Chameleon Gods : Sewing and Fashion

Some Lessons Learned

2011-12-08T16:10:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a very intense autumn - not just because of the business side of my activities, but also because I have had a moderately heavy teaching load at the university. Tomorrow I give my exam and then, aside from the corrections of the latter, I'll be "home free".

On the business end, it has been a very busy time with a lot of lessons. I will need more time to harvest them all, but here is some of the learning. In retrospect, I was rather naive about how the online sales would work out. It has been explained to me that because my product is viewed as "new", that my company operates with the product development cycle typical of high tech companies and products - that is, that a few "innovators" will buy the first generation of the product, following which a larger percentage of "early adopters" will buy, but that the mainstream is only accessible later when the "early majority" buyers see the product enough in and around town that they become interested. So our marketing model needs to be aimed at those who are more adventurous in their purchase decisions.

Secondly, we have found that a typical "trying on" session may take about 30 to 40 minutes. It takes that amount of time for the potential client to really understand what the garment does for them, and typically this involves trying on 4 or 5 combinations (although some people got the combination right the first time and then needed to try on 2 or 3 other combos to double check their choice). Once a person understands the garment, then the use of the web site becomes a powerful tool for ordering, but until the garment is properly understood, the website alone is inadequate. So I am rethinking my marketing strategy towards placing the garment in relatively high end designer boutiques and/or market specific boutiques (such as travel-oriented sales points) which will give the garment the attention it needs to sell, and towards the possibility of organizing direct-to-consumer sales (i.e. independent sales reps, or the "travelling salesperson").

I shall also be looking into the possibility of videotaping a "trying out session" to give online customers a better feel for how the garment is worn. In a lot of ways,

I'm quite pleased about these changes in marketing strategy, because it puts us closer to the client, and I believe that contact is essential to our eventual success with the garment and its sister products. I have some ideas about developing garments which are "designed to be adjusted" so that they may be semi-custom fitted to clients, with the final adjustment carried out by local seamstresses and tailors according to the needs of the individual clients.

However, coming up with a viable and sustainable business strategy that serves these needs is a major challenge for me. Furthermore, money is a bit tight until I can extend our sales, so my ability to manoeuvre is quite limited. I'd like to design and develop several new items, but right now the priority is marketing the existing products so that they can sustain the company and give me some breathing room to develop the next set of products. I have found some additional help to do this - in particular, a micro-financing outfit in Quebec City has agreed to help me with my marketing requirements. What is great about this is that they offer direct business coaching which has already been a huge boon.

Although the challenges in front are huge, the territory covered to date is also huge! Within less than 12 months I have developed a company, a product line (well, two product lines, actually), an online boutique and a network of partners that should see us into the future. I've had to reduce some of our scope in order to keep the funding under control (this has meant letting go of my salaried assistant and the fabulous workshop space I set up), and am now gearing up for a series of marketing initiatives that will take us through to spring 2012. Over the November-December period we have sold fewer products than I had hoped, but we have nonetheless sold several dozen and our ability to sell should increase over the next few months as I work to improve our marketing program. So a pretty good end-of-year bilan, all things considered.

Gearing Up!

2011-10-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

Well, we are under two weeks away from launching our online store (at www.gdotmoda.com) - opening day is set for October 25th, 2011! This is an unbelievably exciting time, although also an extremely busy period as well! This isn't helped by the fact that I have a major teaching commitment this fall and by the weekend just before the launch I will have some 50 exams to mark as well as getting the store up and running!

We will have two garment lines on sale at the store within about a month of the opening. We are focussing on the g-zip line to begin with. We have to learn how to track the inventory, ship the products, manage the returns and so forth, and I want us to focus on one product line to begin with before introducing the second line. Fortunately, I have my assistant to help me get this organized, otherwise I would be going absolutely nuts right now! The patterns took an age and an age to finalize - each time a change (or a set of changes) was made, we needed to make a new set of garments to check the pattern, and this is complicated by the fact that there are five sizes to check as well. So the "update pattern-print&deliver pattern-make up a new set of samples-validate the samples&determine new changes" cycle typically takes about two weeks each time, which quickly spreads out into months of work!

However, we overcame all our technical problems and are very, very happy with the final product. For a long time I was worried about being copied, but although a "cheap copy" may be possible, the engineering that went into the final product was formidable. Even knowing how it can be done (now we've solved the challenges) doesn't mean it's going to be easy to "knock off", so I'm somewhat less worried than I used to be.

Today our packaging paper and labels arrived - again, really cool stuff! I'm thrilled by the quality of what our business partners have created for us.

Our second garment line is called "g-cielo" - it is our hat line, but the hat is being transformed in a number of new and surprising ways, so the result will be "garments for the upper body", hence the use of the Italian word for "sky"! Originally we saw this as a simple accessory, but with the extensions we have begun to make, it has become a garment line in its own right, hence the change in marketing strategy.

The initial offering is all ready to go, but as indicated above, we are waiting until the g-zip delivery system is fully set up and tested before launching the g-cielo line (we are still waiting for the new set of labels to come - every distinct garment line has its own label, and the fabric composition of the g-cielo line is different from what we had for the g-zip line, so the fibre composition label required by law has to be updated as well.

One of the challenges has been setting up manufacturing alternatives so that we can handle demand, whether this turns out to be low, modest or high. We are expecting a low to modest number of orders based on our knowledge of who is interested, but surprises in this regard are always a possibility. So we have set up a manufacturing arrangement that would allow us to accommodate a much larger order than we are expecting, just in case!

There's still a lot of work to be done before the 25th. The photoshoot for the catalog is on the weekend, the website is being delivered Sunday, and the catalog photos have to be integrated with the website over the course of next week. We have also prepared a press release that must be sent out to hundreds of addresses, and the manufacturing has to move forward. All of these tasks are demanding and challenging, so it's going to be a busy time. And I also have to prepare next week's exam for my students!

On the Art of Fashion Designing

2011-08-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

I really have almost nothing to say about designing from a general perspective. Rather, I want to talk about my own style of designing, which is, I suspect, different from that of many, perhaps even most. Also, my designing procedures have changed substantially since I started my own fashion company.

