth I was looking for to compliment the brighter colors.
This process had been so fun, and I love that I have been able to document it, even though explaining through writing is pretty difficult (you can probably tell). Next comes what I think is a very exciting and important, but slightly tedious task, which is the fabric story!
xoxo,
Carmen (your 16-year-old not even sure what to call me)