I’m still in the thick of it and it is down to the last wire with the designs. I really was proud of myself for making as much headway as I had on Tuesday with measurement decisions and completing the majority of the sketches. Today is the big day though…the decisions about colors to use for the leathers and types of leather; this is the decision I will fight till the bitter end to decide. Amber, mustard, brass, indigo, gray, olive and rust are contenders for the body of the bags, but then there’s the question of colors working together to compliment one another on one bag. This is where it gets hairy and I just need destiny to take over. Calling destiny, come in destiny.

Visit www.dutchy.net to see collection.

I’m in it, in the throws of it all; designing, stressing, and trying to stick with the concepts I’ve developed. Argh, this is tough; remember in my last post I mentioned this was fun and challenging? Well now it’s only challenging, the fun has escaped into a stressful whirlwind of color, leather, detail and shape choices. Any artists out there have any words of wisdom?!!!! 

I realized over the weekend in the process of designing for Fall 2007 that even though a color can’t be ‘wrong’, a size can. It is the decisions about measurement and size of the bag that get me stressed out and cause me to procrastinate. This stress is compounded now because last season many buyers wanted smaller bags…apparently cute smaller bags are hard to find and I wasn’t fulfilling that gap in the market–so I want to fill the gap now and argh–the stress that comes along with that is, well, stressful.

In any case, I do think I have some great designs for smaller bags coming to fruition with a good blend of practical to snazzy. One that I can see myself wearing (not all are made for me) is a messenger style with a long strap (that is removable to create a clutch) that has slots inside for credit cards, etc, and an inside zip pocket right in the middle for easy access to keys, the phone and of course the lipstick. It’s small, but has enough room to fit quite a bit, so you could even made it a wallet and throw it in a big bag if you wanted to.

Now the fun part is waiting to see how the designs get interpreted by the sample making room. Sometimes their interpretations of my sketches turn into a bag I would have never wanted to see created, but most of the time they are better than I ever imagined they would be.

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Even doing something I enjoy–designing–can have procrastination written all over it. The process of sketching, coming up with ideas for shapes and sizes, playing with leathers and choosing hardware are really exciting and fun, but I seem to put it off until the last minute-every time.

I have been analyzing this design process procrastination for years and the only thing I’ve come up with is that I am fearful of making the wrong design decisions; choosing the wrong colors, the wrong leathers, not designing the right shapes, sizes, and the list can go on. Oddly enough with regards to color, the ‘wrong’ color is really, in my opinion, not a possibility because choosing colors does not yield the ‘wrong’ color, rather a group of colors that buyers can choose from. One color might be less popular than another color, and the third color might not be trendy enough, but the ‘wrong’ color really doesn’t exist because there are so many buyers who have their personal tastes for colors they will or will not buy (and this is impossible to predict completely). So there’s one example of why my fear is unreasonable and why I should just get to work!

Other ‘wrong’ decisions do exist and are a possibility, but I know intellectually that not making a decision and procrastinating is likely more detrimental to my line than making ‘a’ decision. So here I go, the procrastinating stops here…this weekend I will spend a good chunk of hours working on designs for 2007. Not only just working on designs, but making decisions about them.

You should see the top of my dining room table. It is covered with swatches of fabric, magazines, sketches, ideas on scrap paper, buttons and wooden hardware. Covered. This is how I like things when I’m designing…messy, real messy, but just enough that I can still see things under things. The swatches of leather are giving me tons of inspiration since they’re so cool…croc skins in the most amazing funky colors, soft caribou and the luxurious cow leather I have always used.

I really want to work in these new leathers to the dutchy style and now I just need to sit at the table long enough to make some decisions.

My last night in Mexico was spent watching my friend Clay (well not only watching, but drawing, too–if you can call what I do drawing) draw different designs and concepts for dutchy. Clay is a fabulous illustrator, he takes a concept and breaks it down into the micro and abstract form. For example, in thinking about a peacock feather he drew simple lines that to most wouldn’t even resemble a peacock feather, but the way he brings the lines together and adds depth with a pencil is mesmerizing.

I think this type of artist has a special way of thinking that doesn’t come naturally to most of us, and definitely not to me. If someone says peacock feather my mind goes straight to a literal looking peacock feather; I try to draw the entire peacock feather and it ends up looking like a, well, not a peacock feather. The artists’ mind, the conceptual mind can take an object and break it down to lines and images within the peacock feather. I am amazed by this and by Clay who is fun to watch and learn from.

I can’t wait see how learning from Clay will change the Fall ‘07 collection!

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There is nothing more amazing for design inspiration than the day I spent yesterday. My friends and I are still in Mexico and we went to visit two true artists de Mexico who we had never met before—Nacho (short for Jose Ignacio) and Maggie (short for Margarette). Nacho and Maggie live on a huge compound in San Miguel and have been there for 10 years. When Maggie first moved there with her daughter, the owners were renting it for $300 and before Maggie arrived no one wanted it. But the artist in Maggie looked past the rubble in the yard and knew it was a gem (now the yard is a lush garden).

As I think about what Maggie and Nacho have done to make their home ‘home’ and what they create everyday with their art I am reminded that the details that come from the larger whole are the essence of design. Their works cover every wall (and there are a lot of walls) and range from a small card size image to a huge 4′ x 6′ foot image. Their medium is mostly paint, but they take other mediums and blend them into the art to a varying degree. As I looked at their art surrounding the walls I noticed that even in the most abstract piece you can find detail.

A simple line can create a bird shape, or a nose, or a horseshoe, or a wrinkle, yet still only be a line. It is in this thought of lines as a fundamental element that I will consider the stitching, leather pieces and other details of the bag. How it will manifest is still to be determined.

Visit www.dutchy.net to see the current collection.