Roma

At the beginning of third year, we collaborated with Global Colour, a company that specialises in forecasting trends within Interiors. There were four main trends: CONTOUR, OPAL, PUNCH and ROMA, each shows a very different 'story' through their colour way.

I was given the trend ROMA (as seen above), the trend is described as folk meets punk, in that is is very colourful and expressive much like folk/gypsy style as well as narrow boats and it also has a much edgier side to it also. I felt this project was very challenging to myself as I am not used to working with so many colours at one time, and so the initial ideas stage and process was a difficult one to initiate. For inspiration I used both the tartan side of the trend and also lace, as I was keen to show how a delicate fabric could be very striking. To generate ideas I spray painted lace, weaved using a leno warp, combined my own woven tartan with lace using photoshop, and also used stitching to emphasise parts of my designs.

By combining lace and tartan with one another I produced many different effects, with the above being quite literal I needed to explore ways in order to stop my work being a little too repetitive, I also began to rely on the black a little too much, so I had to go back to the colour palette again and reinvestigate it. This is when I found myself using my own cups to generate colour ideas to see what colours worked best next to each other, this then began a mini project by itself but really allowed me to push forward with my ideas.