if you're watching this video chances are you're thinking about designing a
clothing line or perhaps you already have a clothing line
so in this video what we're going to do is we're actually going to show you how
you should be designing a clothing line to do it the
right way we're talking about how you can actually
conceptualize your idea and make it a full-blown brand and then
put some power to marketing and your sales behind that
so with me today is mike mike uh what are you what are you working on right
now i'm just putting up some mood boards and
some references a little bit of what we'll be working on later today but
i have some course material for us to go over if you're interested in seeing that
yeah let's check it out on the desk so why did you why did you put those up
there by the way i don't know i just thought it'd look
kind of cool but uh i guess we have everything digitally anyway so okay
that's good so for uh so for all the audience
members watching right now for everybody watching for the first time
or if you're a new visitor to this channel make sure you hit that subscribe
button and turn on the post notifications to be alerted of the
latest video drops that we create on this channel mike tell us a little
bit about yourself i've known you for some time i know
you've been in the industry for many years an art director for many
brands tell us a little bit about what you do
my name is mike leisure i am an artist and i'm an art director
and in the past i've worked with brands from skate to street wear
and even men's contemporary fashion shoes
and athletic wear so given the brands that i've worked with i've been able to
work with just amazing designers and these
designers have been able to take me under their wing and teach me
what makes a brand really a brand and what makes each collection so
valuable in their their little details and what makes it really
good and not just a collection tell us a little bit about how
they start in that process or walk us through like
how people should be thinking about when they're trying to design their
collections like what are some of the things that you've learned or things
that you want to share i think one of the really cool things
that i was able to see was as they make the mood board it's not
again not just the clothing so you'd see it could be a photo of a guy on a
motorcycle maybe um somebody sitting at a coffee shop and so
now when i think about the collection it's like oh
this guy wears a sweater he wears these kind of boots he wears this kind of shoe
and then it's like what is his day like uh and that
can create the story for us and maybe we give you a slice of
uh that person's life maybe we give you little details about
what they do in a day and that then allows you to be like to put
your consumer in that um that mindset or that like
location that you've put them to be like i could see myself wearing that instead
of just like that's a cool shirt right right it really has more substance
to it and and the brands that do this well are the
reason that they're positioned a certain way right yeah
um so tell us a little bit about for everybody watching tell us about how
they could uh i mean walk us through an example how
this might work like from beginning to like an applicable
direction here i think off camera we were talking a little bit
about the skate direction and like how if you're
designing for escape brand right tell us a little bit about how that works
personally i really like skating and i'm not good at it you know what i mean but
i love skating and i love surfboard surfing i'm not that good at it either
yeah but we all got our things and i think for me with skating
what makes it so cool for me is that it's like the perfect mode of
transportation i can explore a city uh maybe twice as fast as i was if i was
just walking and it's like the perfect thing for me to be able to
skate through uh downtown and if i want to stop somewhere i can just pick up my
board go in a store like oh that looks really cool let's check out you know
candles whatever it's an incense store never been here before
on a bike you got to lock that thing up if you're walking i might have never
made it there so in that sense for me when i look at
that lifestyle i'm going to take that and put it into a collection
so in a single day what do i consider i consider
things like the weather how long i'm going to be out so as i
wake up in the morning i'll probably hit up some of my friends maybe go out solo
pack up my backpack and i'm again looking at the weather so probably
am i going to wear a short sleeve am i wearing a long sleeve that day i'm going
to pack those things maybe it's going to get cold later on i'll pack a hoodie or
a jacket and then you know i like to save mother
earth and whatnot so i'm going to pack myself a reusable water bottle
and then i've got a skate tool just in case anything happens so
as i take off throughout the day and explore the city i can find new places i
can uh just explore new things hit the skate
like sesh and then come back home and when i take
all those little things that i did that day i can then
create a collection from it so the initial idea here
is i like i said i'd leave the house with either a short sleeve or a long
sleeve and then i have a hoodie or a coach jacket
to kind of pair with anything that i'm wearing if i'm going out that day
then i have the reusable water bottle and the skate tool uh
these this is like a great start for uh if i'm following
the lifestyle of a person and how they live right this might be a
great way to start if i want to plan out the pieces and not
just designs for the way someone lives once i have
those core pieces i can now expand it out and i'm thinking maybe i'll make two
t-shirts a long sleeve a hoodie coach and then now let's add a backpack
in because i want to carry some of my stuff
and i think that that'd be a great way you could also substitute that for
pants joggers sweatpants whatever you want to do that fits this collection
so as i'm skating and i'm going through the city i might find something really
cool i'll stop by in little tokyo and i might find this
