When taken back to it’s most basic level, sewing is the means by which we have clothed ourselves for thousands of years. According to wikipedia the act of sewing dates back to the stone age, where even before there was woven fabric humans would sew together fur and skin using...
18 Feb 2011
Image of a needle point tracing wheel from MacCulloch & Wallis» Tracing wheels usually have a blunt edge, a serrated edge or comes in a needle point style wheel on a wooden or plastic handle. They are used for transferring markings between patterns, or between patterns and fabric. The example...
17 Feb 2011
Proenza Schouler, AW11. There have been times in the past where a theme of hand crafts running through the collections can be a little too dowdy and kitsch. This time around at the New York Autumn/Winter 2011 shows, the American craftsmanship coming through is focused and comes in sophisticated colour...
16 Feb 2011
Thom Browne, AW11, New York. To create the off-the-body silhouettes seen in Thom Browne’s show you need to have a strong understanding of internal structure. The internal structure of the garment is everything that goes on between the outer fabric and the lining and involves a number of different elements...
15 Feb 2011
Thakoon, AW11. It was a nice touch at Thakoon’s AW11 collection to balance out the time intensive tailoring and beautifully draped silhouettes with the simplicity of streetwear closures such as zips, drawstrings and press studs.
14 Feb 2011
Libertine, AW11. Altering a manufactured fabric is one of the most straight forward ways to create designs that are uniquely your own. Whether the fabric is embroidered, laser cut, digitally printed, embellished, dyed, painted or frayed you can take a fabric and make sure that it is unique to your...
11 Feb 2011
Grain lines are a generally unnoticed aspect of the garment, that is until they are either used in the wrong way and cause a fit problem or used in interesting ways to mould the fabric to the body. Sometimes they can also be used to turn a print onto a...
10 Feb 2011
Céline, SS11, Paris. Fashion, as we know, is always evolving in cycles. Sometimes we want clothes fitted, sometimes we want them loose, dark colours will often follow light colours and extensive embellishment can sometimes be followed by cleaner design lines.
09 Feb 2011
Designer Akira Isogawa in his studio, image from NLA. Whenever you see photographs of designers in their studios you are bound to see rolls of fabric, scissors, pins, sketches… and often these curious looking racks of brown cardboard (to the right of the image above). These are the designers patterns,...
08 Feb 2011
Coco Chanel. Sometimes we see photographs of famous designers doing what they were so well known for and it’s nice to understand on a technical level why these images are so iconic.
07 Feb 2011
Gareth Pugh, SS09, Paris. While quilting sounds like a homely technique akin to patch-working or needlepoint it can actually be used to create architectural structure or add new dimension to flat fabrics.
02 Feb 2011
Givenchy, SS11. On a first look through Givenchy’s recent couture collection the most striking elements are the details in the appliqué and the controlled use of vibrant colour and it is only on closer inspection that you can notice the zips used in the collection. Or especially the unusual placement...