I really don't follow in any design tradition. I have no formal training in fashion design, or even in design, although I have been involved in research concerned with design for more than ten years. I do not sketch, much, nor do I make an abundance of clothes of different types (although I have, to some extent, done this before). I am a self-taught designer, following my own methods and instincts.

However, I do not lack for inspiration, either. I am an "idea mill", and have been for most of my professional life as a scientist. I typically generate several new ideas a day - although across many fields, not just in fashion design. Some of these ideas are harvestable or usable, others are not. This comes from a wide interest in different things. For example, I am reading right now several books about Harry Potter (Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, The Psychology of Harry Potter, Looking for God in Harry Potter) - these are books by academics that attempt to make sense of the books, movies and other aspects of this publishing phenomenon. I am also reading a book called The End of Growth, about the economic turmoil in the world today and its relation to the environment. I am reading Isaac Asimov's autobiography, a James Bond thriller, a science-fiction book (The Boy Who Lived Forever), and several other things. These readings all help generate ideas, not necessarily in fashion, but also there. Yesterday, I was making some notes on a device for stiffening bones on a corset and thinking about bra design.

As I've spelled out in several postings on my company blog ("Function-Oriented Design", "Design principles", "Why fashion engineering?"), I am more interested in an engineering-like design process than a purely aesthetic one. What do I mean by this? I mean that my ideas about fashions and clothes are organized around their utility. I want to make clothes that look great, yes, but I particularly want to make clothes that serve a person's needs, usually in several ways. I want to design clothes that fulfill a function. To some extent, clothes do that inherently - they cover/reveal us, protect us, etc. Of course. But they may also serve additional needs, and that is where I get interested (although even as covering, as revelation and as protection they interest me!).

I don't know why I want to do this - it perhaps has something to do with the same wellsprings that led me to become a scientist. I understand the importance and role of art and aesthetics in design, but I want more than that in the things that I make.

Before starting my business, this desire to make things that are used found expression in making clothes for friends and family. I would ask what they would like, why, and then I would design and make a garment to suit what I had learned. The fabric had to be right for the person, of course, and the whole had to be checked with them. In this stage of my development as a designer, I made a dozen or more clothes each year (not a lot all told, but this was very part time and I was still learning and developing procedures and practices).

Although since I started my own business, my production of new designs has dropped still further, but there are signs that this is changing. The process of setting up a company is hugely challenging and takes inordinate amounts of time to do even the simplest tasks. I've had to do much of the grunt work myself, and I'm still not through all the procedure inventing stage. Also, we have narrowed our focus as a company on fine tuning one "idea", albeit a complex, multi-level idea, and most of my design efforts have gone into overcoming the hurdles in the process of making this first garment (I call it my first collection, because the garment comes in eight mutations, well, technically, 24 mutations, since the garment looks different at each size). We call this a "transformable garment" as it parallels efforts by other designers along similar lines. Our "g-zip" garment, however, is rather unique in how it achieves its transformable goal.

The ability of a garment to transform into another type of garment (or simply another color) is a fascinating example of serving a function. The need to transform is omnipresent in our lives today - hence transformable garments should be of wide interest (this is, of course, one of the reasons we selected this type of garment for our company's first offering).

Although working on the g-zip garment series has been a real adventure, our company is already (and of necessity) thinking about the next projects, and this is leading to a more playful and sustained design effort. However, design has shifted from an idea-focused effort to a more collaborative, hands-on process. As we've gained partners, especially people with both the technical expertise of making clothes but also the ability to be playful and creative and extend my original concepts, we've come up with new designs that are as interesting if not more so than my original ones. This ability to engage with others collaboratively has, in fact, been at the core of my scientific productivity over the past thirty years, so there should be no surprise that it turns up in my commercial endeavour as well!

Collaborative design is not only challenging and exciting, it is probably also the secret to a company's ability to innovate over the long term. Interestingly, the fashion industry does not, in general, favor design collaboration. There are examples, but the reward system is set up with regard to individuals. Most of the accolades go to individuals. This is regrettable, as fashion would benefit from a greater recognition of and role for collaborative design. As a designer, there is nothing quite like generating a cool idea, then having someone else take it into a new direction you hadn't thought of, allowing you to take the concept to a new level.

Perhaps the "g" in my company's name, "g.moda", should refer to "group" rather than my name "geoffrey"!

(My summer read: The Fashion Designers Survival Guide - a super, super book chock full of tips for designers and people in the business of fashion design!)

Super Cool - Our First Fashion Shoot!

2011-05-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

We did our first fashion photoshoot today with the advanced prototypes of the clothes. There have been a number of contexts in which the ability to show our clothes would be a help, and so we need a preliminary set of prints before we finalize the production look.

I found a great studio in Quebec City called Focus One (www.focus1.ca/mannequins) - they're actually a combination of a photo studio and a modeling agency. This is a great concept that gives them a lot of flexibility. They are located just down the hill from where I live. The founder-photographer, Jocelyn Bernier, is a guy who obviously has vision. We got to talking about the fashion business in Quebec City, which is not as strong as it could and should be. Like g.moda, focus1 is aiming for the international market and is seeking to act as a catalyst for the region. Although there are a lot of young designers in the city, many are organized into small boutiques which sell locally only. There is so much potential to do more with this talent. From my perspective, the stronger the fashion industry in Quebec City, the easier it is for g.moda to find good talent to support our business, Since we are aiming for the international market, we are not necessarily in direct or heavy competition with other designers in the area - rather, they help to solidify the Quebec branding.

This was my first photoshoot ever, never mind that the model was trying on MY CLOTHES! What an awesome experience. And, even though I say this myself, the clothes looked absolutely fabulous! It was great to see the different variations of our g-zip line and notice how the look of the garment, even the way in which it moves, changes through its different tranformations. The models and stylist were also quite taken with the garments. We found several new ways to wear the clothes that even I hadn't thought about before, as an added bonus.

