protocol analysis: fashion design

(Last post today, and probably pre-IFFTI, I promise)

Today I took part in a protocol analysis(*) exercise at uni; they wanted a designer from each of the disciplines (fashion design, visual communications, industrial design and interior design) to work in a real-life design situation and talk through their thinking whilst designing whilst being filmed. Apparently my PhD-designing was real life enough. (And to prove I've completely lost my sense of humour, everything I do now is doctoral. As in doctoral sewing, doctoral answering the phone, doctoral going to the toilet. Think carefully before stepping into the slushy pit that is a PhD.)

It was interesting to be the guinea pig, given the practice-led methodology of my project. There are parallels in what I'm doing during the practice and what I did today (working on a circle shirt, of all things, on camera). Of course I don't talk out loud in my studio - much - but as I'm needing to keep a record of pretty much everything I do, I kind of talk inside my head a lot as I document it all. I do tell myself that most faculties are still intact while I do this, of course, but boy is it noisy in there sometimes. Research, baby. It was also interesting to get someone else's view on my design processes afterwards; one person's (mine) anal retentiveness is another's "methodical approach", it turns out. The video will be used to show undergraduate students design in action and reflection in action. That tablecloth (to be explained later) is sure to come back to haunt me, possibly on YouTube.

(*) Protocol analysis as a method of inquiry isn't anywhere near as boring as it sounds even if a large percentage of the academic papers written about it would put half the universe into a permanent coma.

Found: Andrew Hague

The MySpace was that of the very Andrew Hague in Fletcher's book! I'm hoping to write a post on him and his work here soon so watch out. Two weeks after resurrecting the blog (after nine months in password-only purgatory) it's finally coming up on Google. So, hopefully I can use this for good and plug another no-waste designer out there.

circles and waste

Any investigation into cutting without waste would eventually need to consider circles. Take circle skirts. The question, generally, one finds oneself asking over and over in a no-waste approach is, 'What can this shape become?' 'This shape' mostly refers to the edge left behind by a pattern shape one has just created; I absolutely believe that here the main limiting factor is one's creativity.

With circles there are many possibilities. Here's a dodgy quick sketch to (hopefully) illustrate three:



The first and second are the same really; the third is something I did at work yesterday. We had some digitally printed blocks of fabric with a blank border about an inch wide between each, which the designer definitely didn't want in the skirt. (Why the textile people couldn't have the solid background colour continue through the 15 metres is beyond me. No, we didn't need it in repeat but all up we paid for at least 20 inches of blank bits through the fabric.) It was to be a full circle, so I made the skirt with six pieces: a quarter circle at front and back and eighths at sides, with side seams (and the zip!) on the straight grain and the bias seams at side front and back. The waistbands came out of the shaded bits. For a no-waste skirt, the third option would probably be the easiest though I see lots of design potential in the first two, too. And not just applique, which has become the running joke in my project - as in "can't think of anything to do with this so it'll become applique". There will be some applique, for sure, but hopefully it won't look like a poor man's version of those amazing fishermen's coats from Awaji Island.

I would love to one day do an experiment with leaving the corners in (rather than cutting out a circle) and darting the hem to bring it back to the circle and having it on the outside. But maybe you'll do it first. Whilst my collection of menswear may well have some skirts in it (why should a windy male groin be the reserve of the Scots?) I'm not sure about circle skirts. Nor capes; whether on men or women, I always expect the cape wearer to take off and save the world flying.

The waist doesn't have to be a circle, of course. It could be a simple straight slash (on any angle, as long as you know what it'll do), or a rectangle, like this:
To cut a long, painful story short, a lovely friend is having a commitment ceremony (she doesn't believe in marriage) and was going to get a dress made from a reissued 1950s Vogue pattern. Her dressmaker bailed and I said I could get someone else but that person wouldn't go anywhere near a Vogue pattern with a sewing machine because why would one; life's too short for those nightmares. So, I offered to 'fix' the pattern prior. From the picture I expected to find pleats but it was cut like the doodle above; the corners create flares from the waist.

(As a side note, why do they print a cute little zip on the pattern piece? A notch would do quite nicely, thanks very much. As for the rest... Thankfully it's a good friend, otherwise all that tissue paper - how I HATE tissue paper - would be eaten and digested in anger by now.)

