A crucial role in the process of fabric manufacturing is played by the designer. Ravi Kant Prakash, design head at Arvind Limited, talks about the role of the designer.
How crucial is the role of a designer in a company that manufactures fabrics? In that light, how important is your own role at Arvind?
To make a good garment, there should be a perfect match of the fabric and silhouette. That's where the designer's expertise and a keen eye for detail come into play. Working in a fabric mill gives you a great understating of fabric, its properties, the purpose of making it, and being a fashion designer, you possess the ability to visualise and render fabric into a perfect silhouette.
Working in Arvind is an enriching experience for designers. The organisation invests and believes in product quality backed by meticulous R&D. They back the creative skills of designers, and it is a pleasure to work for such a company. We have a team of people who are masters of their skills; they keep looking for new ideas which solve specific problems of human needs. My everyday work involves understanding of client's requirements, suggesting them right use of the product, while keeping in mind the end-user of the same, and also helping them in the rendering of the product as per its potential at their price point.
Is there a limit to creativity? How much does a designer stand in the danger of repeating oneself?
Absolutely not, there is no limit to creativity as a designer, but yes, there should be a predefined purpose for designing anything-we create our end-products within the decided target price. As from my learning till date, I've come to an informed conclusion that designing something is mostly re-engineering a product to solve a purpose or somebody's need.
Repeating oneself is definitely a serious issue in terms of legalities. It's not all about only legal but also overlapping of the same design with another designer/ brand will put money or investment on risk, the end customer will get a chance to compare and that may kill the sales.
What are the variables that you play around with so that you don't come across as repetitive?
While designing anything we have to keep in mind "five elements of design", which make every design special in itself. I believe that every design has a purpose to fulfil and it's not possible that everybody has the same requirement.
How much does the fabric material itself play a role in design? Be it in the sense of texture, feel, fibre, material, etc?
Designing any end-product consists of 90 per cent fabric and the rest accounts for trims, embroidery, print, etc. So, if a designer understands fabric in terms of texture, feel, colour and fall of the material, it means half of his/her work is done and he/she can play with other details. (HO)
Published on: 02/04/2019
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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