Fashion start-up : The Light at the End of the Tunnel

2011-05-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

After five months of intense work to get the g.moda business under way and the g-zip garment line in production, there is a light visible at the end of the tunnel! On Friday (two days ago), I signed a lease for commercial office space for the company - so from June 1st, we will have what the French call "pignon sur rue", that is, a street address and a home base for the company that is different from my house. Although a commitment, this is a huge step forward for setting the company on its feet. Production is finally ramping up after having vetted the patterns by a specialist and producing versions of the pattern for all three targeted sizes - small, medium and large. We have a confirmed date for the company's official launching (August 25, 2011), and the online store is scheduled to go live by July 31st. So all the hard work is coming to fruition. The only major source of uncertainty (I say that with my tongue in my cheek, however!) is how well our products will sell! (And hence whether we shall still be in business this time next year!)

Still, starting a company bears with it the risk of failing, and it is a risk I understand and accept. If it fails, it fails - it won't be because we did anything less than we could have, because we have put months of hard work and effort into getting it ready!

This is interesting, and I think a comment on the nature of the stress I've been dealing with. The stress doesn't come from risk of failure. The stress comes from needing to be sure that if it fails, it doesn't do so as a result of anything I could have done differently. And likewise, if it succeeds, it does so as a result of the effort we've put into it. Anything less, and I would feel disappointed in myself.

So the light at the end of the tunnel is not necessarily the light of success, but the light that indicates when the success or failure of the business is no longer strictly within my own hands. Once the public weighs in, we move forward with a different spirit, or not at all. I am confident we WILL move forward, that our product WILL be a success. Through our current efforts, the product is not only innovative, it is also of high quality manufacturing. I am also confident we have done our best to position the product well in terms of marketing, and recognize that we will continue to need to do this, especially after we launch the product line.

We are already at work on designs for the second, and possibly third, garment lines, as well as extensions to the first, so there will be no difficulty fueling the development of the company and its product sales from the production end. It is the sales that will be the determining factor, and the launch date is fast approaching!

On Garment Production

2011-04-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

If someone had told me last September, when I finished my first prototypes, that it would take me nearly a year to get the clothes into production, I would have treated it as a bad joke. And yet, here I am, eight months later, and the job is still not done!

It doesn't help that I've had to learn how to launch and operate a business along the way (and I've still a lot to learn on this front!). I typically put in 80 hours of work a week to stay on top of both my jobs, my university job and my fashion business. I get to do some design work, but far less than before I started my own company.

The trickiest thing about doing this is getting the garment production on track and up to speed. In retrospect, I spent about four months working on moving the garments forward more or less on my own, whereas that work might have been done more profitably and faster by experts. I have now been referred by one of the businesses with which I'm working for the sewing, to a full time "patternist", someone who works with patterns 24/7. Although this feels a bit like a setback, in fact I think this is going to move things forward faster, once we get the "bugs" out of the patterns I've developed on my own. She's going to do the grading to get different size versions as well as clean the pattern up.

Before I started, lots of people said to me, "you don't need to sew to be a designer - you get other people to do the manufacturing". Sounds simple and straightforward, but the reality if far from this. In reality, it's a good thing that I can sew, and manipulate patterns, even if I'm not doing the final work. In reality, the more "techniques" you can do yourself, the more control over the whole process you have. Even with these advantages, however, it takes weeks, months even, to develop the set of contacts and business partners you really need to have a "production chain" in place. In addition, everyone seems to think that they "know better" than I do - I constantly have to "fight" to get my ideas/needs/goals recognized and keep them front and centre, even though I hold the purse strings! As in many other industries with which I've worked, people have a "standard" way of doing things, and when you innovate and step outside of normal practice (which is what innovating means!), people resist. It is a real struggle to get them to work with you, rather than working at cross purposes or even, in some cases, against you!

I'm not at the end of my learning curve in this regard, but already with what I know now I would start "at the other end" of the production chain and work backwards if I could do it all over again! That is to say, I'd start with the patternist, work back to the manufacturer and then work with the seamstress to get the prototypes ready... It sounds "backwards" but it would be far more efficient than the process I've used. Still, I had to go through it to learn the "right way" to get things to work!

It also doesn't help that the garment manufacturing business in North America is in a shambles, due to the offshoring of manufacturing contracts. Although the tide is beginning to turn on this, the past decade has led to massive bankruptcies in the garment industry, and finding reliable outfits to do the work is a real challenge. In Quebec City, for example, the manufacturing businesses that are still in operation have specialized, for the most part, in providing medieval garments for the burgeoning cosplay movement, or into developing uniforms and specialized garments for industry.

Maybe by August we're going to be "in business", that is, finally selling our products, but it's been a long haul to get all of this underway. And you have to be persistent, keep your moral up, and push and push until you get things to work. Otherwise, we'd still be at it next year without any products for sale!

I have a whole new respect for businesses that break into the "garment business" and make a successful go at it. There is nothing particularly "simple" about it. I still get a great deal of satisfaction out of each major step forward, and am looking forward to the day when our products are actually available in our online store (also under development). But it's been a tougher road than I expected, even knowing it was going to be tough!

Costs of Launching a Collection

2011-03-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

Without going into details about the costs of starting up a fashion design business, which are significantly higher than those of "merely" launching a collection, I thought it might be useful to discuss some of the costs involved in launching a modest collection and give a sense of the global amounts. It is possible to do things for less, by cutting corners and relying on friends and acquaintances for a lot of the upfront tasks, but to do the job professionally involves engaging a certain level of investment.

For my initial launch, I will have about eight outfits on display ... I say this with some hesitation, because what I'm offering doesn't fit within standard categories, but let's say that it will be the equivalent of eight outfits, more or less. Eight outfits is a very modest collection - a recent fashion show by a major Montreal designer involved about 40 outfits, and these were "seasonal", aimed for the Spring/Summer period, whereas mine are an "Annual" collection, again a choice for a startup.

The minimum global cost of launching a new line of about eight garments is about 50K$ (50000$). This, in general, excludes the manufacturing costs of the garments themselves. The money is used for organising the fashion show and photoshoot for the website - the cost of photography, video production, organisation, and paying the models, as well as paying the team of people involved in the effort - stylists, make-up, an announcer, music, etc. The reason one pays for all this, is that the fashion show "buzz", the website and the video footage all contribute to driving sales in the initial period. A bill of 50K$ is actually quite low - for larger collections and bigger events, the bill will be much, much higher.