I had a point but now it eludes me. Think outside the circle, maybe?

what couture? haute couture (and not couture)

Whilst I've taken a break this year from teaching in order to finish my thesis (this makes me a nearly middle-aged full-time student...), I'm giving one lecture to the second-year students this semester that I've given twice before, on haute couture. The subject is 'Couturier Techniques' and it's mostly very practice-oriented, with a series of six or seven lectures to support, beginning with mine today.

When I was first asked to do the lecture, the working title was 'What is couture?' I will give a very brief history and an overview of the organisational support for the industry in France, but mostly the lecture is about the clothes and their makers and wearers, and the relationships between them that are intrinsic to couture. I hope that by the end, the students will see how all those 'haute couture' shops along Parramatta Road (a grotty but important Sydney roadway) aren't. I also hope that by the end any misconceptions about the meaning of haute couture have been laid to rest. Understandably a common misunderstanding among past students has equated haute couture with eveningwear; evening certainly dominates the little media coverage couture now gets. My perhaps most important example to show the impact of the client on the garments produced is decidedly day: the famous 'Bar' suit from Dior's 1947 'New Look' collection. Or three rather different versions of it, to be precise.

I will also touch on the recurring pronouncements on the death of couture, and the reasons for couture's decline. In an era when some companies will have you believe that a trend lasts a month, who would be willing to wait three for a garment to be finished (presuming you can afford it)? I don't believe the claims nobody can any longer afford couture - there is arguably more uneven wealth in the world than ever before - rather, I think it's a cultural thing. Apparently to many shopping is a social activity full of pleasure, and being able to take something home straight away - we don't question that any more, do we?.

Many dismiss haute couture outright as an unnecessary frivolity (often without any insight into quality, workmanship, etc.). It's therefore a pleasure that Alison Gwilt, a colleague, has been focusing on haute couture for her PhD for some time. For the past two years, I've not really followed the various investigations into 'slow fashion' as intently as I should have, but surely there are links to be built to couture? Fletcher has included a 'slow fashion' section in her book but I've yet to read it. Anyway, some of the positive aspects of haute couture get little airing, such as the service aspect (a garment will be repaired and/or altered as needed in the future, usually free of charge), or that garments are produced to order only.

Tomorrow: Melbourne, and IFFTI 08. I seem to cause the weather to turn frosty every time I go down, regardless of season; Victorians, I apologise and advise you to rug up.

The World of Blue Jeans, a photo essay from Time

Here. The images could, of course, be of most things we wear now.

Anyone else bought a pair of 'raw' (unwashed) jeans lately that you're not supposed to wash for the first six months? I got two pairs in October/November, from G-Star. That was after a month or two of looking for organic cotton and/or hemp alternatives, both in real shops and the net. By alternatives I mean something that I would actually want to wear, not something I would wear just because it was organic cotton and/or hemp (because I wouldn't - I've yet to find a hemp pair that I would love for five years, a criterion for any new garment I buy).

Now, for someone that always abhorred the artificial aging and distressing that dominated denim for so many years, the tide has finally turned in the past two years and there are jeans worth buying again (even if some prices remain in the rude and stupid categories). Denim - at least reasonably good-quality denim, with no nasty stretch in it - will respond to wear better than any other fabric, I think. Knobbly knees, wallet, keys; it all eventually comes through like the Shroud of Turin but without the pilgrims, making your pair explicitly yours. No such luck with the generic 'worn' jeans of yesterday. I didn't buy jeans for four years, which resulted in a range of denim rags hanging off me towards the end of last year.

But back to the no-washing: the six months has something to do with the jeans taking to your shape or not losing their (synthetic/chemical/toxic?) coating, depending on the sales assistant you get. I think it's a bit of a gimmick, a trend, and nothing more, but one with some positive side effects. As we know, many garments make their greatest environmental impact in the hands of the consumers, through laundering and tumble-drying. (Though Fletcher provides some great insights about this in her book; some were new to me.) One friend lasted beyond the six months, despite weekly wear of the jeans, and I've now made it to 4+ months. The secret to odourless denim? The freezer. I aired and aired the jeans, religiously, but there were a few hot weeks in November and airing in the end did little. You whack the jeans in the freezer for 24 hours, however... Perfect! 24 hours seems to be enough to kill the bacteria that live off your sweat, dead skin cells, body lotion, etc. Now, this isn't without problems, of course - freezers consume considerable energy. But, I think if you have one in operation already, a pair of jeans doesn't take up much space or extra energy to freeze, though I'd love to see someone investigate this.