really cool drink and noir monday is a lot about
just darkness and death desire and looking and finding new things and
for me that drink is great and it has the cat on it
which i love the money cat and that will later help
as you can see i have this other cat here on my board
i start to look at different things like this kid here who's
fixing a skateboard and that's where the skate tool comes in i have a backpack
that kind of feels like the way i want it to be
and later i'll maybe find something similar to that or design something that
looks like that backpack i noticed something
like now that i'm making these boards i
really like the way that these guys are showing their socks so maybe i'll design
some socks and then we've got the city streets and
how it should feel you've got the skaters at the park and
how that should feel and this right here as well as really a good representation
of the mood and how this collection should feel now that
i've got all the pieces ready together i'm starting to throw designs on them
here i've got this get lucky with the cat on it i've got this
no fun and then i've got the logo tee and then i have this noir monday with
the cat on it this noir monday coach jacket the
commuter bottle the skate tool and then the backpack uh
i just put a little logo here and i'm gonna drop some down here if it ain't
broke don't fix it this actually i pulled from the inspo on
the mood board where you can see that there's actually
you know the person walking and uh the city streets because that was
just really inspiring to me it doesn't have to be this but
if you do do it it's just nice to have little things like maybe you took
a photo specifically and maybe you saw the cat and so you take notes on that
i would take notes on everything that you see and things that inspire you and
keep those banked to use whenever you can
so i've created this entire collection now and then it's difficult because i
might not be able to release everything at once
i'm a starting brand and maybe i'll create a capsule collection
and i'll just do one whole collection it's called the kimura collection
from the kimora kamenoseki uh cat i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that right
shout out japanese people don't hate me for this but uh
we have this here the drop one and so drop one i have my
uh no fun maybe i'll call that the mondays or no fun tee
and we have the standard noir monday coach jacket here
and then we've got the skate tool this it doesn't have to be this way you could
release your accessories and your jackets however you want but for me i
just figured if somebody wanted to buy a t-shirt and
the skate tool they can buy it together and they don't have to spend that much
money as opposed to looking at the entire collection and being like i can't
afford any of these pieces now you can kind of look and
choose but as we move on to drop two which i can drop like a month later i
can drop two months later it's part of the same collection and now
i have the get lucky cat here i've got the cat again and then
the commuter water bottle this
really still fits with the entire collection yet
it comes out in these three pieces and in the last drop
i've created i actually decided to add socks because i said earlier
you can see the socks and i really love the playing of putting messages on socks
having this little peekaboo here with the cat
and the cool thing about this is when you look at the collection as a whole
i can wear the coach jacket and i can have the hoodie underneath and
so this noir monday on the arm is now not seen yet you can see the cat
from inside if you have your jacket unbuttoned and same thing if i
decided to wear this with the long sleeve although
i personally wouldn't do because it says noir monday on the coach jacket
and then it also says it on the long sleeve so if i was wearing the no fun
you'd be able to see that as well and these are just like
cool pairings that you can create to supplement each other and have your
brand be cohesive and your entire collection really just
speak for itself so when i look at this it's like why do these
little elements make everything so much better in a collection
and i think the closing notes that i would have is
do the research live the lifestyle and tell your story um
yeah each collection is a story each detail you put in there
is something for your consumer for the where to feel
and really understand what you're doing and then you connect more
on an emotional level at that point it's not just an image that they think is
cool it's like it resonates with them for some reason subconsciously they
don't know why but you did the research and you put in
the work to make sure it connected with them right
yeah so whether it's a something that's nostalgic right from like uh if you want
to have a play on nostalgia you need to
understand what kids were doing when they were playing nintendo 64. they're
probably eating hot cheetos and you know like like you're really diving
into the research of each collection and design
so i really hope that you guys appreciated this video because
mike took the time to come out here and to to really share this knowledge that
he's had over the last few years that he's been an art director
for multiple brands and if you guys want to learn more about
mike and what they're doing on youtube i highly encourage that you guys check
out the links down below in the description
uh they're launching a youtube channel it's gonna be live and they're gonna
have brand and marketing advice as well as
visual tutorials things to really elevate your brand's image and your
brand's overall visual direction and before we leave i
want to make sure that you guys know we did another video collaboration with
mike where he really jumps into the reasons why your clothing brand will
fail and he provides some guidance and advice
on how to prevent that failure so make sure you guys check out the
related playlist that is going to be linked right up above
as well as in the playlist and the show notes down below i appreciate every
single one of you guys watching and i'll see you guys on the next one
you