As a "newbie" designer and business man, I found it very difficult to obtain reliable estimates of the costs of doing business before actually embarking on the process. I rather naively thought we could "introduce" new garments on an adhoc basis as the business grew. But although this is always possible, there are timing and marketing issues that affect what generates the best sales, and the "adhoc" approach is often not the best approach. A structured campaign with appropriate marketing will, in general, drive stronger sales that the ad hoc introduction of new elements. This is why people use the "collection" so consistently within the fashion industry.

Finding the right strategy to follow for a start-up company is tricky. Remember, they say that nine out of ten business start-ups will fail. There are lots of "shoals" to wreck the ship in - it requires careful navigation to get through the coral reefs of the start-up process. Underestimating the funding required is just one of the larger dangers that loom!

The Joys (and Challenges) of Moving Forward

2011-03-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

Time to give an update on how things are progressing!

On my iPhone, I now have a ToDo list that is subdivided into the different categories of what a business needs and does : Management, Administration, Marketing, Sales, Design, and Production. I propose to follow these rough categories to give you an update on how things are going.

Management : By management I mean resources management, of which there are roughly three types currently - staff, finances and inventory. In early February I hired a part-time assistant who's been very productive at getting a whole set of initiatives moving forward while I've been handling design, some marketing issues and also keeping my university career on the ball. I also now have a bank of three going on four or five couturiers/couturières (seamstresses and/or tailors) who I can call on to help with prototype development and the early vetting of production garments. The funding got worked out, although I am still finding dealing with the accounting software to be a major challenge. I think hiring a part-time accountant will be a priority once we start to generate some revenue. Finally, there is no inventory to speak of yet, but we are negociating to rent some office & storage space so that when the inventory does start to arrive we have the space to put it! We shall be acquiring a computer and phone as well for the office in the next few weeks. Also, we obtained a CA # for our clothes, a Canadian legal requirement for the clothing industry.

Administration : By administration, I really mean the top-level meetings, issuing shares and so on. Not a lot going on right now.

Marketing : I have put on a major effort to get an online presence established, and this is going quite well. I have a website with an active blog and a twitter presence that channels back to the blog and website. I've done quite a lot of SEO tweaking and the results are beginning to pay off. Viewership of the website is now above 100 a week and climbing steadily, with a moderate to low bounce rate (40%) and along average viewing time (16 minutes and 12 pages despite the bounce rate) - people are clearly looking at the whole site and not just the blog postings. This bodes well for an online store. I'm also negociating with a company to do the online store after spending some time preparing a website design brief that explains in detail what I want. Locally, I've been promoting the business mostly by word-of-mouth, through my different communities. I am almost finished organizing a Facebook page for the business as well. Also, a newsletter will be issued shortly.

Sales : None yet, of course, but interest is running quite high. We are just in the process of finishing up the first production prototypes, and these will help us garner interest among small boutiques in the region. I've developed a coding system for the garments - the first production run is quite complex and the codes will be needed to make sense of the production and to keep track of where things are at.

Design : Design has been the bottleneck in moving forward, but I've found to my chagrine that it can't be rushed. I can put in at most about three hours a day on design. Then my brain cells start complaining about the intensity of the work! But the first line of garments is (almost) finished, while the first two models of the second line of garment are also more or less completed and ready for production.

Production : While the whole production process was quite mysterious to begin with, we've more or less worked out most of the kinks and know how and where to go to do this, how much time it takes, and more or less how much it costs. We know what labels need to be made and where to make these, and are in the process of working out packaging requirements. We expect to be in production for the first batch of the first garment line by the end of March.

Our local (Quebec City) launch event won't be in April, but we believe we can meet a deadline in mid to late May now. Our online launch date will be several weeks after the local event as the online store will take a bit of time to develop and, hence, we will be able to use the photos and video footage from the launch event on our online site.

The stress levels have come back down to a more or less reasonable level, while the excitement factor remains high. The adventure continues!

Stress Management

2011-02-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

One of the real shockers for me in starting my own company was the level of stress it created. The minute I got the financing all organized, bank account open and the money deposited, my stress levels went through the roof. It took me several weeks to get the stress under control, to a level I can manage. I really did not expect this to happen - before getting the company going, I was simply excited about the whole thing.

It is true that, since about last September, I have a dual workload. My responsibilities at the university haven't slackened - if anything, they have picked up speed in several areas, and, at the same time, I have to keep a company on track, designs rolling forward from the worktable into production, setting up the production and the marketing and... the list goes on. Just to get a sense of my own time management, I've started to keep track of the hours I spend on each task. I have found that my week at the university is roughly 40 hours - certainly a drop from where it has been in the past, but still above the legal commitment to 35 hours a week. I'm also spending 30 to 35 hours a week on the company business, and that is since I hired an assistant and started delegating a number of tasks! My relaxation hours, which I've also been keeping track of, seem to be around 15 hours a week - not many, all things considered. I don't include sleep in my relaxation time, or eating, just doing things to distract myself or calm myself or, indeed, relax.

I'm not sure how long I can keep this level of time commitment up - I expect that after a year or so it will start to wear mighty thin! For relaxation, a friend gave me some tips that have been useful, and I try to get out and walk a bit more than I used to, and to see friends and/or cultural events, but I must say that most evenings I'd sooner crash than go out.

I've got to do something more active to manage the stress, but I still haven't figured out what is right for me. Exercise, yes, almost certainly, but under what circumstances still remains to be seen. I also realized that I have to engage in some sewing projects that are not within the purview of the company, as I find sewing to be particularly relaxing - it's one of the reasons I got into it in the first place!

Plans within plans

2011-01-24T17:27:00.000-08:00

While I'm in the process of moving my designs forward to final versions in readiness for production, I have been doing a number of activities on the side to keep the ball rolling. This includes taming the twitterverse so that my company can develop an internet presence, on the one hand, but also putting down on paper a series of preliminary versions of policy documents.

