A look at the people who are truly making your clothes unique.

Fashion designers within the conventional fashion industry have become disengaged from fashion construction and makers are marginalized. Designers are the public face of the fashion industry, basking in its glamor and prestige, with makers often sitting at the opposite end of the hierarchy. The distance is philosophical, with the role of the fashion designer seen to involve applying creative vision to generate a sketch for the maker (or more, usually a team of makers) to manifest.

Julian Roberts, inventor of the “Subtraction Cutting” method in an Openwear interview talks of designing in patterns, “rather than in vague illustrative drawings which become reinterpreted by other skilled cutters.”

The distance between designer and maker of fashion at the design stage can also be physical, with the actual manufacturing process hidden from view in far-away sweat shops and not talked about or celebrated. Julian Roberts says “before you buy a garment and wear it, it will have been touched by many skillful hands, but often the hand that touches it the LEAST is the hand of the fashion designer.”

The physical and philosophical distance has enabled a range of issues to arise and be solidified over the last 150 years, or ever since Charles Worth the “Father” of fashion design, placed his label on a garment. These include concerns of exploitation, copying, speed vs. innovation and secrecy. How can a re-engagement of design and making foster meaningful, sustainable change in the fashion industry?

Shingo Sato

I consider myself to be a patternmaker-designer. To design zero waste garments you need to be able to design as you make the pattern and not just in response to a design. Design occurs in many places but it does not occur as a sketch of the exterior of the garment, but in the development of the pattern. What implications does designing in this manner have on the development of a sustainable fashion industry? For a start it can result in the unexpected. Much of the fashion we see is a copy of what’s been done before, either last week, last season or last century. For many, the design process involves directly or indirectly copying an existing design, so the patternmaker’s job has become to faithfully recreate the look within the companies size range and for the desired fabrication, perhaps with a few modifications.

The end result can be disheartening for consumers when they see a rapid dissemination of similar styles globally, a process that leads to its ever-faster fashion “death.” It is also a difficult thing for designers, as they know styles are repeated ad nauseam throughout history, then their consumers can (and do) buy vintage garments while remaining fashionable.

For most companies it does not make economic sense to invest time (and therefore money) into the development of a design if the likely outcome is not known. The speed of change driven by the monetary benefits of Economies of Scale and consumer are demanding, so while the argument for which comes first generally descends into a chicken and egg debate, the problem is a very real and immediate one for fashion companies. A problem they solve by repeating and copying existing styles. It should be no surprise that this is the foundation of the contemporary fashion system.

Comme des Garcons, AW 2012

Famous Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie MacIntosh, once said “There is hope in honest error. None in the icy perfections of the mere stylist.” Have fashion designers become mere stylists? With economic and time pressures at an all time high for fashion creatives, the space once available for truly innovative fashion is being squeezed out and much of what does happen occurs at the fringes of the industry. This is often in education, where both graduates and academics in many cases have more creative time and space without the financial restrictions demanded by the need to produce a commercial body of work up to six times per year (or more in the case of fast fashion).

Luckily every season there are examples of designers who push things in a different direction. Whether by material use, technique or form there are designers and their creative teams which pride themselves on demonstrating true innovation in at least parts of their collections. When Rei Kawakubo of Comme Des Garcons sent her models down the catwalk for AW 2012 devoid of a soundtrack with 2-Dimensional garments full of wry cliché it was a clear critique of the growing “flatness” of the industry.

Junya Watanabe

Rei Kawakubo is renowned for being an innovator in the true sense of the word in the fashion world, constantly pushing viewers and wearers with her own unique view of the dressed body – famously bulging and distorted, always 3D – so for her to present such a flat body of work speaks volumes of the state of the industry. As the representation of the fashion industry becomes more and more about ubiquitous and repetitive copies, fashion rebels like Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe seek to find alternatives. For many, this alternative is evident in the rise of craftsmanship, in particular, a re-emergence of innovative patternmaking.

Pattern Magic, Tomoko Nakamichi

Patternmaking is seen by many to be an aloof, mathematical and often dry practice, certainly not design, and very inaccessible. However, when Patternmaking and Design meet as equals, magical things can happen. The brilliant and enigmatic book series from Laurence King Publishing called Pattern Magic, gives a taste for what kind of alchemy is possible. Written by Tomoko Nakamichi of the famous Bunka Fashion College in Japan – a college who taught fashion innovator Yohji Yamamoto –  this series of books introduces the reader to thinking about the design of garments in unashamedly 3D and unexpected ways. Originally printed only in Japanese the images show garment features merging from collar to body, form leaping off the body, while soft geometry and the body tussle with each other and mercifully, standardized forms became passé. The skilled patternmaker can become a kind of magician-designer, deceiving the wearer and viewer, distorting the dressed body, and giving us something refreshing.

