The options
After having met Brigit, we went to meet Amber, an student from the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. When we met here she was very enthusiastic and wanted to make something that is down to earth and feels good on the body. This sounded very nice, but the problem was that she never made any jewelleries. After we talked to both designers, we set out the pro and cons for each.
If we would pick Brigit, we would be sure that a great design would be created, since we saw a lot of her work which looked very nice. It would also be done fast, which would mean around 1 week and we know that it will go right, since she is a professional. The cons are that we need to give the specifics about the mechanism very quickly and we can not go into an iterative process. When Brigit would make something, it would be a final design as it will not be easy to edit it anymore. This is because the process of making it consists of using water and soap to make felt out of wool. After the felt has been made, it is stuck and changing it would mean that a whole new design has to be made. This is difficult for us, since we would like to change the design according to the change of the mechanism. The mechanism and design should grow together and during every step the design should be changed a little bit.
If we pick Amber, it would mean that we choose someone that never designed jewellery, but is very creative and has a fashion background. At the moment she is making her collection for the upcoming fashion show, which takes up a lot of time. When we met her, she said that she always prototypes her designs to see if they look good in real life. This is useful for us, because if we do that, we can change the design after we see it in real life. She wants to make a skeleton and then create textiles around it. This way, it feels good on the body and the mechanisms fit in there.
The decision
In the end, we decided to choose Amber, because we can work together with her closely as she can come to the MediaLAB to work. In this way, we can keep on changing the designs and try printing those at Ifabrica. Hopefully this will evolve into a goodlooking design where the mechanism fits into.