Retrospective Part 1

I call this post retrospective because i am trying to get everything caught up on this blog. My goal is to be able to add a post everyday.

So.....up until this point we have been very fortunate in starting our line. There have been many people that have helped us out and want us to succeed in this endeavor and i think we will. Starting your own business is difficult when you have no budget, starting a fashion line is even more difficult! There are tons of things that can go wrong and everything is very costly.

The most expensive part about doing a collection is the development. It costs a ton of money and mistakes are almost guaranteed to happen. We have the knowledge to be able to do most of the work ourselves like i said before, so its a huge help!

We began by creating an idea...a mood for the clothing.

When i had my job in the industry i worked for a woman who did not understand clothing and/or fashion the way i did. The first meeting i had with her she told me that art has no place in fashion!!.............i kind of chuckled because i thought she was joking......she wasn't. I mean are you kidding me?????? Fashion is inspired by so many things art, feelings, landscapes, etc. anyone can pull anything from their surroundings and create an idea.

I am from a studio art background........ i really enjoyed painting, sculpture, etc. Originally i wanted to be an art therapist, using art as a tool to deal with emotions, feelings, expression, etc. work through issues. That is what art was to me, a way to express myself. Unfortunately, the art world is not about that completely, at least in my opinion. I mean yes...there are artists who really express themselves through their art, but they are always trying to make it marketable and alot of times i feel the art is too opinionated. Art was never a way for me to try and use as a platform for my views or opinions on issues, it was purely a way to express my emotions into a composition and organize them in that way. During critiques i was always ripped on because my work was never trying to persuade people to think a certain way, they did not understand the meaning behind it. As a result, i decided that art was something i should leave as something i do for myself and not a career. I still wanted to find a creative field and i have always loved fashion and the quality of work that goes into it.

So, back on track........

We began with a mood......the idea was something that was comfortable, easy-to-wear, and sophisticated. After realizing the "characteristics" or mood of what we wanted to create we continued on by sourcing fabric. We found this really fantastic quality of jersey we could use for our collection. (BTW, fabric sourcing is a BITCH and one of the hardest things you have to encounter when first starting out) We wanted to keep everything simple as far as the colors go so we started with three colors the main colors were black, grey and an off-white, we used a beige color as sort of a complimentary color or something to add a bit of "depth" to the collection. We worked really hard to find a supplier that did not work on minimums. In this industry people want volume

We now had a focus of what we wanted to achieve with the mood....... drape, cut of fabric, etc. So we began to design, after some elimination and a couple of discussions we decided which pieces would become part of the collection.

Now we really had to start working........ugh.

We set off doing our patterns and creating muslins for our samples. We sewed the muslins out of really cheap jersey, we just wanted to see if the patterns we made were true to the design we wanted and if the fit was good. This is when my friend Courtney came in, we were able to have her put everything on and check the look and fit.

Once we corrected the mistakes for the pattern we could create the first samples, all this costs alot of money if you have to pay someone else to do it.

Paying to have patterns made is a large expense, be prepared to pay at least 200 dollars for a pattern, and sometimes the design can look perfect on paper, but once realized in fabric it could look awful.

After all the corrections were done we got the fabric we would use for our garments and sewed the final samples together!


So....now that we had the samples we had to find a way to get them photographed. NETWORK! NETWORK! NETWORK!!!! There are plenty of talented people out there trying to find their way and begin their careers. We were extremely lucky to find an amazingly gifted photographer with a fantastic eye! He was looking to add more fashion shots to his book and was happy to take on the shooting of our lookbook!! My friend Candace agreed to model for us for the shoot!!! She did an amazing job!! The shoot lasted for 10 1/2 hours and she did not complain even once!!! She looked fantastic!!

Once the photos were done we had to create a website. Much like other things in this experience, I had to figure out how to do a website...we could not afford to pay someone to do it.