In the Mood for Fashion

Diana and the mother of all mood boards

I've had mood boards way before they were called that. A collector of ephemera, I enjoy looking at bits and pieces ripped out of magazines or picked up along the way. I started small, with a bulletin board in my bedroom, but it grew. My workspace at art school was pretty awesome, inspiring the director to let me know if I didn't take it all down at graduation there would be consequences. As a graphic designer I managed to eek out a little space to pin up inspiration every place I worked. Once upon a time I had a whole spare bedroom for a studio and corked the walls. My mood boards then rivaled Diana Vreeland's office at Vogue.

Fashion designers have long used mood boards to pull together their collections. Any interior designer worth her salt carries around a portable mood board in the form of a notebook. I know Pinterest is touted as a digital mood board and can be very addictive. I fear that and am not taking the bait.

Nowadays I indulge my love for fashion with mood boards only this time, challenged for space, I use the insides of my closet doors. Thank you, lovely people who renovated this bungalow, for giving us a wall of closets with smooth white doors. And thanks to Scotch Brand for inventing Magic Tape.

A mood board inside my closet

You shouldn't need a tutorial for a mood board. I actually found "24 Pro Tips for Creating Inspirational Mood Boards" while researching this blog. That sounds too much like scrapbooking. Mood boards are for you and should come from the heart. They should make you happy and inspire you. Should they be shown to someone else, they will be seeing you. Which is fine, except no one is seeing inside my closet.