From Pattern Magic

Patternmaker, designer and educator Shingo Sato gives away many of his techniques and make his “tools of the trade” readily available on youtube. While his approach, which he calls “Transformation, Reconstruction” has been critiqued as simply dart manipulation and elimination, something which is neither new or innovative, he demystifies the process, merging design with patternmaking to “draw” line and form on the dress form, often with a magic marker. An exploration of his techniques reveals an ease with breaking tradition and the adoption of new form, the old rules need not apply.

Julian Roberts, Subtraction Cutting

Julian Roberts is a UK based designer and inventor of what is called Subtraction Cutting. This process involves designing not the exterior, not the front, back or side, indeed there are usually no side seams to his garments (after all, do humans have side seams?). Instead, Roberts designs the interior space of the garment that the body travels through. His approach results in forms that are difficult to predict, requiring an intimate relationship between designer, hand, cloth and body. While acting as “Fashion Adviser for Europe, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa” for the British Council, he also spends much of his time teaching workshops full of students how to take the creation of clothing in new directions by engaging their maker-mind in the design process.

Julian Roberts, Live Subtraction Cutting, Liverpool

Both Shingo and Julian freely share their processes, rebelling not only against aesthetic norms but also against the tradition of secrecy in the fashion industry. The growing call for openness and transparency strikes fear into the hearts of many designers and the wider implications still need working out. However, sharing design processes which cannot lead to mindless copying (from designer to designer to highstreet to trash), helps to slow the fashion juggernaught down, provides consumers with real choice and not just the illusion of choice, while reconnecting designers and consumers with makers and producers, will lead to an industry which does all things better.

And for that we should all rejoice.

Image: Style.com, Laurence King Publishers

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A fashion industry insider reports.

Charles Frederick Worth was one of the world’s first noted fashion designers (See his Court Dress, above). In 1845, a fashion designer was an artist, highly regarded and sought after by the society of the royal court to advise on their wardrobe choices. Worth’s main concern, as a designer, was to design and handmake one of a kind haute couture that would distinguish each of his customers. Associated with class, distinction, style, and influence, people like Worth have been labeled taste-makers for well over a century. Relics aside, today, the role of a fashion designer is far more complicated, competitive, and multifaceted than ever before.

Well known designers, such as Stella McCartney, have been known to express a desire to run away from the industry after a season. When she received harsh criticism after her debut collection from the press in 2001, McCartney told NY Magazine, “People think I’m strong, but actually I wanted to crawl away. I thought, I’m going to live in the country with my horse and I’ll get a nine-to-five; I don’t need this.”

However, with hundreds of new designers emerging to show at fashion weeks around the world each season, even negative press is better than the alternative of no press. Minor complaints aside, in the past few years, incidents suggest that there are more serious issues afoot plaguing designers than insults from the press. From John Galliano’s drunken Nazi rantings, to Marc Jacob’s repeated drug problems, and the most tragic being Alexander McQueen’s suicide last year, designers seem to be experiencing something beyond the usual industry stress. With all of these melt downs, one has to ask: Might these outbreaks just be symptoms of a larger system failure?

To understand the current circumstances, one must first understand the role of a designer. Today, the designer actually functions as a Creative Director, overseeing many different pieces of the company’s product design, execution, brand imaging and positioning, and much of the marketing and press. Another key part of the role is being accountable to the Financial Officer, also known as the “Money” of the business. Which means a designer really has to understand every step, cost and stage of their business to be able to make well informed decisions on how to steer the business. Below is a diagram to illustrate everything that must be managed and considered in order to produce and sell fashion on a mass market level. The arrows describe the tiers of power throughout the system.

In a cascade system, such as in a fashion house, each part of the system is dependent on the other. Therefore, if one part of the system fails, the entire system collapses. And yet, somehow, up until recently, this system has been quite efficient across the board for most well known fashion houses. This system has been able to maintain because the least powerful and the lowest paid group within the system, the laborers, farmers, and factory workers, make up the largest part of the system’s labor pool, keeping the costs and product prices low. Ironically, these links just happen to be what keeps the whole system going.

The other factor that the fashion system relies heavily upon, but also pays little for, are materials. However, if the costs of labor go up because, for instance, a country like China decides to enforce and increase their labor standards (which is currently happening), the standards raise across the board in other countries. Over time, the price of the product must go up as well. If cotton crops fail repeatedly due to climate changes, the cost of materials increase across the board due to shortages, and the price of the product goes up again. If the price offered to customers goes up dramatically, amidst all the cheep and cheerful overstock product flooding the market from last year, customers simply won’t buy it. After all, most people already have enough stuff. The brand will only sell items on sale, which results in job instability of everyone in the cascade system.

