Stay tuned to this page to find out. We will be posting the timeline, announcing the winner and chatting with you about your great designs on this page.

** The winner will be announced on Friday May 25th.

We are also thrilled to announce that we will be opening a designer showcase. The showcase will feature the top selection from the competition and in the future we will be accepting submissions from designers who would like to have their work shown.

The showcase will be open for comments, discussion and customers can favorite the designs. Designs will be chosen each month to be produced and sold on the website in conjunction with the designers.

We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with such talented and creative designers!

Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ThunderLily for the latest info

As you walk down the street in silk, heads turn, eyes watch. Silk is the ultimate luxury fabric. It elevates any garment of clothing to a new status. In the delightful film Don Juan DeMarco, he describes silk, “…how it barely touches her skin, how it rides on a cushion of air as she moves, how the silk floats above her body”.

Types of Silk

Silk Charmeuse is a luxurious fabric, variable in weight, with a sheen on one side. Often used in wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses and luxury wear.

Silk Chiffon is a lightweight sheer fabric that is woven from S and Z twist yarns, which give it flexibility. Very floaty and ideal for lightweight dresses or blouses.

Silk Devoré is a burnout technique that uses a gel to dissolve the cellulose fibers, leaving the silk, so the effect is semi-transparent.

Silk Dupioni
A more structured fabric, that bears a random knobbly effect. It is made from two different threads (the name stems from the Italian for “double”) It has tiny imperfections in the thickness of the thread which provides the texture and uniqueness of any piece of fabric. Dupioni is ideal for either home décor or suits (it is used widely in the east to make suits).

Where Does Silk Come From?

Silk most often comes from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori, (reared in captivity) and it is the triangular prism-like structure of the fiber which causes the lustrous, shimmering effect, which allows silk cloth to refract light at different angles, to produce the effect of different colors.

Silk Charmeuse

Silk Chiffon

Silk Velvet Devore

Silk Chiffon Devore

Silk Dupioni

What are we looking for?

There is no exact formula for choosing the winner, but the designs must be wearable and appealing. We are equally enthralled by the elaborate designs as we are by the simple designs. We are considering not only what is current, but what is timeless.
Sometimes it is the silhouette of a dress, or the interesting cut of a pant pocket that catches our eye. And we believe that our customers will feel the same way.
So, when you are designing, you should think not so much about what we like, but what your customer will like, what defines you as a designer and what fashions would you most like to see on the street.

What you should have prepared so far

With just two and a half weeks to go you should be timing your designs. You should have your inspiration and your color story worked out. You should have made early sketches or scribbles of your designs and you should be prepared to start on the final drawings.

What if I Can’t Draw?

This is not a drawing competition, but an ideas competition. We do need you to illustrate the seams, entry points, notions to show the construction of a garment. Are there buttons? Elastic? A zipper? How are the do the darts placed? But if you can show these elements, you do not need to be able to be an excellent sketcher, rather a knowledgeable designer.
If you do want to place your sketches on a model then there are online resources that can help you, you can find sketching techniques at http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3718/fashion-sketching-for-untrained-artists or get free downloadable croquis at: http://www.designersnexus.com/design/free-fashion-croquis-templates/

I have Questions

Great, we love questions. You can comment on this blog post and we will answer, that way your question can help other people. Or, you can contact us directly via the Contact Us page and we will get back to you personally.
An important part of finding a designer is communication, so please do write to us!

Click here for the Rules and Guidelines for the Fashion Design Competition or to ENTER THE COMPETITION

Why be an early entrant for the Fashion Design Competition?
The winner of the competition will be collaborating with us, albeit remotely, as we create the patterns for their designs before we have them produced. This means that we will be building a relationship with our first designer, finding out how they work, design and think creatively. Undoubtedly during this creative process there will be tweaks, changes and revisions made on a collaborative basis.

The designer will be our first designer to “open shop” at ThunderLily and again we will be coordinating and working closely to ensure a smooth transition.
In short, this will be the first designer with whom we build a relationship, and it will be a prototype for the relationship with future designers, so…this is a very important relationship for us and a lot is held in the balance.

As an early entrant to the competition we have the opportunity to:

At any time we also encourage you to ask us questions and communicate with us. This is a marriage of communication and creativity.


READ MORE ABOUT THE COMPETITION…or ENTER THE COMPETITION

Thank you for entering the Fashion Design Competition!

Color Types

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Colors
Take a look at the first row of wheels in Color Types.

Monochromatic Colors

Monochromatic colors are shades, tints and tones of one color. The large color wheel shows the pure hue of any color and the shade and tint of it.
The different shades and tints are known as values of a color and are created by adding more white or black to the color.

Color stories

Color as we know is both social and personal, so the selection of a color story is literally a ’story’ about the designers thoughts and feelings represented in color alone. A color story is created from any object that is forming the base of the inspiration for the collection. A color story is pure color, shades and tints that are selected to make a statement and capture the imagination.

Enter the fashion design competition to be the next ThunderLily designer

Purple or green? Just love how the Layered Circle Skirt reacts to the wind — it feels so great to walk with your skirt catching the breeze. It also catches the compliments and of course the questions…where did you get that skirt?

The Layered Circle Skirt has so much “flair” that it is best teamed with a close fitting top (such as the Mini-Military Jacket) to create a Fit & Flare statement.

Design a collection for Autumn 2012 and have your fashion line produced and sold by Thunderlily!

