Phoebe Wright’s final major project ‘PW x Conflict of Ego’ was a surface design collection designed for existing clothing brand Conflict of Ego, based around their current collections and style. She created two collections that COE potentially would use as prints or patterns for their garments. Together with designing two collections of surface designs, Phoebe also built a Pop-up store designed for COE to showcase the two collections. The store features some of these designs used in the hard and soft furnishings. Here is the front cover of a magazine style she produced as part of her final hand in, as well as a final presentation board showing off her space she built from scratch.

The two collections both filter of the main idea of space, and she used this idea in concepts called ‘Building space’ and ‘Retro space’ both set in different time zones as well as different colour palettes. Both the collections work together and apart, they focus on textural and structural elements within the artwork to create designs unique to the concept. The clothing brand Conflict of ego brought out a limited edition collection which based its ideas around the future, solar bodies and hydra creatures, which is where I came up with the two conceptual ideas.

She has used various collaging and layering techniques to create the designs from materials such as bubble wrap and sweet wrappers. As well as a series of her own photographs from trips to London and New York whilst studying in her final year at University. Having such a wide amount of drawing processes, allowed for her designs to all be individual and stand out on their own. Her unique style and bubbly personality comes through in her work, Phoebe uses bold colours and shapes within her designs which reflects her as a designer. She is not afraid to push boundaries and experiment with materials and methods she has never used before.

Phoebe used collaging with paper, fabric, bubble wrap, tissue paper and loads more to create these designs. She also used the scanner a lot to constantly manipulate her work fast and effectively, as it enables you to move the drawing and creates textures and reflections you wouldn’t get normally. Her photographs from trips were also manipulated in photoshop and physically cut up to create new shapes and patterns from. She also used a process of bleaching her work to enable the materials to be stained and generate a rawness to the drawings, especially when using tissue paper as it bleeds the colours out and produces an effect you wouldn’t get digitally.

Phoebe studied Interior Design Decoration at University, but as both interior design and fashion have been her passions from the beginning of her studies. She was luckily enough to be able to combine both interiors and fashion in her studies whilst at university, and tailor her Final Major Project so she could combine the two. Meaning her surface designs would be suitable for fashion garments alongside hard as soft furnishings.

This design process meant she needed to consider which designs would be best suited for fashion or interiors, given the pandemic happening she wasn’t able to print some test samples onto fabric to make those final decisions, so it all came down to her visualisations and final presentations. Phoebe created at least one other colour way for each design to show the variety or shades and colours in which the designs could be used.

As you can see, she has displayed most of her designs as wallpapers, flooring or upholstery among fashion garments. She obviously studied interior design but really wanted to showcase her love for fashion within her work. All the designs featured in her final magazine she produced either in an interior setting, on a piece of clothing or both. She enjoyed her final major project so much she wishes to carry on working on this current collection to make it bigger and better.