Designing Kara

While watching Vagadu's Kara Maria Line move forward to May 3rd, I have begun to enjoy watching how each member of the team brings her own creative process to the interpretation of Kara's work.

...Megan, one of the interns...

Out of all the pieces of the collection Megan jumped on the opportunity to work on jackets and dresses.

For me, it is always interesting to watch what clothing items people gravitate to work on. Fortuneatly for Vagadu, it always works out that most of the interns want to take on different projects and so it works out that everyone is happy.

With jackets, Megan took on an area where we didn't have a clear design plan in mind. The only thing we knew was that we wanted a short jacket and a longer jacket. Other than that Megan was left to her own devices.

After a few days Megan emailed me a bunch of sketches. The first picture here above was the one that we struggled with most trying to find a fabulous amalgamation of ideas and themes true to both Kara Maria and Vagadu.

I liked the the sketch of the button over jacket, but besides the military/uniform element behind the design I just didn't know how it fit into the collection.
I went back and thought about all the different design themes that we discussed for Kara like bold, strong, symmetrical shapes. And content like birds and flight, fighter jets, war, invasion, women, exposed versus covered, Middle East versus USA. With that I thought, why not lengthen the jacket and change the opening to a button down instead of a button-over jacket? As you can see in the second sketch the design then becomes amazingly similar to the look of traditional Muslim wear.

Megan took that idea and went a bit further. She decided she still wanted a short jacket. But she went more with the theme of flight versus military with the bomber jacket like Amelia Earhart wore. Then, keeping with the Middle Eastern theme she used the Muslim decorative neckline for the jacket. (I can't wait until you see it at the show!)

There was a bit of frustration and butting heads over how to make this piece come together, but I am so happy with the final design. It is the result of a creative fusion of ideas, personalities and tastes while keeping to our core ideal. This type of collaboration where unique visions come together and find expression is what makes Vagadu so fun and special.