As a researcher with a reputation for "out-of-the-box" thinking, I have long recognized the value and importance of planning, and writing down one's plans. Twenty years ago, as I was entering the academic world as a young professor, I set down on paper my long term plans, which at the time consisted of developing a cogent linkage/platform between the arts and the sciences. In 1990, this was a radical goal - academia was a long way from welcoming such a prospect with open arms. Even today, although there are many more venues where collaboration between the arts and the sciences is taking place, there is still a great deal of resistance to this program. So it seemed unusual and daring at the time.

Mind you, I didn't proclaim my goals up and down my department, but I did quietly work away at them, so that, 20 years later, I achieved what I set out to do.

Over the course of those years, I was involved in setting up a major and well-funded research network as well as managing a research centre and initiating an arts-science business venture. I learned how to write a business plan, and initiated and led several large-scale consultation exercices aimed at developing strategic plans. So I have a good deal of knowledge and savoir-faire about how these things are done.

For my fledgling company, in order to solicit a bank loan, I had to write a business plan. These last couple of weeks, using the business plan as a basis, I have started to set down on paper my understanding of where gdotmoda's marketing efforts need to go - i.e. a marketing plan. Right now, the company consists of only me, but within the next few weeks I shall be hiring an assistant as well as a number of production seamstresses/seamsters. For the assistant, at least, I need to work out a clear approach to marketing. But even simply for myself, writing down my understanding as it develops through voluminous reading is an important task. There are so many things to remember, that a clear set of plans to steer by seems to me, essential. My marketing plan has two major sections, one for internet marketing and one for local marketing. These two subareas have very different marketing needs, and require almost separate marketing plans.

Keeping the books!

2011-01-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

I know these blog entries don't seem to have anything to do with sewing and design, but as someone who is going through the motions of developing a fashion design business, I think someone may find this useful, as I'm not the only person interested in doing fashion as a business who began with very little knowledge of how to do this! After a quiet time over Christmas as I spent time more with my family than with the project, I started the new year flat on my back with a bad cold. It's only in the last two days that I've started to feel better.

I've started to systematically organize my research effort. Hence one of the tasks I will need to do soon will be to identify my most likely sources of fabric. I've still not made all my decisions in this regard, for example, off-shore versus fabrics produced in Canada or North America - right now, I'm trying to cost it all out and find good quality fabrics at prices that make sense. As I started to make lists of potential fabric sources, I realized I really needed to organize these into a database - my company will need to manage its sources rather more systematically than haphazardly. After some time looking into database software, I decided that what I really needed was to start looking into financial management software, since the fabric sourcing is intimately tied to many of the financial issues, and to develop the sourcing files simply as contact lists, using AddressBook on my Mac.

As a result, I spent time over the weekend reading up on reviews of accounting software for small businesses with a particular focus on MacOS-compatible software. Despite some discussion about a possible Peachtree version for Mac, I was not able to obtain any direct demo for this - instead I downloaded a demo version of AccountEdge (formerly MYOB).

My efforts to understand this software were hampered by my lack of experience with basic accounting principles. But as I struggled with the software, I kept telling myself - "hey, you're a senior academic, this isn't rocket science, tons of people work with this all the time, you just need to 'catch the trick' and you'll be fine". And when I stepped back to read some basic texts about accounting 101, I did finally 'get it', and from that point on, I've been able to use the software with only a few teething problems. The "trick", no doubt obvious to all and sundry who are familiar with accounting, is that you have to double up entries on the Debit side with entries on the Credit side. To some extent, the software does this for you, but until I understood the principle, I was producing nonsense.

Other teething issues were the realization that I needed to turn on "multiple currencies", since many internet purchases are in US$ (or even Euros) and not just in Canadian $, and then I had to figure out how to modify the default exchange rates to something like where they are now. I'm still not at home with invoicing, but I do feel that I am beginning to get a handle on how to use the accounting software to stay abreast of the financial management of my company. At this point, I'm not managing much more than some of the early financial outlays, but even for these I now have a cumulative figure of how much I've paid out to deal with a range of "start-up" issues as well as some ability to understand how these costs distribute across different categories of purchases.

I'm still waiting for the provincial registration papers to come back with tax numbers assigned, while in the mean time moving forward with finalizing the prototypes so that when the start-up money clears, I'll be set to get the production machinery in motion!

g dot moda inc.

2010-12-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Well, the company is now incorporated under Canadian law as "g dot moda inc." The incorporation process consists of having an official name search done for the proposed name and any likely variants (the idea is that the name must be distinct from those of other businesses so as not to cause confusion), preparing the Articles of Incorporation, then paying some fees and submitting the application for approval. This used to take several days, but this time the approval came back the same day. It turned out that there is already a "C.G. Moda Ltd" in Canada, and I know there is a G. Moda in New York (a furniture company), so going with "g dot moda inc." is much more distinctive and is what my website address is anyway!

I now have to have the company Registered under Quebec law - the Quebec government will give the company a unique taxation number and the name will be recorded in the Quebec business registry. The paperwork has gone in the mail for this - unlike the feds, this still has to be done the old way.

So g.moda is now officially incorporated, which means I am ready to set up a bank account for the company, as soon as I get home in January. I'm leaving for Victoria later today for the Christmas holidays, to spend time with one of my brothers and his family, as well as old friends.

My priorities when I get back are to finalize the design of the g-zip garment line (my first line) and get the company's finances into order. I have decided to focus my effort more towards the first garment line, to at least get that off the ground ASAP, before focusing more on the second planned garment line, g-eode. I have ideas about several other lines - these ideas are firming up over time.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Moving forward

2010-12-02T20:50:00.001-08:00

Well, the bank approved my application for a loan, so I'm good to go, to set up my company and move the project forward! This morning I couldn't keep still, I was bouncing up and down so hard!

