Designing a FW collections involves a deep dive into trending fabrics, colors, patterns and new accessory development. Choosing an inspiration was easy because it naturally progresses from one season to the next. While in France on our SS20 inspo trip, Lisa and I came across some beautiful coastal home accessories that seemed to fit into a more muted fall palette. We snapped a multitude of pictures to bring back to the team. When I began to research trends, a wide variety of natural sea elements, rich jewel tones, and fun sea-inspired pins and clips were available and trending in the market. I knew we were on the right track!
From there, I created mood boards, color palette boards, product boards and a sense of place inspiration presentation for the team. This helps me narrow down and stay focused on colors I choose to use across the line, textures that I repeat and use to compliment other textures and product/prototype sample development. Within this wide theme of Winter Coastal, I chose to focus on nature elements to ground the collection in amber hues and other deep colors.
Coastal regions and port cities were centers of trade and commerce. So much culture passed through these ports over the years that textiles and tapestries became sought after imports for clothing, accessories and housewares.
For textures, we focused on updating our velvet, added in textured velvet and curated a line of new velvet ribbons.
For our fabric covered headbands, we developed 3 additional embellished pieces to bring a bit of bling to the solid fabric. This nod to seafaring navigation in the gold star studded headband, the pearls on the midnight blue headband and the multi-colored jewels that are reminiscent of sunken sea treasures help tie the them together.
Our designer, Riley, jumped right in to add her take on coastal patterns. From Winter butterflies in a coastal Hampton garden, a winter birch forest and a shibori water patterns, we focused on flora and fauna from the coastal regions.
Water birds evoke distant shores and this beautiful teal color is echoed elsewhere in the line.
Our scrunchie/bandanas offer 2 products in one, provide a variety styling options, and they are a great canvas for these custom designs. Birch forest, Coastal Shibori, winter Butterfly and Hampton Garden are rounded out by our solids in clay, fuchsia, navy, ivory, black and teal
As we venture deeper into new product types, it seems logical for us to expand our collection into more embellished ties, pins and clips. These add new styling options for holiday hair or other special occasions.
So much of this design process was done while we were all in quarantine. Our team worked to answer your needs. We knew that first responders were unused to the long hours in masks. This led to ear chafing and our answer was to add buttons to out soft, athletic style headband, the accelerate.
Our infinity headwrap has also jumped into the spotlight as being a must have for almost everyone I know, including my son. As we head back to work and school this staple piece is essential to have in your car or around your neck in a pinch.
Some of the trickiest parts of designing include incorporating previously designed products and best sellers into your collections. I definitely want to do my part for the environment by cutting down on waste and ordering new items. Instead we refresh previously designed products, like our Original 1” and ½” velvet backed headbands, added in 2 more colors to fit the theme and voila! 5-star headbands stand the test of time! They are bestsellers for a reason, and we honor our customers by never changing up a perfect design!
Banded’s mission is to design great products while fulfilling a greater purpose.
1 product purchased provides 3 meals to a child in need. What that REALLY means is that, to date, YOU have provided 12.4 MILLION meals to hungry children in Central America and the Caribbean.
Our oncology collection brings beautiful head coverings to women everywhere who struggle with hair loss due to chemotherapy.
Thank you for helping us provide this. It is time to come together as a community of strong women, banded2gether by hope, by service and by that great hair day.
Maarika Mann
Creative Director