In the end, though, because of the sweat, dead skin cells and body lotion residue I am looking forward to washing the jeans soon. One more month, maybe two... And to take your mind off my dead skin cells, here are some images from Eco Chic, a show in Jakarta, Indonesia.

project runway australia

If that sort of thing interests you, applications for Project Runway Australia close on Sunday. Since I don't have cable and won't be watching, I won't know if the competitors will be tested on such essential design skills as printing off pictures from net-a-porter.com and giving these to a patternmaker, or attending a champagne launch for a thrush medication on a Wednesday morning so that your picture may appear in the Sunday papers. But please do tell me all about it when it begins.

del.icio.us

Everyone in my inner circle would know that I'm not exactly up there when it comes to new technology and new things on the web, even if I may have been part of the first wave to leave Facebook. I've known of del.icio.us for quite some time but never got around to it until last week. Some of my fellow research students do know me for my, um, somewhat anally retentive bookmarking, so it's hard to believe it took this long for me to join. I joined on Friday, and imported all the bookmarks from Firefox and IE on my uni computer. 1200+... By the time I'd done the same at home - let's not even go there. It may be a blessing I've yet to work out how to do the same from Safari. I've spent four days culling and cleaning (not unlike the experience of leaving Facebook, actually), and whilst there are some obvious missing tags and things that don't necessarily make the sense they could yet, here they are.

information wanted: Andrew Hague

In Kate Fletcher's book there is a photo of a shirt (p. 153) by Andrew Hague, described as "efficient pattern cutting concept shirt to address wastage". I did Google searches for 'Andrew Hague fashion' and 'Andrew Hague patterncutting', with little success in the first five or so results pages. I did find this, the MySpace of a Andrew Hague. I will contact him later, to see if he's the one. I should contact Fletcher, too, to ask for more information and thank her for the book (a must!). But, if you know more, please email me on timo.i.rissanen at gmail.com For whatever reason, there is no reference to Hague in the body of the book.

Oh, and the book with my chapter in it should be out by mid-April - I just got word on the weekend that there has been a slight delay. I'm still not completely over my embarrassment that the chapter includes no reference to the research work of Deborah K. Burnham but naturally I will rectify this in any future publications. Thanks to Kathleen Fasanella and Alexandra Palmer for introducing me to her work. On Palmer, the latest issue of Fashion Theory has a fabulous article by her, with a fascinating account of her education at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art under Stella Blum, during the Diana Vreeland era. In fact, the entire issue, on fashion exhibitions, is fantastic, and I'm finding it really helpful as I find myself involved in three different exhibitions over the next 18 months. One is, of course, my PhD exhibition, I'm contributing to the catalogue of one by two colleagues and I'm co-curating one for 2009.

the crisis of fashion journalism in australia

This sorry piece in the Sydney Morning Herald pretty such sums up the state of 95% of fashion reporting in this country (100% of TV reporting, in fact). Only last week I was bemoaning to a colleague how the reports from the shows tend to be along the lines of, 'Oh, look at this funny hat', and there it is. I long for the days when Jane de Teliga, Maggie Alderson and Patty Huntington used to report for the Herald. I could go on and on - what about that 20-something socialite that 'wrote' the fashion section for the Sunday Telegraph while the wonderful Melissa Hoyer was on leave? The poor love confused the Australian designer Collette Dinnigan with Colette, the store in Paris. 'Nuff said.

misc.

Models smiling at Hussein Chalayan. Who would have thought?

Via a Google alert on eco-fashion came this. Whilst I have absolute respect for people with convictions, 'eco-fashion' and vegan fashion are not the same thing. I don't know, it's like a thousand 'fashion is bad' posts I've read before and speaks to the converted only.

Excitingly, a new journal: International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, from Taylor & Francis. Call for Papers is downloadable from the button at top. From the 'Aims and Scope':

Aims & Scope

International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education aims to provide a high quality peer-reviewed forum for research in fashion design, pattern cutting, apparel production, manufacturing technology and fashion education. The Journal will encourage interdisciplinary research and the development of an academic community which will share newly developed technology, theory and techniques in the fashion and textile industries, as well as promote the development of excellent education practice in the clothing and textile fields.

