Day to day in fashion

Immediately after our collection is finalized for the season (although it’s never REALLY finalized until bulk production…) the first thing we do is request photo samples from our vendors.  We take time to go through the collections and decide what garments we want to photograph for our catalog (most of our catalog is just CAD spreads, and there are only about 6-10 model photos).

We will often request twice as many garments as we need to photograph, sometimes more, as often items come in looking really crummy, don’t arrive in time, or they get dropped/changed between the time we request them and their arrival.  Our lead time for photo samples ranges between 6-8 weeks, but no matter how much time we give we are ALWAYS following up with vendors on a daily basis as the photo shoot approaches to review status and push them to make sure their arrival is timely.

Since fabric isn’t made, dyed, printed, knitted, etc quite yet, vendors will use whatever “available” (this is a term we throw around a lot and refers to fabrics – or other items-  that they have immediate access to in their factories or in the market that they can access for small quantity use) fabrics they can find that is as close as possible to what the actual garment will be.  Patterns, prints, plaids and such will be digitally printed and can come out looking amazing or can come out looking horrendous, thus why we request more samples than needed.

In some cases, we wind up making photo samples in our office.  The shirt below did not get done in time for our upcoming shoot, so we found a solid white tee that was close to the one we are running, printed the design on heat seal transfer paper, and are hand stitching the embellishments and design details.  Yeah, I know, it’s seems a little crazy and maybe even ghetto, but let me tell you – it’s better than no sample, and believe me you would be surprised at how well it photographs!

Prepping for Photo Shoot - hand making a photo sample is not an uncommon occurence...

One season we even had to sew a few skorts from scratch…the vendor was able to digitally print the fabric, but was not going to be able to get them cut and sewn in time, so they sent us the fabric and our technical designer whipped up some skorts…not ideal but you do what needs to be done!

Just this season we got set up with software called WFX (World Fashion Exchange).  It is a PLM (product lifestyle management) software system and is SO amazing…the screenshots below don’t do it justice.  This system is how we manage all of the tech packs for garments, approvals, sample ordering, reporting, and much more.  We used to manage everything in a billion Excel spreadsheets, and it was a mess – when something changed, it had to be updated in 5 different spreadsheets.  It was a mess and a lot of work.  This database like set up saves a lot of time and work while also tracking things more efficiently.  Here is a quick rundown on a tech pack:

WFX Tech Pack Home Page

Click on the image to get a legible view, but here’s a quick rundown on the capabilities of the software.  Circled on the left are the details for the tech pack – you can add more but the basics are colorways, care, image and annotation (allowing you to upload CADs to call out details in garments/patterns), file upload/download, specs.  Circled along the top are various tabs that allow you to track the status of the garment, a log that tracks everything modified on the tech pack, a messaging center where you can communicate w/ your vendors on that specific style, BOM (bill of materials) that allows you to add all of the “materials” required to make your garment (buttons, zippers, hang tags, poly bags, fabrics, etc), and costing where your vendors can input pricing and it will auto calculate all of your margins frombased off of your sell price.  Wow, as I write about this I realize that this is only the smallest fraction of what the software does.  More details will have to come later or this will wind up being one lengthy post…

I’ve always been a firm believer that shoes say a lot about people.  Don’t get me wrong, I have my favorite comfortable but boring kicks that I put on, and if you were to judge me based on those you might think I was a pretty boring person.  But most of the time, my feet are parallel to my personality – fun, unique and eclectic.  My coworkers are no exception, and last week it was a great day when we realized that 3 out of 4 of us (and the 4th person is a male, so it’s fair his shoes didn’t match ours – he does however have some very unique soles) we wearing leopard shoes!  It of course called for a photo:

It wasn't planned, I swear!

…seeing your design on TV!  It’s not terribly glamorous, but let me tell you that it feels great to see your designs out in the real world, and TV is even better!  Here’s professional golfer Kevin Na wearing a fantastic polo I designed.  This garment is actually one of my personal favorites from the Fall 2010 collection!  Woot!

Kevin Na at the Arnold Palmer Invitational 2010 (photo credit Getty Images from abcnews.com)

Kevin Na at the Arnold Palmer Invitational 2010 (photo credit David Cannon / Getty Images North America)

Although I’m not nor have ever been trained as a techincal designer, I do think all the steps and processes that are followed to make sure a garment fits right are interesting.  My knowledge of this portion of the design process is somewhat limited and I’d like to expand it (although it’s hard to find time in my work day to learn new things) but I will share a little bit about what I do know.

Depending on the silhouette of a garment and/or our past experience with a factory, we will request various numbers of “protos” which will be fit and measured.  A new silhouette will without a doubt require at least a 1st proto, just as a new factory will have to submit at minimum 1st protos for all garment silhouettes they are working on.  When the garment comes in, it is first measured at the defined Points of Measure (POM) and the data is put into a spreadsheet that will automatically calculate if the measurements are out of tolerance.

