KAREN MILLEN — ARCHIVE RESEARCH & COLLECTION DESIGN

CLIENT
Karen Millen

PROJECT
18.01LONDON × Karen Millen

SERVICES
Fashion Archive Research / Vintage Research / Creative Direction / Collection Research / Fashion Design / Product Development

THE BRIEF

18.01CREATIVE and 18.01LONDON worked with Karen Millen on a project bringing together physical archive research and contemporary fashion design.

The collaboration demonstrates a distinctive part of the 18.01 approach: using original garments not simply as visual references, but as physical design research.

THE RESEARCH

Through 18.01LONDON, our design practice has access to a physical archive of more than 30,000 garments, textiles, accessories and objects spanning different periods, categories and design disciplines.

For the Karen Millen project, archive research provided a starting point for exploring construction, proportion, detail, fabrication and silhouette.

Working directly with original garments allows a designer to understand information that cannot always be communicated through a photograph: the weight of a fabric, the internal construction of a garment, the way a sleeve is cut, how volume is created or how a fastening changes the behaviour of a piece.

FROM RESEARCH TO DESIGN

The role of 18.01CREATIVE is not to reproduce vintage garments.

It is to understand why something is interesting and identify how that thinking can inform new product.

Archive references were therefore examined, edited and interpreted through a contemporary lens.

Elements of construction, proportion, detail or attitude could become starting points for design, while the final product remained appropriate to the Karen Millen brand and its customer.

This movement from physical research into contemporary product is one of the areas in which 18.01CREATIVE and 18.01LONDON work most closely together.

OUR APPROACH

RESEARCH → EDIT → INTERPRET → DESIGN → PRODUCT

Rather than beginning with a generic trend report, the project could begin with real garments and real construction.

Those references became a catalyst for new ideas rather than an end in themselves.

It is an approach that allows fashion brands to access the depth of a major physical archive while also drawing on the design experience required to translate research into relevant commercial product.

THE RESULT

A collaboration connecting the research capabilities of 18.01LONDON with the design and product expertise of 18.01CREATIVE.

For us, the project represents an important principle:

The archive is not the answer. It is the beginning of the question.

EXPERTISE
Fashion Archive Research / Vintage Research / Womenswear Design / Collection Development / Fashion Research / Creative Direction / Product Development