I've a website up and running, too - the address is "www.gdotmoda.com". My company is called "g.moda" - "g" for my name, and "moda" for fashion, although you could also interpret it as "g's way". The "dot" is a kind of bridge between the design and the production. The website is kind of a "placeholder" site right now - nothing is really revealed, but you get a glimpse at some of what is being planned. Essentially, the first two garment lines are described in fairly general terms. As the company moves towards its inaugural event, I plan to slowly reveal a bit more, just to keep prospective clients interested, with the big reveal happening at the inaugural event and its online equivalent. The website will be transformed into a sales site, where you can purchase garments directly online.

There is, however, a ton of stuff that has to be done to get to that point. More later!

Incorporation Mysticism

2010-11-17T16:32:00.001-08:00

I thought of calling this blog entry "Incorporation Blues", but it isn't really a downer - on the contrary, it's incredibly exciting! But it is rather mysterious...

I have actually been through the incorporation process three times before, so it should be no great mystery. I was a shareholder in a company a couple of my friends created way back in the 80's - I sold my shares back to my friends when I realized I couldn't participate as fully as I had originally expected, and eventually one of them took over the whole company and that was that.

Then, for four years, I was Associate Director and later Director for a large pan-Canadian research network with an incorporated Business Centre. That was the second time, but it wasn't me who actually drew up the paper work, even though I learned by the seat of my pants how a CEO with no vote on the Board still has to manage the Board and how much power a non-voting member can still have. A very interesting experience, with a budget in excess of 25 million dollars, so not small fry at all!

Finally, I co-owned a small business with my collaborator and business partner of long date, Marie Louise Bourbeau. Here I really learned the nuts and bolts of incorporating, setting up shareholders meetings, a Board of Directors, and so forth. However, our company didn't actually make any money! We incorporated before we knew where we needed to go with the concept (my fault actually, I was the one who jumped the gun!) and we ended up funding most of the things we wanted to get done through my research grants at the university. We did remarkable things at the edge between the sciences and the arts .... but it wasn't really a business. It was also a constant nightmare trying to keep separate my business for the company from my contributions as a researcher, so as to avoid conflict of interest situations. We finally decided to close down the "business" last year since we were still not making any money and had no idea how we were going to!

So this is my fourth venture, albeit the first really commercial one based on my personal initiative. Nonetheless, the other experiences give me background and a certain amount of experience with the mechanics of setting up a business, including developing a business plan (we developed business plans for both the research network and the arts-science initiative), developing Articles of Incorporation, developing a logo and brochure, etc.

My business coach in Toronto tells me that my number one principle for spending money (or doing anything at all), is "lead with revenue" - that is, make sure that there is a direct line between what I'm doing/spending and how this is going to generate revenue! It seems such an obvious thing, somehow, but I find it really useful to review all my expenditures in light of how they relate to income!

So after reviewing all the choices (do I incorporate or merely register as a single-person business? do I incorporate under provincial law or federal law? does the company offer a single type of share or more types of shares? how many shares should I issue, and of what value? how many directors do I need on the Board? etc.), and consulting with some people with good knowledge of what is appropriate, I am moving forward to the next stage. Still, the process still seems mysterious and somewhat heady - one is making a rapid series of decisions that will set in place many of my activities over the next umpteen years!

It turns out that I may need to contact the bank initially before incorporating, as they may have some requirements regarding the Articles of Incorporation. These could always be accommodated later, but I'd have to pay another chunk of money to have an amendment made, so it makes sense to do it all in one go (I think!).

My workshop is ready - I shall be posting some photos of the space shortly. I've been working on a business card, and I am starting to look into creating an initial website. And the sewing still has to happen as well!

Setting the Company Up

2010-11-10T07:44:00.000-08:00

Well, my logo is done, as is my Business Plan, both in English and French. My next steps are to look into the incorporation process and to set up a meeting at the bank.

The logo turned out to be a fascinating experience. I have done work with local graphics companies in the past, and was not looking forward to a reprise of the difficulties encountered. But before I could even think about that, my business friend and coach showed me the "crowdspring.com" website. This is essentially a kind of online brokerage for doing graphics design. The site claims to have nearly 70000 graphics design individuals available. You prepare a "creative brief" describing your project - about 70% of the business on the site seems to be logo development, but they also do website design, printed documents, stationary and business cards and so on as well - then post it and pay your money. The cost of the service is incredibly cheap - 200$US minimum for a logo (actually, it's a bit more, because the crowdspring site charges a 39$US fee to use the service, and a 15% overhead, and they also offer several options to improve your chances or gain greater control over the process). I spent 390$, including the option of having my brief sent to the "50 best creatives", which turns out to mean the 50 designers who are the most productive. You also determine a length of time for the submissions with a closing date - they suggest 7 days for a logo, which I followed.

Now, get this - I had 199 submissions for my logo over the week interval! With so many submissions from nearly 60 different companies, I had no trouble selecting a winning design. So within 10 days and 400$, I have a logo for my new company. The last time I worked with a company in town, it cost me nearly 1000$ and 6 months to get a logo!

At the same time, working with my business friend/coach (actually, I'm going to promote her, she's a really savvy real estate agent in Toronto - her web site is Just Call Jane - but she used to run her own company doing marketing and graphic design, so she's very knowledgeable about business as well), I drafted and then completed a business plan. This week, I used a Quebec City translation bureau to have it translated into French.

In the mean time, I've completely re-organized my home. I live in a three storey town house looking north down the "falaise" or cliff between upper and lower town, hence a view of the city and the mountains to the north. My bedroom, for the past 8 years since I moved in has been the top room at the front, the one with the view and the incredible light, and my sewing room has been a small room at the back of the house (south side). So I've switched them - my bedroom is now the small room at the back, and the front room at the top has been converted into a full scale designers workshop!

Next steps are to start moving my designs forward again as well as pursuing the funding efforts. More to come!

Next step - Start my own business!

2010-10-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

Well, the late summer and early fall have led to big things, even though things seemed to be moving along incredibly slowly! I found that the sewing course I did in London left me with a huge boost in confidence with regard to my sewing ability, and that this boost translated into a much surer hand when I sew! Where I used to struggle a lot to get a straight seam, now it seems more or less automatic. I've also done dozens of zippers lately, and so zippers no longer present themselves as a kind of nightmare part of the project - I know exactly what I'm doing.