Contributions suitable for this new journal should fall into one of the following three categories:

(1) Research papers presenting important new findings
(2) Technical papers describing new developments or innovation
(3) Academic discussion papers dealing with medium to long-term trends and predictions.

All published research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by independent expert referees.

collection fabrication

For a long time, I've been torn in regards to the fabrics for the collection. Of course I would like to use solely 'sustainable' fabrics, whether they be organically grown, recycled/reclaimed, local, etc. There are two problems I need to deal with: lack of diversity and lack of money. For example, if I were to use only locally produced (Australian) fabrics, my choices as a designer would be very limited, also posing problems for the quality of the research (see below). Even if I expanded beyond local, the emphasis in hemp and organic cotton fabrics tends to be on basic canvasses, lawns, poplins and jersey. And the quality is often... well, not as high as I'd like; the coffee sack look is still worryingly popular. And don't get me started on the strange woven plaids and stripes that I regularly come across. As for the latter (finance), I think it's a disadvantage that can be turned into an opportunity; lack of money is only as restrictive as you allow it to be, I think.

I do believe that bought, old, fabrics already in existence are better used than not. So, I will use some of the fabrics I've had lying around for four or more years, since I walked away from the label (including some 100 metres of cotton jersey). If I were to mass produce the garments, I would substitute the conventional cotton jersey with an organic alternative, if I were able to find one of the same quality. Two weeks ago a friend donated ten metres of a double wool she'd had for ten years, with good intentions but no outcomes. Anyway, arguably the fabric to date has been passively wasted, and so for me to use it is to make the most of the effort and resources that went into producing it, just like with the fabrics I've had collecting dust.

I will use some fabrics and trims that I've bought in second-hand stores. This would pose a challenge if I were to mass produce but I have no plans to do so; nevertheless, I will discuss later how I would tackle the particular challenges - various options do exist.

Finally, some fabrics will be bought new, and it's here I will make the effort to find the most sustainable option, as long as the compromise to quality isn't too great. So, denim will most likely come in a hemp/cotton mix (organic cotton if possible) and hemp canvas may provide the canvas for some hand-painted pieces. (Painted how? Let me read Fletcher's book, fresh out of the box, and I will get back on that.) I've also seen a hemp-silk mix that might work for some of the shirts.

But, I do aim for the collection to be at the high-end of things in terms of quality and level of finish and some painful compromises may come my way. And of course, I will try to educate myself as thoroughly as possible, every step of the way. For example, in her book Fletcher questions the antibacterial claims made about bamboo fabrics (ppp. 32-34) although TreeHugger has discussed some studies done in the area. There are also some research requirements for the fabrics that I need to meet, for example, using stripes and/or checks, and one-way prints, to see the implications for a no-waste approach. At the end of the day, my project is about not wasting fabric, and to keep it firmly focussed within the time frame I have, some high ideals may need temporary ignoring.

Synthetics: some still take a zero-tolerance approach to anything synthetic (a verbal attack against a carpet manufacturer by an audience member at one of the d factory talks on sustainability last year comes to mind), but to me the infinite recyclability appeals. Kate Goldsworthy's research in particular is worth looking into. To me, the problem with synthetics is more to do with comfort and wearability - I wear them little myself (an old nylon Miyake jacket notwithstanding) so I do have trouble proposing others to wear them.

Then there are the trims and notions... Many will be reclaimed (e.g. buttons from second-hand shops) and I will avoid creating natural/synthetic mixes with trims - for example, applying a polyester braid to a hemp pant. Overall, I find this a problematic area and will discuss further as things progress.

A short post on a complex topic but life beckons. I will return to this, no doubt.

Oh and next week I'll be attending the IFFTI conference in Melbourne. Some very interesting papers though not much on sustainability.

misc.

Bahar Shahpar Autumn 2008 collection: The use of the plaid in this is inspired though probably somewhat wasteful.

Evolution/Revolution: The Arts and Crafts in Contemporary Fashion and Textiles at The RISD Museum of Art, curated by Joanne Ingersoll.

Encyclopedia of Life is now online. Some background from the BBC.

This BBC article on greenwashing reminds me of a project I taught in, where the students had to come up with logos promoting sustainability that did NOT include a sphere/circle/globe, a plant or the colour green.

