Violette Boyer, design process

Violette Boyer’s graduate collection “The perfect woman” was influenced by the ideal woman the society imposed during the 1950s especially in the United States, pressuring women to always look and act perfectly according to the expectations of how an housewives should be. Violette wanted to create a collection that both combined historical inspiration mixed with modern twist in the design as well as in the fabrics. Her collection is based around a colorful color palette to translate this decade

Inspired by 1950s prints surrounding an housewives’s life at that time, Violette drew multiple patterns. They are inspired from vintage ads, popular furnitures (curtains, sofa, tablecloth..), children drawing... The prints and drawings led her to create a colorful collection. She then used different fabrics and canvas to test them. Specialized in knitting she tried to knit different form inserting wool threads needle by needle to the piece being knitted. This technique is called the “E-wrapping”. Then she tried to hand-paint flowers on leather using leather paint. The watercolor flower drawing because of its multiple colors has been tested directly in order to be printed by a machine.

After printing and drawing, Violette then tested different volulmes directly on her Stockman. She also used pattern making as a way to research interesting forms. She found this process useful as to get a better point of view on how the final product will look like and where to place prints and colors. This technique also allows her to understand how the clothes will look like using different types of fabrics (heavy, flowy..).

This is Violette’s final collection line up. Violette created five looks from her line up : look 1, 3, 6,7,8, and would of loved to see the rest of her collection come to life. The clothes from this collection are made from diverse fabrics such as wool, leather, organza.. in order to create a variety of looks each of them being different but similar at the same time. Violette’s graphic final line up illustrations translate her intention on making the collection modern but also of vintage by the hairstyle of her model.