Destiny
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.
To the bitter end
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?!!!!
Size does matter
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.
Visit www.dutchy.net for current collection and big sale!
Pulling teeth
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.
The table
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.
To Press or to Press
I just sent a couple of the coolest totes–one black, one mocca (the jet tote) out to Marie Claire for review.
It’s always such a test when bags go out to the magazine editors for critique; in fact it feels like I’m interviewing for a job everytime. You know that feeling when you want a job, it’s your dream job really, so you prep your resume and you send yourself to the interview and hope you answer all the questions perfectly (or at least what they’d consider perfectly). That’s what it feels like to have my dutchy designs sent to editors. Not to mention the fact that they are reviewing hundreds, if not thousands, of other bags to choose just one. It’s such a great opportunity, so I do it everytime, but the stress does get to me…hoping, wishing, praying…that they’ll pick me–I mean pick dutchy. But isn’t that the quandry with artists anyway; their work becomes not only a reflection of who they are, but sometimes the line gets very gray and their work is truly who they are?
See line at www.dutchy.net
Love these flattering sites
dutchy got another write up yesterday from a fun site called gretchen’s closet. Check out the review of the cute coin purse…
http://www.grechenscloset.com/index.php?category=2
Sites like these are great places to find tons of cool indie designers who have the greatest most unique stuff that not everyone and her mother has. Besides the fact they give such designers a place to be found and with the web as vast as it is, it won’t take long–so get it while the gettins’ good.
Handbag designer 101
There’s a new site that just featured dutchy last week and it’s pretty cool… http://www.handbagdesigner101.com/designer/11/dutchy_halasz_audree
The name sort of reminds me of going back to school and with one of the questions being “if I had any experience in fashion prior to starting dutchy”, I really felt under the microscope. But those are my hang-ups. I actually consider the experience I did have with sewing costumes for fun, and growing up with parent’s who owned a boutique experience in fashion. But I think the question was geared more towards education and experience in the field getting paid for the work; but that’s just me.
Check out www.dutchy.net
Artist inspiration
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!
Check out www.dutchy.net
Color
People often ask me how I chose my colors for dutchy bags and I tell them honestly that there’s no true method to my madness. In fact it is one of the choices in the design of dutchy that is at the top of the importance list, yet it seems to daunt me each and every season.
Of course I am always drawn to the same color palette–the subdued colors seen in nature; I would make bags of olives, browns and creams every season if I could. I think each of us has an eye for a particular palette-some for more subdued natural colors and others for colors that ‘wake-up’ the eyes, like the fuschias and the chartreusses. Even though I am pulled to the softer colors, I know that I can’t always create bags in that palette; people like to see color and at this point the trend is to have a splash of color with more subdued clothes. While there are forecasters that tell all designers of the trends in color, that information is hard to come by when you’re a small designer and really have an intuitive cord running through who you are and how you create.
So they say Victorian grays, brasses and ambers, and deep blues with true red; we’ll see if the trend reports win over my intuition for Fall 2007, or if I can’t incorporate both.
Visit www.dutchy.net to see the current collection.
