Tribal prints…from start to finish

Working as a designer has so many facets. It’s not just drawing but also extensive trend research, intuitiveness, and  working with great people to make things happen. The one thing I enjoy about working as a footwear designer is how much ahead we work. I have already designed for Spring 2011 for some of my clients, and am wrapping up AW 2011 for one of my clients. I enjoy the research, and predicting what I think will be happening in the future, and standing behind it.

At the end of 2008, I started to work on Spring 2010 for one of my clients. One of the trends we chased were tribal prints. We felt it was a good concept for our customer and went after it. Of course, it’s a risk. We could have been wrong and missed the mark. However, we followed our intuition and designed a small collection of tribal print inspired footwear with an ethnic feel. Our designs included braiding, wood wrapped wedges and heels, printed uppers or linings, and distressed leathers.

I was very happy to see that one of my designs made WWD and Kim Kardashians online shoe of the month club, www.shoedazzle.com.

Here is  one of the marker renderings, actual shoes, and you can see that tribal prints are hot this Spring from apparel to furniture, and more!

Tribal Prints are everywhere!

One of the marker renderings from the collection

Topview of wedge in Chocolate and Cream