That'll do for now. But, with the endless Google Alerts, more to come soon.

print repeats

In a zero-waste approach to fashion creation, fabric poses significant considerations for design that one might not otherwise think about. Recently, in my industry job, I did, however, need to think in a no-waste approach, sort of. We were using a print that was essentially a very large check - a 55cm repeat - to make a full-length bias-cut dress. Because the same print placement was desired for all the dresses about to be produced, the yield (or yardage, meterage, etc.) was going to be a multiple of 55cm. I then needed to work out the smallest multiple of 55cm that we could get the dress out of. I think in the end it was seven repeats, or 3.85 metres.

The amount of waste? HUGE, much bigger than the figures put forward by Cooklin and others. I work as a patternmaker, making patterns according to the designer's sketch. These generally aren't negotiable. Yes, I feel awful about it, but at the moment working is about keeping me fed to the end of my PhD, and I still don't know how most companies would go from a conventional, wasteful approach to wasting little or none. Anyway, unlike many of the awful cheap fabrics (result of people demanding ever more awful and cheap clothes, I think) I've had to work with over the years, this was quite beautiful and the print was begging for a creative no-waste approach. It wasn't to be, but I will be using some conventionally repeating prints or patterns (e.g. checks) in the collection to see what the implications are. I may also use -gasp- digital printing although 99% of the time it looks too much like, well, digital printing. It seems that anyone capable of operating a scanner and/or Photoshop is a textile designer these days. But there I go digressing again. (Need to discuss collection fabrication in detail here soon, too. Very problematic, if a holistic approach is to be adopted in terms of sustainability.)

The collection... The working title is 'Bad Dogs', for reasons I'll explain another time. A lively conversation about related stuff today produced 'Do Not Iron the Poof', which might just work as a title. But time for sleep now.

a quick note

I should clarify that I cannot share my key research findings here until after I've submitted my thesis and published the most significant aspects of the research. Obviously I will share some findings in the exhibition in August and don't see a problem with discussing those here. As for the rest, they will have to wait until next year. I do hope to maintain this blog beyond thesis submission, however sporadic that may be. So, apologies, but we'll get there eventually.

new books

Eight months after my last post, here I am, again. The collection is well on its way and the exhibition will take place in August 2008. Since my last post, two significant new books have been published on sustainability and fashion and textiles. Whilst I'm still waiting for my copies to arrive and hence am unable to comment on either, here are the details:

Kate Fletcher: Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys, available from here.

Janet Hethorn, Connie Ulasewicz, Yvon Chouinard (editors): Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? A conversation exploring issues, practices, and possibilities, available from here. (This is the book I wrote a chapter for.)

Also worth a read, the WWF 'Deeper Luxury' report, from here.

That's it, for now. In coming days I'd like to summarise some of the articles on futurefashion (NY fashion week) and Esthetica (London fashion week). I have, however, a lot to organise for my exhibition as well as one I'm co-curating for 2009 so it may not happen.

some thoughts on 'well dressed?' part 1

'Well dressed? The present and future sustainability of clothing and textiles in the United Kingdom' is an excellent report from a team at the University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing. It may be downloaded here.

p. 10: Hourly wages in the clothing industry by country, US$ per hour (from an ILO report, 2003)
Pakistan 0.23
Sri Lanka 0.57
India 0.71
China 0.86
Mexico 1.75
Hong Kong 5.13
Germany 10.03
USA 11.16

When I had my label, I paid my sample machinist $25-$30 per hour, and the production machinists $12-$15 per hour. (I didn't pay myself anything for design, patternmaking and cutting.) People always wondered why even one of my basic tees retailed for $80, when some other (larger) labels were selling theirs for half that (made offshore). Everything I did was made in Australia - Sydney, in fact. That's why. I have no regrets about it, though. I knew who was making the garments and in what conditions. There were no middlemen and the money went directly to those that did the work. I should note, though, that I really had no idea about any environmental issues at the time, or at least I didn't pay any attention to them. It was hard enough trying to break even - not that that's an excuse. But, once I was in the midst of it, there simply wasn't any time to try to educate myself. That's what I'm trying to do now.

p. 14: The four major environmental issues associated with the clothing sector are:

• Energy use
• Use of toxic chemicals
• Release of chemicals in waste water
• "Solid waste arising from yarn manufacturing of natural fibres, making up and disposal of products at the end of their life."