Points of Measure - each has a code and a description, plus a set measurement with an allowed amount of tolerance from the Spec.

Depending on where the measurement is, the tolerance will vary.  The opening in an armhole will have a smaller amount of tolerance than the opening at the bottom of the garment.  When too many measurements are “out of tolerance”, we will request a 2nd proto and in some cases we will even request a 3rd proto.

In addition to measuring, we also fit many of the new silhouettes to ensure the pattern doesn’t just measure right but fits well on a human body.  We have both a male and female fit model so we are always fitting to the same figure.  Here you can see comments that were made for the fit on a sweater and how those comments are conveyed to the factory:

This photo shows (although hard to see) that there is an excess of fabric in the back neck. Remember, a photo can be worth 1000 words especially when communicating with people whose 1st language is not English.

This week we had a great trainer visit us from NedGraphics, the company that produces the fashion design softare we use.  We were well overdue for a software upgrade, and our upgrade included 2 days of training.  Woot!  It was an amazing 2 days of education and we learned all about the new tools that the software has to offer (some of them were actually just new to us…).  I will share with you here one new tool we learned as well as a few of the basics of one of the many programs we use.

Storyboard & Cataloging
This program is used to both “fill” garments with patterns as much as it is used to put together presentations.  I will show you here how we use it to “fill” a garment.

Storyboard & Cataloging: Filling a Garment

I’ve circled a few things that I will review briefly.  Garments are brought in filled with color based on where we need to put different patterns or where those patterns need to go in different directions.  I show a few steps of “filling” a garment from the original multicolored shirt, to defining what direction the pattern needs to go (straight up and down in the body, and at a slight angle in the sleeves – defined by the arrows that are circled), and to the final “filled” shirt.  Garments are brought in from your “article library” and patterns from the “fabric” library.  Everything can be scaled and manipulated based on the size and needs of your garment.

The new tool that we learned in S&C has by far been my favorite and without a doubt the one over which we oohed and awed over.  That would be the 3d mapping capacity of the program!  We don’t have the software to create the images to be mapped, but we have a library of basic items that we can fill using our patterns.  See below:

3D Mapping in Storyboard and Cataloging

The item (ie tie) is pulled in from the 3D Book, then your pattern is pulled from your fabric book.  It’s was my first experience with 3d mapping like this and I’ll be honest, it was a little bit like magic.

This week back in the office was a much needed change of pace in comparison to last week, full of final review on the FA10 collections and development of the SP11 line.  I’m going to make this post about the process of moving from sales samples garments to bulk production.

After receipt of sales sample garments (which are manufactured and produced independent of bulk production, giving us the opportunity to change things – details, fabrications, colors, etc) and to drop pieces, we review each and every item and send comments back to the vendors for things that must be changed and resubmitted for approval before proceeding with bulk production.  Another very tricky part of this process is that the vendor who manufactured our sales samples (SS) is not always the vendor who will get the PO for bulk production.  Initially, vendors are submitted POs for a SS order, which is usually done at 1.5 times FOB cost.  Vendors may run into various problems/challenges with any given style, such as limitations with the machinery in their factories inhibiting them from manufacturing to our expectations.  One would think that upon submittal of the GRs, the vendor would be able to say yes or no, we can/can’t do that, but surprisingly (I think) they will often take styles and then later on (which can create many problems for us in the long run) they come to us with these problems, and many of them make it our job (which it really should be theirs) to come up with the solution.  A perfect example was a knitted jacquard polo with a “cross” type design going across the left chest.  There were limitations in how many colors of yarns could be knit going vertically and horizontally, and the vendor came to us 3 weeks before SS were due and asked us to change the design.  Not willing to alter the integrity of our design, we came up with alternative solutions such as knitting the ground of the garment and then printing the cross design, or digitally printing the entire garment for SS purposes only.  This garment is a perfect example of where the vendor took something on that they were unable to complete, giving us good reason to move this style to another vendor for bulk production in order to get what we wanted.  One thing you don’t want to do however, is tell the vendor that they are not getting bulk POs for styles X, Y and Z before they have completed their SS order.  At this point they would have little/no incentive to complete their SS orders (of course they need to consider long term relationships etc, and there are vendors who will still take care of your needs even if you don’t give them certain bulk POs, but there are vendors who will totally screw you, so you just have to be careful).  Because of this, it’s best to wait until SS are done before issuing bulk POs.  As all SS are reviewed, pricing must be finalized and bulk vendors decided.  At this point, comments are sent out to vendors on things that must be changed for bulk, and we must send any quality approvals, garment samples, whatever we have for any garments that are being assigned to new vendors so that they have as much to work with as possible.  It is now time for vendors to submit everything, trims, lab dips, qualities, protos etc for bulk production at which time we will “approve for bulk”.  Almost everything that was approved previously was “approved for SS only” – this is a safe way for us to proceed as it always gives us an out to change anything before bulk begins.