A unique opportunity, to have your fashion line promoted and sold by ThunderLily, available in hundreds of different fabrics and custom sizing, a professional photo-shoot for your line, opportunity of your lifetime.
Design five women’s wear pieces on the theme Autumn 2012 and have the opportunity to collaborate with an emerging fashion technology company to produce your mini-collection which will be featured in a fashion photo-shoot.

Click here to enter the competition

Competition Rules

To enter the competition please first read the rules and guidelines. Competition rules and guidelines.

* Please note entrants must be 18 years of age. Or, if they are 17 then they must have a representative creative their ThunderLily account. The winner will need to have a seller’s account in order to sell their designs, all sellers must be over 18.

The Future of Fashion

ThunderLily is a fashion workshop. We are developing software to enable independent designers and fashionistas to create their own fashion quickly and easily and have it produced on demand. The competition winner will have the opportunity to experience the technology and see their designs being custom-produced by ThunderLily.

Supporting Individuals and Small Businesses

ThunderLily works with individual seamstresses and production houses based in New York City’s Garment District to produce our designs. Designs are produced on demand, no upfront costs, no waste.
We want to put style back in your hands, so everything is made to be customized by you. Customize what you want, how you want.
Visit our fashion pages to try clothes on a model.
Click the fashions to customize with different fabrics and create unique looks.
Save your unique looks to My Favorites and share your creativity on Facebook,Twitter or Pinterest.
Buy the dress pattern customized just for you or get a made to measure unique outfit shipped to your door within three weeks.
Compete with top designers to buy fabrics direct from New York City’s garment district.

ThunderLily works with boutique fabric shops in New York City to bring fabulous, unique and reasonably priced fabrics to people across the country and around the world. Most of our vendors sell to and buy from the fashion industry so the fabrics are often one-of-a-kind.

Competition rules and guidelines. Terms and Conditions

Click here to enter the competition
or go to http://www.thunderlily.com/sketches.html

]]> http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/fashion-design-competition/feed/ 87 http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-balancing-body-types/ http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-balancing-body-types/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:37:02 +0000 ThunderLily http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/?p=1173 When designing or buying clothes, understanding fit is all too important. Elements of design can be used to balance or counter different body types for the most flattering look.

Countering the natural body features creates better vertical balance and proportion, resulting in the best silhouette for each body type. It is fun to change the illusion of the way the body looks naturally by choosing or adding design features that create “tricks of the eye”.

Working with lines and shapes it is easy to show how balance can be created. We have used some diagrams below to illustrate this…
the first row shows the basic outline of the main body types.


the second row illustrates the corresponding geometric shape, it is this shape that allows us to understand better how to balance the body.

in the third diagram we use arrows to show how design features would best be used to ‘counter’ features, creating balance and resulting in the most flattering look.

]]> http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-balancing-body-types/feed/ 0 http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-choosing-design-elements-that-flatter/ http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-choosing-design-elements-that-flatter/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:13:29 +0000 ThunderLily http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/?p=1150
While lines and shapes can be used to balance the body, design elements can be used to flatter and enhance certain features. Design elements should not distract, but enhance, ultimately bringing attention to the face, hence dominant details are most effective when at the centre front and above the bust line, (not on the bust line) pulling the attention in and upward to the point of personality and communication.

Secondary details are to support the main design and can be placed below the waist, or at the wrists, ankles, hemlines, exaggerated details should not be placed on the bust, hips or tummy – typically areas that are subject to weight gain.

How Long Should a Skirt be?
Skirts can really be any length, but an important guideline is that they are most flattering when they fall on the slimmest part of the leg, therefore, just above or just below the knee is the best way to use length to flatter the curve and shape of the leg.

Sleeves
Sleeves can easily balance the natural arm shape. A very full or puff sleeve complements very slender arms, while tailored or straight sleeves counter fuller arms and naturally include ease.
Shoulder pads or epaulettes added as a design feature can balance narrow or sloping shoulders. Shoulder pads do not need to mimic the power shoulders of the 1980’s, but can be of various sizes and gentle curving shape.

Necklines
The shape of the collar or neckline can so easily be used to balance the shape of the face. A soft curving collar or a simple round neckline can balance an angular face and similarly, a crisp tailored collar adds contrast to a round face or a double chin.

Waistlines
A varied waistline, such as an empire waist or dropped waistline perfectly leads attention away from the tummy region and allows for more comfort.

]]> http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-choosing-design-elements-that-flatter/feed/ 0 http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-using-visual-lines-to-create-shape/ http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/how-to-choose-or-design-clothes-that-fit-and-flatter-using-visual-lines-to-create-shape/#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:30:59 +0000 ThunderLily http://www.thunderlily.com/blog/?p=1125

Louise Gray Fall 2012 photo:Alessandro Viero/GoRunway.com

A great fit begins with understanding the body. What are the considered standard proportions vs. what are unique proportions, different body types and and how other forces such as posture affect clothing.

Great fitting clothes satisfy two visual (and seemingly contradictory) issues. Firstly, they must flatter and enhance the body type, and secondly they should use lines to contradict and create balance and shape.

Changing Shape with Lines
Clothes start at the neck and shoulders and the fabric drapes down from there, following the shape of the body. The eye also travels over the body from top to bottom, so lines can be used to move the focus of the eye to create an optical illusion and balance any body shape.

Click on the links below to see how both narrow and wide lines radically affect the body shape, which can be used to create flattering proportions.