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7 2 THE FASHION DESIGN REFERENCE + SPECIFICATION BOOK
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Chapter 6: Mood Boards and Library
Mood or inspiration boards can be described as posters that map out the fash-
ion designer’s mental process in developing a collection. They help to direct
and explain style, allowing anyone to imagine the effect that the designer is
attempting to create. Assembling mood boards digitally is ef cient, but must
be weighed against the bene ts of displaying tactile, three-dimensional com-
ponents with which people can interact. The physical sensation of seeing how
a fabric drapes, re ects light, and feels to the touch has much greater impact
than looking at it as a at picture. The organic visual format allows the eye to
scan at length or in brief, or to jump around the board at will. Moreover, the
combination of photographs, sketches, texts, and color and textile swatches
becomes a design in itself.
Fashion designers use the board both to develop concepts and to communi-
cate with colleagues and clients. Just as magazine editors will often dedicate a
wall to planning the ow and big picture of an issue, designers will post all their
sources of inspiration on a board to look for connections and contradictions
and to step back and see how it reads as an overall message.
To generate their mood boards, designers often start with the resource les
they will have already been compiling. Most designers will nd that they require
additional reconnaissance work speci c to the collection or project at hand.
This is not an area where designers should skimp or simply make do with what
they have. It is important to stay up-to-the-minute fresh. Designers will only
achieve that latest, greatest version of their style by bringing in a constant
ow of new stimuli, choosing from a mix of images, trims, fabric swatches, ne
art, fashion, cultural trends, icons, print and color concepts, accessories, or
silhouettes.
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Digital Board
(created in Photoshop)
Black-and-White Theme
Rough Sketches
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FUNCTIONS
Abstract
Boards often take the shape of a free-form collage. This helps to liberate ideas into an ab-
stract form and makes it easier to discuss content.
Common Ground
Everyone with whom the designer works can tap into a board at a different point and in a
different way that is meaningful to them. This builds a consensus around the board’s core
concept. For example, designers sketch or collect samples, fabrics, and trims based on what
is on the board.
Teamwork
Developing a board can be a group effort, with each individual adding to the process by col-
lecting and contributing images, texts, and swatches. The board thus becomes an excellent
tool for team building.
Rough Sketch
Boards enable designers to create a quick mock-up of their concept. This prototype skirts the
need for perfection at the initial design stage. Sketches may be created on a gure to show
the look in perspective, or showing the garment only which is referred to as a “ at.”
Dialogue
Boards generate the language that will surround the work. Conversation about the boards pro-
vides common reference points. This helps to avoid misleading or misinterpreted messages
as the project develops and decisions need to be made.
DESIGN LIBRARY
In addition to collecting inspiration items for their resource files, designers will also want to
build a fashion library. A reference library should be diverse and include both physical and
digital formats. Increasingly, books and magazines relevant to a designer are being produced
for distribution on the web and for electronic devices such as the Sony’s Reader or Amazon’s
Kindle.
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Mood Boards and Library 75
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The pages of printed books hold a world of information and beauty. A design library should
cover everything from fashion history to designer biographies to explorations of color and tex-
tiles. With an exquisite selection of coffee-table books the designer can experience the next
best thing to being in the room with the subject. Exhibition catalogues are especially useful,
since in many cases garments or accessories from museum archives might be on display for
only a limited period.
Many designers collect complete editions of important fashion magazines such as Vogue and
Harper’s Bazaar and have them bound. Some newer publications also merit collectable status.
Visionaire, launched in 1991, is a good example. The publication is a multiformat album of fash-
ion and art produced in numbered limited editions, elevating its value and its desirability. Un-
like traditional fashion magazines, this type of periodical becomes a more concentrated time
capsule of an aesthetic.
Film is also a powerful design resource, and designers might assemble a collection of DVDs
that stimulate their creativity. The movie industry has created glamorous and romanticized
versions of almost every time period, real or imagined. To take one example, both the 1938
W. S. Van Dyke version and the 2006 Sofia Coppola version of Marie Antoinette pay tribute
to an important period in fashion history; however, costume designers Adrian and Milena
Canonero (who won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design) each took artistic license in
interpreting the period for the audiences of their day.
Documentary films and instructional videos provide a wealth of content to pull from. Documen-
taries in a designer’s repository will range from historical to biographical to artistic; they are a
great way for new designers to familiarize themselves with their industry and with the lives and
careers of a roster of contemporary designers. How-to videos become important when design-
ers want to familiarize themselves with new techniques.
Nothing creates a mood faster or more efficiently than music, and it is one resource that
should not be left out of work environments during the design process, not to mention presen-
tations. A design library should contain whatever genres inspire the designer, whether classi-
cal, jazz, rock, salsa, country, pop, dance, electronic, R&B, hip-hop, alternative, sound tracks,
or world music. For instance, a designer might decide to indulge in musicals while engaged
in the creative process because of the familiarity of the melodies and the ease of the lyrics,
not to mention the often playful or theatrical nature of the music. Surprisingly, a collection
designed in this environment might end up making it down the catwalk to the heavy thump of
techno music. Designers will sometimes ask a DJ to remix something from one genre they’ve
been listening to into another to serve the expectations built around a runway presentation.
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