This afternoon, we had a helpful lesson from Myleene Klass. She may have started off in a pop band, but for the past 10 years Myleene has worked in partnership with Mothercare, designing children's collections.
Firstly, Myleene gave us a quick insight into Mothercare and how she became an active part of their design team. Her initial passion for marketing and brand sales stemmed from selling fan merchandise when she was a singer. Since then, her love for making products to design and sell rapidly grew. After becoming a mother, Myleene became frustrated with the children's and baby clothes market, as it was hard to find comfortable, and practical clothing for her children that were also on trend.
Mothercare approached the mother-of-two and since then they have worked together on over 20 collections, from babies to up to eight-year-olds. This talk was the perfect insight into branding from a designer’s point of view, filled with all the trial and error you learn from. Struggles with backlash from picky mothers, to staying conscious of cultural differences (ie. colours, and animals hold different meanings globally), to the rules of health and safety. Myleene laughed about the rules when she joked, “you can’t have a unicorn, but you can have a horse with a party hat!”.
Listening to this talk was a great way for any designer (no matter the age of their target customer) to take branding into consideration when starting a collection.
Words by Maisie Taylor