Category: Interview

[Video Clip] Grace Coddington and Andre Leon Talley of The September Issue at Barnes & Noble today.

PinkyShears @ VCU. NEW VIDEO!

Today I want you not to read, but to watch and listen. If you’ve ever wanted to know some straight-to-the-point industry advice and a little about me, Brandon Graham, and why I started PinkyShears, this is a “Must See” for you. This video is an intro to a 5 segment piece on advice to people both in or about to join the fashion business. I address some of your fustrations and fears towards the industry too.

I thought you might be interested in what a Fashion Colorist does. As a designer I’m used to checking and approving color test/lab dips myself, but the interviewee, who would rather stay annonymous does this exclusively for her assigned designers. I asked her 15 distinct questions to help you understand this position. It seems like a position people “just fall into.” They don’t teach this specifically in school, but you may be assisted by one when you begin your new job… if your lucky.

A simple thing like changing a dress form can save a lot of money. We changed our form to the Alvanon form recently. They’d been working with old Wolf forms. The problem with old Wolf forms is they are just not made like a human, and when you start to use those forms as a base, your garments are bigger and too boxy to reflect how people are.

Her experience working for others as well as starting her own line makes Lara Bly a great resource for beginning designers. Beginning to work on her own line, she remembers, called on skills she hadn’t used in a while. “It was a big change after having patternmakers and machinists working for me at Sacrosanct. It took a while to remember what I knew about sewing. I was rusty, but it came back quickly. It took me a while to transition away from Sacrosanct’s way of doing things,” she remembers. “I would call them up, and ask ‘could you get me in touch with those people who did the beading?’ or try to track down my old favorite machinist. It was like I was teaching myself all over again to do patterns.”

Studying fashion design and marketing at the American Intercontinental University in London, then living and working in cities like Beirut and Los Angeles as well as New York gives Lara Bly a uniquely cosmopolitan perspective on the business of fashion. She has held a supervisory position at Sacrosanct, a company based in London and Beirut. She is developing her own fashion line for women. Lara Bly and her husband share a studio in the Banana Factory, a Pennsylvania art space supporting local creativity. She shared some of her thoughts with PinkyShears about the fashion industry, aesthetics, and getting a business started, as well as her insights fabric sourcing.

PinkyShears publisher, Brandon Graham Speaks with Marketplace.publicradio.org
He talks about what the consumer can do to help save New York’s Garment District.

Find Out What Segment of the Garment Industry is Still Going Strong.  Meet Steve Steinberg of QST Industries, leading supplier of innovative men’s, women’s and children’s apparel construction components.  Part 2
BG: How do you handle companies changing their designs during the entire process?
SS: We get called in after a company does all the initial [...]

Find Out What Segment of the Garment Industry is Still Going Strong.  Meet Steve Steinberg of QST Industries, leading supplier of innovative men’s, women’s and children’s apparel construction components.  Part 1
The many facets it takes to create a garment are not made within one company; the devil is in the details. No one understands this [...]

“Could be the next Marc Jacobs!”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Paul Cavazza confided “I like working with seasoned professionals, because as a businessman, I appreciate that everything is going to run smoothly, by the book.” But he lights up when he talks about working with new designers who are still learning. Although they [...]

Grading isn’t taught as part of academic fashion education, but a skill, Cavazza observes, that most companies today will teach hands on, training within the company. When someone comes to Cavazza interested in being a grader, the first thing he asks is: “Do you like math and fractions? If you don’t like [...]

A marker is the paper layout for cutting pattern pieces. Cavazza sees making markers as building puzzles, “where you’re not sure what the finished product is going to look like.” He has loved building and solving puzzles since he was a kid, a quality he sees as essential for someone who [...]

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, [...]

Next Week:  Interview With Paul Cavazza of Create-A-Marker.
Need help grading patterns or creating a marker?  Don’t know what that is?
In our 5 Post series Paul will explain patterning terms, his role in the industry, and why he likes working with new designers.

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Brandon Graham: How do the details a tech designer tracks affect the bottom line and consumption?

Nina Banks: Because we’re working with production and sales as well as the designers, we’re going to see a big picture of how any design change you want to make will impact the costs, and the consumption of fabric, [...]