Custom Button Up Shirt
This project explores how childhood nostalgia can be translated into a contemporary visual system for fashion. Inspired by Thomas the Tank Engine, I reinterpreted familiar characters into a simplified, modular pattern language designed for modern apparel.
Rather than replicating the original designs, I abstracted key visual elements color, geometry, and line weight, to create a cohesive and repeatable system. The goal was to maintain recognizability while aligning the visuals with current fashion aesthetics, emphasizing clarity, consistency, and scalability.
The final pattern was applied to an all-over printed button-up shirt to evaluate how the system performs in a real-world context, considering scale, repetition, and how graphics interact with garment structure.
Process
To evaluate the pattern’s effectiveness in a real-world context, I first tested the design using the original character color palette. This version explored how high-saturation colors and recognizable visuals translated onto fabric, focusing on print clarity, scale, and repetition throughout the garment.
Through this process, I assessed how character density and strong color contrast impacted readability and overall wearability. While the original palette remained highly recognizable, it became visually overwhelming when applied at scale.
In response, I refined the system using a more controlled, vintage-inspired color palette. By softening tones and unifying color relationships, the final design achieves a better balance between nostalgia and contemporary fashion, resulting in a more cohesive and wearable outcome.
