Synopsis

The Alain collection, primarily inspired by the Margareta collection tells the story of how elderly (focusing on my grandmother, Margareta Morvan) feel in today’s world. In the last collection, I wanted the wearer to feel over protected although suffocated by the numerous layers, which presents my personal incapable willingness to help my grandmother get out of this channel of life. The Alain collection conjoins these ideas into a wearable unisex diffusion line intended for the middle to high market. Alain is a certified organic fair trade label using more sustainable fabrics and design practices such as zero waste where possible. Taking the quote by Kate Fletcher, “Relationships can be fostered by designing garments that encourage us to ask deep questions about our sense of place in the natural world…It is about designing confidence and capability-including pieces that encourage versatility, inventiveness, personalization and individual participation” Alain pushes the boundaries of mass produced fashion by opening its market to men and women allowing them to style the clothes in their personal way. This is then reinforced by the advertisement of the zero waste pieces in the collection seen in the exclusive khaki topstitching and unusually designed clothing that stirs a popular craze in the market place bringing about a new way of zero waste designing and unisex dressing. Alain customers feel positive about using and buying the pieces and are intrigued by this new way of dressing and therefore tell their friends and family. They feel comfortable, warm and modern.

The key word behind Alain is effortless. It is effortless in its styling, its effortless to wear and effortless to pile layer upon layer. Alain is for rebellious girls who like to dress up in theirs boyfriends and brother’s clothes, tying a belt around her waist with her hair in a messy bun. On the other hand Alain is for guys who want to be comfortable and are interested in mixing their wardrobe up a bit. He is relaxed with who he is and likes the fact that a girl might wear the same jacket or shirt, he believes this is a ‘cool’. Whether the Alain customer is creative or not, they consider themselves creative. He or she is interested in fashion but not a fashion victim. They are growing up in the present day where Global warming and ideas around sustainability are constantly swirling the media. Although they don’t always use there green reusable shopping bags at the supermarket, they try to conserve power, shop organic and reduce waste as much as possible and therefore are interested in Alain as it encompasses sustainability as a key motive.

Saying this, while sustainability is a key focus for Alain, it is primarily a fashion label and as design in New Zealand is facing a number of challenges where skilled workers are going offshore, small factories have shut down and therefore the capabilities to implement a lot of design features featured in the Alain collection simply don’t exist in the New Zealand market. In conjunction with this, if the collection was totally made in New Zealand the price point for a lot of items would increase beyond my markets financial capacity. Consequently, there is a push toward a more designer loaded sustainability technique using zero waste and unisex dressing to minimize waste and mass produced garments that are thrown out after each season.

The color palate for the collection includes warm and cool greys, black, khaki and a cinnamon brown. These color’s were foremost inspired by the concept of deterioration in the Margareta collection and then edited to fit a more modern style of dressing that suits both men and women. The fabrics include some sustainable/organic textiles such as hemp blends and organic cotton in conjunction with some cozy New Zealand made Merino’s and wools. The merinos are lightweight therefore designed to be layered and worn under t-shirts. Most of the jackets and outer shells are bound inside and out to enable the wearer to wear the clothes in really unusual ways (inside out). As mentioned above, the zero waste items are top stitched in green khaki to tell the costumer and the general public that they are sustainable. The small gun print that mimics the same style of tiny geometric symbols seen in brands like Lonely Hearts are intended to add a more youthful trendy element to the collection. The idea of the gun in the print plays on the ‘protective’ element in the collection and would be digitally printed onto merinos and organic cottons.

With all these aspects in mind, Alain is what you get when you take the unisex silhouettes of Jimmy D, the organic and relaxed cottons of Kowtow, the innovative design of Maison Martin Margiela and the price point of Kate Sylvester’s diffusion line, Sylvester.