Remember that madness going on in our heads, the same one taking over our minds while working on the “La Vie En Rose collection”? You know, the hectic pinning, the seemingly aimless wandering while looking for the perfect fabric, the long hours we spent on drawing and than throwing out pieces of paper, because obviously the sketch wasn’t good enough, the tiring pursuit for the perfect photoshoot location, the model scouting and the list goes on an on. Remember that? Well, the launch of every new collection is kind of like a chain with all of these points being its hoops. Sounds tiring, doesn’t it? So why do we do it? Because we love every single hoop of the chain regardless of how annoying or exhausting it can get. We call this process our happy place, because it never fails to make us smile, and get our creative juices flowing. And you know what they say, when life gives you creative juices, you squeeze them and make a lemonade or was it lemons. Oh well, you get the picture.
So, as you’re probably already guessing by now, we did it again. Yup. We’ve launched yet another collection which according to our humble opinion we consider one of the best to be made in the history of Bastet Noir. So let’s start by unveiling the creative process, shall we? We’ll let you be the judge of whether or not we’ve outdone ourselves this time.
1. Picking The Colors & Fabrics
Picking cuts and silhouettes is definitely the first thing we look into when planning a collection, mostly because shapes dictate which fabrics would be the best to use. This time around though before picking anything else, we’ve decided to first start with choosing the colors and the fabrics. We wanted to create a fall fantasy land with a color palette of sunflower tints, the lime greenish color of the autumn leaves, shades of pumpkin inspired tones and the color of gloomy skies. We aimed for a combination of luxe appeal and comfort, because no matter what our girls never, ever compromise on comfort. Naturally the fabrics we picked had to reflect all that while at the same time keeping the grandeur toned down, so the look could get a sort of polished allure. So we opt for matte satin silk fused with shiny pure silk. The idea was to keep the dresses and jumpsuits toned down, so you could be able to wear them at work, during a cocktail party, at a wedding or style them with ankle boots, chunky sweaters, edgy leather jackets, high heels and blazers.
2. Inspiration Behind The Designs
Having nature and its colors as our focal point opened us up to a lot of ideas when picking the actual name. So while doing the research we stumbled upon one goddess whose name was potent enough to carry through everything we were trying to convey with the collection. Gaia, the Greek goddess of Earth, or as the Greeks believed the mother of all life was the center around which we’ve built the collection. Her exuberance and vigour inspired the bold architectural structure for the silhouettes. On the other hand, the intricate drapery of the clothes this Greek goddess wore was the reason behind the details like the gentle ruffles and soft draping embellishments.
Because the collection was inspired by Gaia, we decided to name each of the dresses after a daughter or a granddaughter of Gaia. So Rhea, Hera, Athena, Maia and Aphrodite are the 5 Greek goddesses we chose to honor with this line.
The model is wearing The Maia Jumpsuit
To make it a bit more modern and contemporary, we’ve added deep plunging necklines and opened the back which we’ve embellished with strappy details.
3. Styling
What we’re always trying to maintain throughout our collections is to have a minimal sort of appeal in order to have the main focus be on the clothes and their shapes. For this collection we opted for gentle layered, barely there necklaces as favorite jewellery choice.
Experimented with scarves and fedora hats.
Embellished some of the designs with big golden buttons.
And sassed it up with an oversized straw bag.
As for the choice of shoes we had extremely high sandal heels and ankle boots.
4. Photoshoot
Our very first thought when we first started thinking about this collection, was to shoot in nature. After all the very inspiration for the collection was fall’s colors, so capturing its essence meant shooting outside. Having that in mind, we sort of had this image of a little girl on the praire roaming the fields, carelessly smiling and having fun. As we went on the hunt to look for locations, we’ve stumbled upon two amazing fields, one covered with corns and one wide open field entirely covered with hay stacks. We couldn’t pick one, so we shot at them both.
Shooting in nature is always tricky. There’s the sun factor you have to deal with, which means the light is never the same, than there’s the unpredictability of the weather and the location itself. However, our photoshoot went perfect. It was a blast really. Perhaps we were graced by the gods with a favorable weather conditions because we dedicated this collection to one of them. Who knows really? All we can say is that we had so much fun shooting this collection that by the end of the day, we went immediately back to the office to sort and pick photos so we could put the finish touches and launch the collection as soon as possible. So here it is. Go and check it out.