Between a massive amount of work preparing my fall courses, I managed to steal about one day a week for my designing efforts. Since the summer I've come up with designs for more than a dozen garments. I've mapped out two garment lines, each with a common flavor to them, and I've constructed the pattern, cut and sewn up the first prototypes for each of the two lines. Somewhat to my surprise, the results are... well, in my opinion, stunning. I've checked this perception out with some savvy (and critical) friends, and I don't think I'm mistaken.

So I started to plan a fashion show to launch the garment lines, what I call my Collection 2011 show. However, when I sat down to work out production and event costs, I realized that I couldn't do a decent event, even under a scaled down framework for a group of friends and colleagues, for less than, say, 5000$ - and that doesn't take into account much in the way of production costs. So if I actually want to turn my garments into something I can sell, even in a small way, I am looking at a significant outlay of funds.

This led me to rethink my strategy... Because, in my humble opinion, the garments I am developing deserve more than a "minimal effort" with a lot of corner cutting to show something for the effort I've put into them.

Hence, I decided to rethink my strategy - what would it take to launch a business to do this properly? Well, it turns out it will take some real financing, so I will need to go to the bank, and for that I will need a decent business plan among other things. So I have decided to go forward with this adventure. I am working on a name and a logo right now, I have a draft business plan developed, and at the same time I am continuing to develop my garments (while also working on my lessons at the university, sigh!). Busy times!

I will be reporting more here as the whole adventure moves forward.

Dynamic Clothing Prints

2010-09-01T16:26:00.002-07:00

As part of a research project earlier this year, a colleague and I developed an idea about the use of dynamic garment prints which we presented to a scientific conference concerned with a special kind of computer data structure (called the Voronoi diagram). I often don't think to connect my fashion/sewing blog to some of the more relevant research projects with which I'm involved. In the future, I'll try to remember to do this more, as I think some of these projects may be of interest to people interested in fashion design.

Our original idea was to use this particular kind of data structure as a support for software that could be used to combine the stages of printing, layout, garment construction and garment wearing. Using modern animation techniques such as dynamic cloth simulations, it is becoming easier to link the garment construction and the overall look of the garment under motion, and existing software packages allow one to specify fabric and layout and infer garment construction. However, incorporating the printing stage is still very difficult to do, even though, with digital fabric printers, it is now possible to custom design prints to create the final garment appearance. Right now, the process of getting from the printing to the appearance of the final garment is very much by trial and error. It would be great to have access to software that would allow one to "slide the print around", or make changes to the print and see instantly the effect on the final garment.

There are a number of technical problems that have to be overcome to be able to do this. Although not the only solution, and perhaps not even the best, the Voronoi data structure offers some flexibility in being able to do this, which is why we investigated this for our research.

However, once we got onto the idea of being able to "slide around and update" a fabric print within the garment layout, and see instantly the result on the final garment, we realized that a similar procedure might be used to generate "dynamic patterns" that change in real time on the garment's surface. This rather cool idea, requires new technology to actually implement - we are not (yet) at an era where fabrics are a kind of flexible computer screen, which is what one would need, ideally, to achieve such an effect. However, with a little imagination and technical know-how, it is possible to conceive of a number of lesser effects that would still provide interesting garment experiences.

(a) One way to do this would be to equip a garment with an array of LEDs (light emitting diodes). LEDs are cheap (less than 2 cents a diode) and there are now a number of technologies that allow them to be integrated into clothes. Although controlling a large array of lights is still quite demanding, controlling a smaller number (a dozen or so) is relatively straight forward, even for the amateur. Over time, controlling arrays of LEDs should become easier. However, this is perhaps not the best solution.

(b) The use of chromothermic inks provides another means to dynamically change fabric prints - however, the principle is fairly constraining. Essentially, different colored inks can be used that become transparent at different temperatures - for example, red at 15 degrees celsius, blue at 16 degrees, green at 17 degrees and so on. By heating the garment with a low voltage electric circuit (or simply as the ambient temperature changes), the garment's printed pattern will change its appearance. A number of new garments presently emerging from experimental stages are using this principle. However, for dynamic garment prints, the applicability is still limited.

(c) An alternative approach, and one closer to our interest, is to use augmented reality. The term refers to the idea of viewing a camera image which shows the "world" as it is, but overlaid on top are virtual objects, which, in sophisticated AR applications, appear to be part of real world objects. Traditionally, the use of AR involves wearing specially designed glasses or goggles that incorporate the cameras, but recently the iPhone and similar devices has been used to provide a similar capacity, not "glued" to our eyes in the same way. That is, when you look "through" the iPhone, you see the world "augmented" by the virtual elements.

(d) A fourth possibility, related to the AR approach, is to project images onto the garment. This could make sense, for example, for a play or dance show that one watches from a distance - the effect is limited to a particular viewing direction. This has been done on several occasions by avant-garde artists, so it is not particularly new, although before the arrival of Augmented Reality software modules in the public domain (of which there are now several), this effect was very challenging to achieve!

To explore what this might look like (either option (c) or option (d)), we simulated the use of a dynamically "corrected" print using a virtual development environment (Poser 7). In the video segment below, you will see a virtual woman wearing a blouse with a static print (the usual!), lean forward and then back, followed by a sequence showing the same movement using a dynamic blouse pattern. The idea is to note that the dynamic blouse pattern leads us to view the body differently than does the static pattern. There is a bit of a "moiré" effect, due to the single perspective and the "perfection" of the dynamic pattern - in a real implementation, one would not expect to see this effect, as there will be many small imperfections in the way the pattern will look, but overall the different perception should still be maintained if the print changes over time.

Of course, there are many other ways to make the print vary over time - in our work, we were particularly interest in body image and body perception.

Design Opinions

2010-08-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

Clothes should reflect the intensities we carry around within ourselves.

While I was out ogling the fashions (and the women ... and men... wearing them!) this afternoon, this phrase came fully formed into my mind. It expresses something I feel strongly about. I'd say about a third of the people I see dress in a way consistent with this statement. I can't say that all my clothes speak to it either. But it is something I think we should pay more attention to. Clothes, in my mind, should be "strong", they should make an unambiguous statement. Even if that statement is about ambiguity!