My research, of course, investigates one aspect (fabric waste) of the last one.

Speed-reading the report and the technical annex, it seems there is some excellent concrete information on the amount of fabric waste produced by the fashion industry - I need to return to this. Although this seems like a short post - well, this is a short post - I've been interrupted by three phone calls and have probably spent two hours on this, and am getting hungry.

Get the report and read it. Very informative. I'll attempt to return to it shortly.

(Oh, and I did get the progress report in today, officially two weeks late. That's progress.)

why not waste?

At Design Inquiries an audience member asked me why we should worry about wasting (or not) fabric? I replied that I believed fabric to be a sophisticated, precious, designed product in its own right, usually with a significant ecological footprint already attached. Since then (and even before, as my journal shows), I've thought about this more. (Of course I have; this is the rationale for my entire project.) It would seem to me that it's also about the fashion designer having a different sort of appreciation or respect for fabric. If you look at the works of Zandra Rhodes and Mark Liu, for example, both design the textiles first, then the garment. The rich thinking processes that constitute textile design, all of the problem solving, is evident to you when you've designed the fabric. Perhaps when you design the garment, the fabric is that much more precious then that it becomes that much more difficult to waste it. Rhodes actually talks about this: “The [printed] patterns lead me along and influence the way I use them [in garments]…I always consider what is left and try to make it into another part of the dress. I can’t tolerate waste and use every inch.” [In: Rhodes, Z. and A. Knight, 1984: The art of Zandra Rhodes. London, Jonathan Cape, page 56]

I don't know. It's just makes sense not to waste it.

i'm back (for now at least)

It's been more than six months since the last post. Blogging didn't feel a right fit to document the practice on the kind of basis that is necessary for the research; my research journal (a very hands-on approach that I'm familiar with) has worked much better. But, I do think this place can play its own role, too.

The six months have been hectic, as I'm currently trying to explain in my now-two-weeks overdue progress report for the semester. In late February I finished the book chapter I've worked on since August; that has now come back with comments from the publisher. It's quite exciting to see how that project has evolved. The book is planned for publication in early 2008, under the title Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? It is edited by Janet Hethorn (University of Delaware) and Connie Ulasewicz (San Francisco State University). My chapter is titled 'Jigsaw Puzzle: Creating Fashion without Creating Fabric Waste'. The other chapters (there are 15 in all!) seem very exciting; the book will be a valuable resource for various fashion-related fields.

I was accepted to present two different papers at two different conferences. The first was Dressing Rooms: Current Perspectives on Fashion and Textiles, in Oslo 14-16 May. The second was Design Inquiries, organized by Nordes in Stockholm 27-30 May. Both conferences were invaluable experiences, both as speaker and audience member. At this point I still feel the information overload, as I'm typing up my notes. If another research student somewhere reads this and thinks, wow, he's doing all that, know this: I was petrified going to both conferences, doubting everything that I was about to talk about. It's that eternal fear of being caught out. That you're a fraud. You just need to ignore that fear for the twenty minutes it takes to present a paper.

During the trip I had a chance to meet Professor Julian Roberts from the University of Hertfordshire. His approach to fashion design and pattern cutting (or what we in Australia call patternmaking - I still don't know where I sit with either term, and am not sure it matters, either) has interested me from the start of my project, and he was generous in talking about his work. Hell, he was generous just to meet me (and buy me a drink, which I had no opportunity to shout back). I still can't believe how late I was, although luckily I've since understood a few more things about reading the London Tube map.

I was also contacted by Mark Liu who I then had the pleasure of meeting. Mark is a former student who is finishing his MA in Textile Futures. His final work? A series of textiles, that are in fact garments - all of the textile is in each garment; these are zero-fabric-waste fashion! I got very excited by his initial email, and even more so when I saw the work. He's letting me include the the work in the book chapter, too.

I think that'll do for an update for now. Of course I've been busiest with making. More on that at the other one.

Categorising fashion design - one example

Ok, got the book [Rennolds Milbank, Caroline (1985) Couture. The Great Designers. Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc. New York], these are the categories and designers.