This past week my team and I (3 of us total) traveled to Orlando Florida for the annual PGA Tradeshow. We were not just there for the show, but we also had a preview VIP event that ran Monday PM to Tuesday PM. 100 of our top accounts were invited to this event for a preview of our collections. Our arrival was on Sunday afternoon at which time we got to work right away getting clothes steamed, gridwall assembled and bust forms dressed. We were holding our preview event at an upscale resort inside one of their ballrooms and our sales meeting was Monday AM so we had to get the entire room set up by Sunday PM. We had loosely preplanned the layout of each collection (there were 20 collections to be shown between 2 brands that were being represented – this included men’s, women’s and children’s lines). We had about 15-20 people or so there at any given time and after 10 hours it was complete. The worst part of this process is that at the end of it when you look at the final product, it doesn’t look like it should have taken as long as it did. This pains me every time but is the hard truth. At 12:30am we returned to our villa, treated ourselves to a bowl of cheerios and started planning the fashion show that we were putting on the next night – Monday was packed so we had to get it finished that night. 3am rolled around and we finally hit the hay.

Monday AM came way too soon and by 8:30am we were back at the ballroom opening packages from overseas that had arrived that AM with late samples – they were literally hot off the press. We frantically steamed them, got them onto their bust forms and on the gridwall. In the meantime, the sales meeting had begun in the middle of the ballroom. By the time they were done, we had finished getting the late arrivals up and now it was time to help present the line and educate our sales team. Each of us was assigned to a group of sales associates and we went through each line and grouping and presented them to the sales team. You must remember that we have been working on these garments for close to 3 months or so by now, and this is the first time the sales team has seen them (most of the team that is – there are select sales people who review and critique the line during our initial design phase) so they have a lot to learn because in less than 24 hours they will be meeting with buyers.

After the line review, it was time to get started on the fashion show. We were short some samples, so we had to pull them off the grid wall, get all of our outfits together, and get them over to the fashion show venue (about 1/4 mile away). We frantically got everything together, got to our venue at 4pm where we had all of our models waiting for us as well as our DJ. The runway was just about set up so we began a quick rehearsal. We had barely enough time to run through everything twice before it was time to try and clothes, finalize outfits/shoe pairings and walking order. 6:45 came before we knew it and it was show time. The whole thing is kind of a blur as most fashion shows are for me. Being back stage is always quite hectic and frantic and everything moves so quickly that I hardly remember anything. All I know is that we got everyone on stage in the right order, the right outfits, and the crowd loved it.  Cell phone photo from backstage:

Back stage at fashion show

There was a bit of mingling/schmoozing time afterwards but it wasn’t soon that we had to get all of the clothes back to the ballroom, resteamed and back on the bust forms as buyers would be there in the morning for their sneak preview of the line. After all of that, it was 12:30 and we got back to our room and to bed. A long 14 hour day and we didn’t see much slowing ahead.

Tuesday was actually a bit of an easier day, we got to sleep in a bit and had to be at the ballroom by 10am to walk the line with accounts. We were there for a few reasons, but the two bigs ones were that buyers just “love” to talk to the designers, and that we were still a lot more knowledgeable on the line than the sales team so we could help answer questions. Now let me just say that sales is not something I’m particularly good at or enjoy, so this was not really my favorite part of the trip, but of course it’s always good practice. Throughout the day we continued to receive samples from overseas that we quickly got up on the gridwall and on display for buyers to veiw. Ideally we would have had all samples prior to the show, but for various reasons some things were running a bit behind to say the least… After chatting with many buyers and accounts and presenting the collections, it was 5:30pm and we were allowed to retreat to our villa while the sales team and the buyers went to a fancy dinner. Meanwhile, our PR rep had appointments with various media contacts to show them the line. These appointments ran to about 9pm. At that time, we had to go back to the ballroom to tear down, pack up and get ready to move everything to the convention center where the actual tradeshow was taking place. Done in about 20% of the time it took us to set up, we had everything done in under 2.5 hours and were back to our room at 11:30 just in time for a beer before bed.  Here’s the beginning stages of setting the booth up:

Setting up the trade show booth

The next day we trekked to the Orlando Convention Center where we began booth set up. Since we already knew how the collection groupings were to be set up, it was easier this time. Our booth was set up and ready to go by 7pm and we headed out for dinner. Thursday was the first day of the show. The turnout was decent and there seemed to be a good general buzz through the convention center. We walked the show, talked to some contacts, critiqued competitor’s lines and enjoyed the time to just wander and look around. The afternoon was there before we knew it and my coworker and myself left for the airport – our portion of the trip was done and I was thrilled to get back home to my husband and dogs. My boss stayed through the weekend for the rest of the show and to support with tear down.

After a long week, I truly can say that I’m excited to go back to the office tomorrow. The PGA show was a big hump for us to get over and now it’s time to focus 100% on designing Spring 2011. Always my favorite time of the product development cycle, we now get to play with colors, stripes, plaids, patterns and more. For a few weeks it seriously feels like a mix of art class mixed with shopping mixed with a round of playing paper dolls and I love every minute of it.