First update from NA-KD.com

Hello and happy Tuesday everyone!

This is my first blog entry reporting from my internship at the fashion company NA-KD in Gothenburg. I have been placed at the design department where I help out with everything from doing research to handling samples. I am going to write a little about things I have learnt so far within the design process and in the right order. These learning’s are going to be divided into 4 parts each part is one blog entry.

The internship is going really well and it is a lot of fun, everyday you learn something new. I have been given many assignments; one of them is to do a trend research to look for future trends. The company works a lot with fast fashion so there is always something new. At the research stage it is important to keep in mind what target group and style the company has with their existing products.

I started looking into what is trending right now, both colour and style, look for how long these trends has been going on, and also search for what the big designers has in store for autumn winter 16/17. This research is made by collecting pictures and making collages (own choice) to get the right mood and feel of the trend. After this part is made the inspiration is sent to the manager of the department who decides what kind of styles that should be developed further. Once it is decided the sketching starts.

The company also work with social merchants or social influencers; these are people that are in someway very big on the social platforms e.g. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and YouTube. Here they collaborate with one person and helps them develop and make the designs chosen by the merchant. These design are then later sold under that merchant name or brand name. For this the research process works in a different way where the merchant decides the styles and collects inspiration of their choice. Then it is up to the design team here at the head office to work on ideas for sketches. Sometimes this process can be time consuming due to the fact that the team gives inputs on the design choices made by the influencer, so there are a lot of emails being sent back and forth. It can be anything from the colour to the material, and is it commercial enough, in this way NA-KD works as a consultant as well.   

So this is pretty much it, I think I am going to stop here and continue with the technical drawing process next time.

Have a nice week!