Category: How To

Mercedes Gonzalez is Director of Global Purchasing Companies, a full service buying office that plans and implements retail strategies.

This is a collection I did for my clothing line Brentwood last season. (See more pics below.) I wanted to explain to you that it doesn’t take a “ish” load of money to market a collection granted you understand your customer and what they want. This strategy will drastically cut down on your marketing costs to the point you can redo the lookbook if you don’t get it right the first time.

The making of a Hermes bag.

How It’s Made: Ballet Slippers

Do You Have Your PANTONE Book Yet?
This is a color reference book used commonly in the industry to communicate color. Pantone is known worldwide as one of the standard languages for accurate color communication, from designer to manufacturer to retailer to customer, across a variety of industries.
Each color is given a number to represent [...]

How A Shoe is Made.

Stretch Your Shoes With Ice

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…we got into a conversation about how easy it is to forget the fundamentals like draping and filling out a spec sheet. Funny thing, we both forgot how to measure shoulder slope. We knew the term, but couldn’t remember how to take the measurement. After talking about it and sketching it out on a napkin we figured it out.

Dress Form. How It’s Made.

Video: How To Attach A Pant Zipper

Don’t forget a women’s pant zipper is unzipped with the left hand and men’s zipper is unzipped with the right hand.

Childrenswear Flats. by Janelle Washington
Here is a great example of how to detail flats for the factory/sample maker. It clearly shows button size, stitching, etc. To make the process faster companies have sketch templates to use as a base to add or subtract details.

These are two very well done flat sketches using Adobe Illustrator by Adrienne Elise, a PinkyShears reader, who works for a major women’s private label here in New York.  Later this month we will be interviewing her about her time in the fashion program at Virginia Commonwealth University and her experience working with women’s knits.

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Quick Behind the Scenes of the Making of a Chanel Coutour Piece
This is what I truly enjoy to watch and be a part of. I could watch things like this for hours. Check out how they prepare for the intricate beading and how they start the creation process.
They use the same supplies and [...]

Production is the mother of the business. Sales controls the business: they’re the father. They say “they’re doing this in the industry and we want to be closer to this, what do we need to do to get there?” They look at numbers critically, and see how they can make it better, and ask the technical designer how to make the changes. Sales, being the father knows where the family needs to go, how to make a better “kid,” the garment, so to speak.