Introducing Paul Cavazza. Part 1

Paul Cavazza, owner of Create-A-Marker at 254 West 35th St. 10th Floor New York, NY 10001

Paul Cavazza’s company, Create-A-Marker, does grading and makes markers for numerous customers in the fashion industry. He is a natural and highly visual problem solver, sketching to illustrate his points as he shares stories of his life in the garment industry. He grew up in the garment industry here in New York, going from work in his parents’ shop to study at FIT, working between classes at a grading and marking company. In 1993, he started his own grading and marking company, which now has a staff of 27. In a typical day, he takes the last order by 3pm at the absolute latest, and stays til after 6pm, finishing up work, and sidestepping the shop cat, Popsicle, who makes him sneeze.

Cavazza has worked with big name runway designers, some of them since their origins. He is especially enthusiastic about the collaborative teaching process of working with younger designers, who are just starting to learn the business. In addition to his insights about the process and the business of fashion manufactuing, he has a long memory of the way the garment industry’s place in the geography of New York has changed, and is still evolving.

The work that Create-a-Marker does, grading and marking patterns, is all tied to the information on the cutter’s must. Calling it “the bible of the garment,” he pinpoints it as the intersection of all the steps and different jobs that go into making a designer’s ideas into reality. A cutter’s must is the inventory of the parts of a pattern. But, says Cavazza, “from my perspective, there are so many critical details on the right side of the cutter’s must: the type of stitching, seam allowances, instructions on how to press it and the inventory of accessories, like the kind of zipper, or how many buttons to order.

“With just a pattern on paper, you don’t know what kind of garment it is. You know the season and the style number. You know what is the self, and what is the lining and the fusible and the shapers are; but you’re second guessing the types of fabrics, the trims, hems, and special instructions. And if I don’t have the right information from the cutter’s must at the first part of production, that could start a ripple effect of more and more expensive mistakes down the line!”

What Are Markers?.  Part 2

Tags: Create-A-Marker, fashion industry, grading, markers, Paul Cavazza, tech designer

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 7:00 AM and is filed under Interview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.