The Swimsuit Brief

One of Lulu projects is to design a swimsuit. She briefed me; she had the idea of designing a swimsuit that makes women's bodies look more toned and desirable by allowing certain parts of the body to get more tanned than others. Lulu told me she got the idea when she went on holiday and wore a cut-out swimsuit. The swimsuit looked good however when she took the swimsuit off after a day of tanning, she ended up with horrific tan lines in weird places. She wanted to design a cut-out swimsuit that would flatter the body after tanning.

 The way Lulu wanted me to go about it was to research toned women with desirable bodies in bikinis and sketch them. Shading in the parts of the body which naturally looks darker on a toned body. I enjoyed this task because I like sketching, however, it was challenging to distinguish which parts to shade in dark and which to keep light as the bodies darker to lighter parts are subtle and gradual. I expressed this to Lulu, she suggested that we look at fabrics that are semi transparent as these parts can get semi-tanned as apposed to parts that would be completely exposed to the sun. However, semi transparent fabrics may be too flimsy and not look good as part of a swimsuit. I carried on sketching and distinguished as best as i could the dark, medium and lighter parts of the torso and breast area. Lulu said the shapes were a bit too complicated and this may cause the swim suit to not look desirable and would make the costs of making the swimsuit too high. She wanted the costs as low as possible as it was being made for a more commercial market. She asked me to make shapes simpler and try to stick to straight lines creating shapes that are not complex. I sketched about 15-20 versions of interpreting the shapes into simpler form. Lulu picked her favorites that she thought looked the sexiest and would flatter the body the most.
  I learnt from this task; to show the designer that you have thought of the bigger picture and thinking outside the box e.g. how to design the costume so that the darker to lighter parts look subtle and gradual instead of having really bad tan lines.