The Founders: Worth, Doucet, Paquin, Lanvin, Callot Souers, Lucile, Boué Souers, Poiret

The Artists: Fortuny, Callenga, Liberty & Co, Mary McFadden, Zandra Rhodes

The Purists: Chanel, Jean Patou, Molyneux, Grès, Augustabernard, Louiseboulanger, Vionnet, Mainbocher, Valentina, Halston, Sonia Rykiel

The Entertainers: Schiaparelli, Adrian, Maggy Rouff, Karl Lagerfeld, Marcel Rochas

The Extravagants: Dior, Nina Ricci, Balmain, Jacques Heim, Jacques Fath, Jacques Griffe, Jean Dessès, Norman Hartnell, Valentino, Givenchy, Galanos, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Yves Saint Laurent

The Architects: Balenciaga, Charles James, Roberto Capucci, Pierre Cardin, Courreges

The Realists: Claire McCardell, Vera Maxwell, Bonnie Cashin, Norma Kamali, Norman Norell, Pauline Trigère, Hardy Amies, Geoffrey Beene, Perry Ellis, Ralph Lauren, Kenzo, Giorgio Armani, Issey Miyake

Like I said, these categories have little bearing to what I'm researching, but it's really interesting to me nevertheless that someone has categorised fashion designers at least partly according to how they work. The designers of some or considerable interest to my project can be found under several of Rennolds Milbank's categories: Callot Souers, Fortuny, Zandra Rhodes, Madeleine Vionnet, Jacques Griffe, Balenciaga, Charles James, Claire McCardell and Issey Miyake. Of course, these are not the only designers that I've looked into; for example, the book is that much old now that Yeohlee Teng doesn't appear. Also, people like Thayaht (an Italian futurist that worked for Vionnet at one point) and Bernard Rudofsky weren't fashion designers, yet designed clothes at one point in their respective careers: clothes that wasted very little fabric. And of course, all types of 'traditional' dress from around the world are of interest to me, as usually very little fabric is wasted in their making. The kimono from Japan is probably the best known example in this respect.

I'm not sure it's within the scope of my PhD to attempt to categorise all different types of fashion designing, but I'm guessing that when I get to the other end, I will have some very good pointers toward such a categorisation. Or I might realise such a categorisation is not appropriate. I do know that different fashion designers have very different approaches to designing: some rely entirely on the sketch, others do not sketch at all and there are countless variations between the extremes.

Fashion design and making (part 1 of countless to come, no doubt)

I suppose that underlying questions in my research are 'What is fashion design?' and 'What role, if any, does making play in fashion design?' Increasingly, with the moving of clothing production off-shore, a fashion designer draws up a garment on the computer, specifies the dimensions of that garment through a set of measurements and emails these off to a manufacturer. A week or so later a sample garment arrives. After a fitting, any required changes are communicated to the manufacturer, usually again as a series of measurements (e.g. raise underarm 1cm; shorten sleeve 2.5cm, etc.), until a sample garment is approved for production. It is now possible to 'design' and acquire a finished sample garment without any direct contact with a patternmaker, or a cutter, machinist, etc.

A particular book comes to mind, titled 'Couture, the great fashion designers' (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1985). The author, Caroline Rennolds Milbank, covers significant fashion designers from Charles Worth (late ninenteenth century) onwards. I don't have the book with me now, but from memory, the book was in categories suchs as 'The Realists', 'The Architects', 'The Artists' and so forth. I'm not suggesting these categories are necessarily the right ones if one is to categorise different types of fashion designing, but the fact that the author has attempted to categorise these designers at least partly based on the way they work (again, I'm working from memory here) is really interesting. I also recall someone once writing that fashion designers could be divided into 'architects' and 'decorators'; while I don't necessarily agree in such a simplistic dichotomy (why couldn't a designer be both?), the labels are once again suggestive of how the designers work.

How does this relate to my research? To eliminate waste, the designer needs to be aware what the garment looks like when its components are separate and laid flat. I know from personal experience that some designers do not, and don't care. To others, the making of the pattern is absolutely integral to their design process, not because of waste, but... actually, I'm not sure why. For me, patternmaking is important because I know (most of the time) how the two-dimensional shapes will turn out in a three-dimensional garment. Now, of course, pattern is also important for me because it's key to eliminating fabric waste.

I'll get my hands on the Rennolds Milbank book at home, to see what the actual categories are, and which designers are under each.