The creative process of a textile collection, a fashion collection or a design piece requires a basic step: to relate between a real product and the original idea.
This process, on the contrary to what people normally think, is very complicated as it implies that the art director requires subtle and intangible capabilities along with a profound technical knowledge. These qualities together make the difference to obtain the desired final product. It also implies the art director’s capability to stand great pressure, as a new collection is always a bet that as to confront with:
- The art director’s sensibility and creativity
- Market request, better what our target request
- Production needs, it means the capability to produce what the art director has in mind
- The Brand values, which implies to be coherent with the company philosophy. For l’Opificio is the choice to create long lasting interactive and circular collections.
This request l’Opificio Art Director Barbara Bertoldo to create collections that can always work with the already existing ones.
The first creative step starts with a moment of fascination, a starting point that will be translated in a sketch, a drawing that will visually propose a pattern
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Barbara Bertoldo says:” during my creative process, I find very important the combination of my knowledge with my experience in the fashion world of more than 20 years. The latter taught me what is timeless elegance, that subtle balance that plays with contrasts never becoming excessive, on the contrary becoming a very personal interpretation”.
It is in this right moment that the profound knowledge of the fibres becomes important. Without it, the indications that production would receive would be not clear enough for the production process itself.
So, the second step would be the identification of the fibres we want to use and therefore transform a sketch in a production drawing.
At this point we will start to select the colour variants, which also in this case will have to respond to many requests as:
First of all, what Barbara likes. Being a trend-setter, she always anticipates future needs, colour is one of her distinctive characteristics evident in l’Opificio creations designed by her. Her capacity to create “harmonic contrasts” are the distinctive element of the Maison, never too much, timeless and elegant.
Then the request received from the market, which implies to respond to a need.
Then the Brand values, which means the new collection has to work with the previous one.
Finally, the commercial needs.
It is during this phase that Barbara and Paola Bertoldo both together make the selection of the colours, that play an important role for the coherence of l’Opificio Brand philosophy.
Finally, it will be time to choose the finishing, in order to obtain the haptic requested by the art director and that will characterise the collection.
Last, but not least, the final step will be to prepare a first lot, which will be analysed and discussed all together in order to define the final colour variants of the collection.
At this point the Art Director will define the soft-furnishing models – for example cushions, bed runner or curtains or home accents – and eventually some furnishing pieces in order to interpret and present the new collection and its spirit.
The collection is ready to be presented to the market.
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