“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and lead a trail.” This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson stayed with me while I was designing my fall/holiday collection. I took a business class some months ago and from painting one of a kind scarves, I decided to change my tactics and technique and come up with a design just as beautiful, but design that can be reproduced quickly and it doesn’t take me days to complete.
But how do I do that? Well, I experimented lots and lots. I took an old method, transformed it, and added my own technique to it. In the end, I came up with a brand new technique—my own. There were many trials and errors until it could be perfected. In a way, I think everything I’ve done until now has lead me to this point.
Once, I read in an art book that when you work with restrictions, you can reach great results. In particular, they were referring to limited use of color, or lines, or forms—whatever you decide it to be. Once you make your choice, you proceed with that. I wanted to design my new collection with a limited number of colors. In particular, I wanted to use autumn colors like gold, yellow, orange, red, brown, and green. I wanted to see what kind of results I could reach if I used only 3 to 4 of those colors. I designed several scarves and was pleased with the results. Then, I wanted to add some more festive scarves and using the same colors but in different combinations, I came up with the holiday scarves. At least that’s what I call them. Then, my collection was complete. Instead of looking like separate pieces, all the scarves looked like part of the same collection. Using a limited color palette and similar design shapes helped me achieve unity.
I decided to call the collection “Golden Brown Red” because the song always reminded me of fall and when I think about those colors, I imagine deep and rich colors which encompass all the colors I used to create it.
By walking the path less known, I found my own new technique and method. It was worth all the sweat, days, and months spent to develop it. Click here to see “Golden Brown Red” collection.