In Prints & Patterns We Trust
For those who feel in full saturation
Understanding color is, in many ways, understanding your emotions. Add shape and texture into the mix, and to me, it starts to feel like diving - bathing - within layers of self-expression. It takes guts. It takes a certain sensibility. And often, it demands the ability to make a fool of yourself.
When I studied fashion, we were taught that black was the holy grail of high fashion. Dark, rigid, architecturally shaped garments were treated like tributes to the “gods” of the industry. Designers like Yohji Yamamoto and Rick Owens were spoken of as almighty figures - untouchable, infallible. And while they’ve undoubtedly left a massive mark on fashion history, it always felt like something was missing from the conversation.
Designers like Marni (my love, my life), Dries Van Noten, Pucci, Etro, even Fiorucci, were pushed to the side, almost dismissed. I can confidently mention Fiorucci here after seeing an exhibition earlier this year that dove into his wildly imaginative universe. What a pity it is to overlook such creators.
Now, I work as a print designer. I live and breathe color. My job is to sink into a world of patterns, textures, and feeling. Often, the prints I create are built out of recent experiences, passing moods, or inspiration from other creative mediums. With that in mind, this piece is a little tribute to prints and patterns, those that went all out on the runway and left their mark on fashion history’s more niche aesthetic corners.
Now you might be asking yourself, “Okay, but what does this have to do with me, besides the joy of looking at these delicious, maximalist looks?”
Well, babe, I’m here to give you a peek behind the curtain, into how some of these garments are actually made.
Here’s the thing: working with color and print keeps you close to the act of creation. Design can so easily become technical. Or worse - logistical. Questions like “how will this sell?”, “how do we reduce costs while raising prices?”, or “how do we make this fit everyone?” slowly take over. You blink, and suddenly your job feels more like a cog in a machine - producing units, not clothes. You’re not an artist anymore; you’re in a glorified assembly line that might as well be making car parts.
But prints… prints are different.
When you play with prints, a whole new world opens up. You get to experiment with how a print behaves on different fabrics, just like Dries Van Noten does. His prints are wild but so smart: sometimes digitally printed, sometimes hand-dyed or block-printed, sometimes layered with embroidery or metallic threads. It’s this beautiful mix of tech and tradition. And the coolest part? You can build on top of them. You can paint, drip, sketch - just like Marni often does. You’re not just making a garment; you’re creating your own little piece of art. It becomes a conversation between your mood, your hands, and the fabric.
And then there's knitwear, which deserves a whole article on its own (and yes, we’ll get there soon). But just to tease you: when you design a knit pattern like a jacquard or intarsia, you're not just drawing. You're translating an artwork into stitches, literally. Using software like Stoll or Shima Seiki, you convert your design into a grid of tiny, colored squares, each representing an individual stitch. But there’s a limit: only a few yarn colors can be used at once (usually 2 to 6), since each color needs its own thread feeder in the machine. So the more complex the design, the more clever and simplified it has to be. It's pixel art meets engineering. It’s technical and magical.
Ain’t that absolutely fascinating? Maybe not for you, but hey, at least now, every time you’ll wear a knit, you’ll think about how it was made. And that’s cool, because holding valuable information is cool.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that black or patternless garments don’t have their own kind of magic. Of course they do. But let this be a little awareness campaign - a reminder that there’s a whole dreamy, colorful world out there. And sometimes, diving into that world might just bring you closer to yourself.
To close, I’ve included a glimpse into my own world: a womenswear resort collection born from everything we’ve just explored -color, emotion, and the fearless joy of print. Each piece is a response to the themes in this article, a small rebellion against uniformity, and a celebration of personal expression through shape, texture, and tone.
