Fashion Meets Product Design Project- Week One

For this project, the aim to produce a final product, using the laser-cutting machine, which would be a collaboration between two existing designers. On the first day, we visited the Design Museum where we got the opportunity to see Paul Smith's exhibition. We got an inside on how he started out, his inspirations and his work in general. Something that really caught my interest was one of his quotes saying "Ideas can come from anywhere- you can take inspiration from anything". Even though Paul Smith started off as a fashion designer, throughout his career he collaborated with loads of other designers and companies, such as The Rug Company, Triumph Motorbikes, Evian and many more. This made me realize that designers can collaborate to create a final product, while still keeping both their styles. 
Later on that day, we had to go around shops like Selfridges and Liberty, to look out for products that have been made using laser-cut techniques. By doing this, I was able to see a range of materials that other people laser cut for instance, paper, plastic, wood and plexiglass. It also gave me ideas on how to design my final product. 

For my final product, I decided to design a neck piece, which would be a collaboration between Zaha Hadid and Iris Van Herpen. I found it challenging at first since the styles these two designers are completely different. However, after researching their works, I noticed that both designers use abstract shapes that do not follow a certain pattern. Therefore, for the rest of the week, I was trying to extract shapes from both their designs. By experimenting with collages and sketching, I was able to come come up with various shapes that I could later on use in my design.