CHARMOUR

This collection was my final for the fall semester of junior year and it was also a collaboration was another student. I was partnered randomly with Carley Summerville and the task at hand was a menswear collection. While we were free to do whatever we wanted artistically within the scope of menswear, we did have to draw inspiration from a piece of literature. This could be anything really, no matter how small. It could range from a whole book to song lyrics, to a haiku...literally anything in written form. As it is my favorite book in the world, I suggested we use The Little Prince as inspiration. So we began working on this story of a prince who slowly sheds his material possessions in search of spiritual and physical comfort in a windy desert.
From the start of the collection to the end, there is a subtle transition of this toy soldier-type outfit all the way to our final look which is a slouchy, shapeless, enveloping sweater to represent not caring about anything other than comfort. There are elements relating to royalty such as sashes and other diagonal lines, as well as epaulets. And we wanted to reference the book in other subtle ways such as stylized ties used to suggest a snake around the neck, as well as dying roses in the men's hair.
For presentation purposes, our professor mentioned the desire for an alternative means of illustration or going outside our comfort zones. While I was not entirely willing to give up the immense amount of detail in my final drawings, I was able to offer an accompanying drawing for the flats. So I used the illustration from the book(an illustration style that I have always admired since I first read the book) as my reference. The illustrations helped to give our collection the missing adorable element that it needed. Because while we were designing a collection that would be respectable enough for men to actually want to wear it, we were still referencing a story about a child prince on this fantastic journey. That kind of whimsy could not be lost simply because it is a menswear collection.