NEST’S ARTISAN GUILD GETS A LESSON FROM ANGEL CHANG

Angel Chang is a creative force to be reckoned with, and her dedication to reengaging China’s diverse handcraft techniques makes her broad base of experience particularly relevant to the artisan business community. As the recipient of the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award and Cartier Women’s Initiative Award, Angel has been widely recognized for her innovative contributions to the fashion industry.

On May 18th, Angel joined Nest to share her industry wisdom and fresh perspective with an eager audience of artisan business leaders, who as part of the Nest Artisan Guild, tuned in from around the world to participate in Angel’s webinar seminar hosted through the Nest Global Learning Center.

The topic at hand, design research and development (R&D), was selected by Nest’s Annie Millican to address what has been cropping up from the Nest Guild community as a subject surrounded by question marks. And so, artisan leaders had their questions answered as Angel walked her audience through her own R&D process and mapped out a cohesive framework for integrating inspired new styles into an artisan collection. Topics catering directly to questions submitted from participating artisan leaders included:

• Market trend research: ensuring your product offering fills a consumer need
• Brand: matching your product line to your brand story
• Color theory and color story
• Themes: leveraging themes to update collections on a seasonal or annual basis
• Design Frameworks: employing tools or techniques for developing inspiration for new ideas and designs (i.e. – mood boards, integration of other artistic activities, collecting materials from the natural/local setting)

For the artisan leaders who participated in Angel’s webinar, the opportunity to learn directly from an expert was one of the many reasons why the Nest Global Learning Center has become a valued resource. We believe that this type of cross-cultural exchange, skill-sharing, and collaboration is needed to propel the artisan sector forward, and we thank our supporters and donors for making the Global Learning Center possible.