Five Steps To Designing A ‘Virtual Athleisure Collection’

The fashion industry continues to push for change in 2020. As we navigate through these adjustments, we begin to embrace new technologies as well. Vogue Business states, “[t]ech is influencing the industry now and in the future.” Pine Crest Fabrics has created a Virtual Athleisure Collection, where we used new and existing software to design garments. Our goal for this collection is to inspire apparel designers to look at how technology is changing fashion. Below are a few steps we took to create our virtual collection inspiration. 

Step one: Research 

When designing a virtual collection, start with research to help guide yourself towards inspiration. Researching topics such as geography, nature, or any other broad subjects will help get ideas for designs. Once you have enough research, you can create an inspiration board that shows where your ideas came from. An inspiration board typically has a color story with images and text to help convey the collection. We were inspired by loungewear and our recent activewear Fahrenheit fabrics when developing this collection. 

Step two: Sketching

After you have gathered all the research and created an inspiration board that tells a story, you can begin sketching. The sketching process can take an hour or a week. Either way, be sure to not rush this process being that creating the concepts for the designs is the most crucial part. 

Step three: Digital Tech Flats 

Drawing fashion designs on paper will get the ball rolling, but taking the sketches digital is where the designs become more of a reality. Designing fashion flats isn’t easy, so if you need assistance check out Sew Heidi’s YouTube video here. The purpose of technical fashion flats is to communicate detailed information about each piece in your collection. 

Step four: 3D Garment Design

Bring the designs to life! CLO3D is a new fashion design software that allows us to draw garments right to fit. These 3D visuals show the garment design on a live model. This technology simulation is new to the fashion design world, and Pine Crest Fabrics sees this 3D tech-drawing becoming more mainstream due to the impact the fashion industry is facing from COVID-19. If you would like to learn more about CLO3D fashion drawing, please check out their website. 

Step five: Presentation

The best way to present a virtual collection is with a video. There are other ways to share the collection online, but a video will show capture the audience and show the design process in more detail. When presenting a virtual collection, be sure to include all 5 steps. Viewers enjoy seeing where the ideas came from and how it was created. 

Check out our final presentation of the ‘Virtual Athleisure Collection’ below

For more information about the fabrics that were used, please contact a Fabric Specialist!