Fencing for sportswear

This sportswear project felt like a great opportunity to involve bold prints and wild colours which was something I hadn't done yet. I decided to look at the old historical side of fencing to incorporate with sportswear as I liked the quilting and padding involved with the old school fencing gear which would be a great aspect to include in future designs. 

For research I visited Selfridge's and found some amazing sportswear in the mens section with an overload of shiny fabrics, quilting and prints which inspired me instantly. Also because we were told to include a London landmark of which I chose the Lions in Trafalgar Square, I decided to do some observational drawings so I headed down and got some great colourful sketches in different styles and angles which I thought would be useful for creating some prints. 

With the lion sketches I done I used a kaleidoscope photo app to create prints which I thought were successful in that they had a striking effect in creating a bold prints. With these different takes of the lion kaleidoscope images I took to Photoshop to play with colour and repeating the patterns. To me sportswear has the potential to always be fun and colourful which is why I wanted to involve bright yellows and purples in the prints to make them stand out.

To incorporate fencing with the prints I created some designs heavily influenced by the shapes and padding originally found with fencing gear. With the designs I created  I had fun mixing and matching prints to do with the garments as I scanned the designs into Photoshop to filter in the prints to create the full final designs. 

I find my final collection successful as the designs and prints look consistent and I love that the colours are random but bold, even though there's no exact colour theme throughout I like the looseness of the collection and still feel it works as a whole.