The Designer and the “Money” must take the issue seriously and find a solution before the system can continue on a healthy level. However, limited resources and rising labor costs are not an easy problems to solve, especially when you have an extremely competitive market and are running a complex system already set up to work only one way. Unfortunately, there are only a few options within the fashion industry to stay afloat:

The Iron Fist Solution, á la H&M: Make the customers temporarily happy by making and selling enormous amounts of low price-tag products of cheap quality. In this case, the cost of business operations is covered through the slivers of profit on each item sold, and multiplied by the tens and hundreds of thousands of items that are produced. With this solution, the brand needs to be able to sell directly through their own stores and the designer must have some kind of monopoly over materials and labor to keep the prices of the goods exceptionally low. This technique will destroy the competition, as long as the designer can continue running the business on minimum costs. However in the current environment, this is not a long term solution. The costs of materials and labor will go up as resources continue to run low, which is caused by the mass production of poor quality goods in the first place. At this point, the company is chasing its own tail, and even if  the company using the Iron Fist Strategy can hold out long enough to put the competition out of business, eventually they’ll put themselves out of business if they don’t innovate their process at some point so that they find a solution to materials shortages.

The Velvet Glove Solution a.k.a. the Luxury Market Method: Invest in maintaining the appearance and allure of a “luxury brand” while selling a lot (although maybe not as much as an H&M) of lower cost product at “luxury” prices. Examples of this would be the Diors and Chanels of the world. This is the Iron Fist Solution seasoned with a little better quality and taste, and disguised by marketing that allows the brand to make a much higher mark-up on the sale of each item. Therefore, even if the brand is selling less items across the board, they make more for the operations budget on each item. So while we, the customers, equate Chanel with haute couture dresses and iconic tweed jackets, they’re making their money on selling patent leather (a.k.a. vinyl) shoes, handbags and perfume at exorbitant prices. This also destroys the competition, who can’t compete with the marketed “luxury” brand allure and history. While this solution may last for some time, provided consumers don’t get wise to the marketing schemes or lose their taste for “luxury,”  it again does not address the materials and labor cost increase issue, which eventually will cut into the marketing budget and over time might cause detriment to the brand.

The Performance Solution: They keep the costs of products proportionate to the costs of materials and labor. This solution invests in manufacturing technology, textile engineering, and science to keep ahead of the curb. This would be the Patagonia’s of the world. In this solution, there is almost no competition, you create your own niche market, and through innovations, you gain customer loyalty. Be the only one to know where to get materials that are made of recycled or renewable resources, thus removing the dependency on natural materials costs and you have created a more sustainable future for your company.

The Innovator’s Solution: There are always new designers and businesses springing up with a new way to do things. Whether it’s tackling marketing, design, or materials in new ways, this group of oddball fashion designers and indie-houses are thinking outside the box to drive consumer culture and the market out of the old ways. With the current media and market focusing on all things “green” and “socially responsible,” this new crop of innovative businesses are popping up to fill the hole in the market through the use of unthinkable techniques, collaborations, and technologies. Examples of these designers might be BioCouture, who creates leather jackets from tea film, Christopher Raeburn, who’s been known to use left over parachute material from the military to make windbreakers, or perhaps, Bright Young Things, whose marketing tactics appear to aim to convince people to buy less. While this growing “innovator” circle has not fully matured into well known designers in the mainstream, perhaps the mass market is not an innovative place to be if a designer is trying to plan for a future with fewer resources and fairly paid labor. However, these designers might just be the ones who ultimately find long term solutions to the current fashion crisis.

With all that is going on in the world’s environment, markets, and economies, it is easy to despair. From the standpoint of a designer, who oversees enough of the business to understand how things work (or how things don’t work), it’s like watching the ship going down in slow motion.

From their mast heads, some of the biggest designers of our times seem to be doing just that. Perhaps they’re just on their way to becoming relics themselves, without enough knowledge to change the way that their industry works altogether. Well, not all of them.

Karl Lagerfeld

Karl Lagerfeld is living in his ivory tower which he’s built so high that he might be the only one left with his head just above the water in the end. Recently he was quoted by Vogue as saying, “I have a lot more sympathy for people who have to take the train to work every day. What a load of nonsense.”

Sympathy, eh? “Designers are artisans who are extremely privileged to have a poetic profession. They are not artists. We have to stop saying that they are,”  Lagerfeld adds.

He makes the job look easy. Meanwhile those designers who feel all of the responsibilities behind the job, have panic attacks or worse. But let us remember back in 1975, in the thick of building his career to the empire he now owns, he mentioned to The Observer Magazine his philosophy on his own work practices, “I am a sort of vampire, taking the blood of other people.” With this work ethic he has gone very far, leading some of the most powerful and influential fashion houses in the industry, producing billions of dollars worth of product, and making people on all corners of the planet thirst for a wide range of products on an unprecedented level. Perhaps he actually is the bug that bites.  But then again, according to him, he doesn’t even take himself seriously. It’s a wonder that the rest of the world considers him a fashion guru.

Editor’s Note: Due to sensitive circumstances, the author has asked us to use a pseudonym. We have honored the request in this case.

Image: Joe Paczkowski

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