Note that the affirmation does not say that we should dress "intensely", that the clothes we wear should necessarily be "intense", although many of them will be if we try to live up to the statement. Instead, it is a statement about attitude, about how clothes speak for us, of us.

Many people dress as if to hide the intensity they carry around inside of themselves. This is regrettable, our inner intensity is part of what makes us, each of us, interesting, both to ourselves and to others.

Some people may think they are not "intense", but that isn't quite what I say either. We all carry with us an inner intensity, even if we don't think of ourselves that way. Sometimes, also, this inner intensity is tied up with painful things and feelings, but that isn't necessarily a counter argument either. We should have clothes that allow us to speak to such things as well.

I think people are drawn to designer fashions partly because designers struggle to do this, to express the intensities that they share with us, with potential clients. It is also about aesthetics, and style and those other things, but designers are also tuned in to this question of intensity.

On Fashion Drawing

2010-08-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

In my efforts to develop a working design practice, I have struggled mightily with the problem of drawing. After thinking I couldn't "fashion draw" for years, because everytime I put pencil to paper the results were so bad as to not even contemplate, I finally remembered that, over a number of years, I have done watercolors while traveling instead of postcards with quite creditable results, so the reason can't be that I have no talent whatsoever! Perhaps what I lack is training, but who has the time to invest hundreds of hours in learning to "draw"...

Over the past few weeks, I have more or less solved the problem using a combination of techniques. I bought the "Fashionary" book from its Chinese author, following a recommendation from someone through BurdaStyle - essentially, the book is a drawing book with very discrete profiles of women printed in dots on the page. You have to look closely to see the dots, but they provide a template for body drawing. Since I already used templates in earlier efforts, this proved quite successful to get some initial designs sketched out.

Secondly, I am not a bad draughtsman, and I work professionally with maps where you use the 2D maps to infer 3D features of the landscape. I am thus quite good at visualizing the 3D results of a 2D garment pattern, and because I develop flat patterns, I can often sidestep the 3D drawing stage and go directly to a tentative pattern, then use this to backstep out to the drawing.

Between these two techniques, I can develop sketches of sufficient quality and detail that I can use them to advance my thinking about the designs, but the results are not professional enough to show to an audience. I have therefore also been struggling with this issue. And I think I've found a workable, albeit not perfect, solution to that as well.

I had been contemplating using photographs of women downloaded from the web. I did some experiments with fashion ads, where I replaced what they were wearing for the ad with garments of my own design. The problem, of course, is that the photos are too "realistic" to support adding on "cut-outs" and still look good. I did try degrading the quality of the photos, but there are other issues, such as how to remove the pre-existing garments.

Then I thought, why not use nudes... there are, after all, millions of nudes on the web. The problem is, of course, copyright. I'm sure you could get away with using arbitrary nudes, there are so many of them, but the solution doesn't quite sit right. Also, I need images where the hands and arms do not block one's view of the torso, as their presence makes the drawing of "cut-outs" considerable harder. It would be nice, then, to have control over my own model...

Finally, a light bulb went off. What about using Poser, or another 3D design software that incorporates human figures? I do own a version of Poser (Poser 7), but Poser is quite awkward to use if you want results quickly. However, over the past couple of years, I've been using a piece of software called DAZ Studio, which uses Poser figures and objects as well as objects in its own internal format. Although there are some downsides to DAZ Studio (file management, in particular, is messy), it is an environment which is much easier to use than Poser in terms of getting a workable result rapidly. With a small layout of funds (the DAZ Studio software itself is free), it is possible to construct some quite interesting environments and then pose a number of nude figures within these landscapes. So I spent the weekend testing this idea out, and the result is quite workable.

Shown in the image is a variation on the standard 4th generation figure used in DAZ Studio (Victoria or V4) - I have dressed her in a sports bra and panties that are provided with the figure, although I actually work with the nude figure. For a modest fee (I pay 7,95$/month), you can join the "Platinum Club", which gives you access to a large number of environments and figures at minimal cost. Hence the environment shown, called the "Veranda Cafe", is available for Platinum Club members for 1,99$. Within this environment, you can control the placement of all the chairs, the lights, the camera views and, for another 1,99$, you can choose different background scenery to be viewed through the windows. (I think the hair also cost me another 1,99$.)

Once I have "rendered" my scene (see first image), as for the photos I used earlier, I apply a Photoshop "filter" to get an image that is more like a drawing (i.e. it is simplified to form 8 different colors only), and then I can add my "cut-out" garments on top with a result that looks snazzy without looking too odd (larger image at right). As my ability to "draw" with the software improves, my "cut-outs" should begin to look better, and I think the result is presentable to a larger audience. Perhaps not quite as sharp as a good drawing, but the use of 3D graphics environments offers other advantages. It is true you are stuck with the landscapes somebody has decided to build and offer to the users, but the choice of scenery and environments is actually quite large, especially if you are willing to pay a bit more money (e.g. entire city blocks for about 30$, for example).

Using Photoshop to add my cutouts allows me, for example, to make small modifications or switch out one cutout element for another at the touch of a button.

In principle the garments could be "built" within DAZ Studio and their appearance entirely simulated within the environment, but this takes a lot of effort and know-how. I've looked into it, but unless you want to pay a lot of money, it is not presently doable to a "layperson" such as myself.

On Corset-Making

2010-08-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

I recently put the finishing touches on my very first corset - I made one for my cousin, who is still stunning to look at in her fifties and who was seriously interested when I told her I was learning to make corsets. This was actually my second effort, although it is the first one I've finished. I started making another corset for a friend here in Quebec City several weeks before beginning the one for my cousin, but I needed to finish hers first as I was traveling to England and could fit her for the final adjustments if I had a pre-finalized version ready.

Despite the fact that it took hundreds of hours to make (I took my time, because I wanted to do everything right, so I didn't actually count the hours - I'm sure as I make more I'll be able to bring the time down, but I'm told even the best can't do it faster than about 30 to 40 hours!), I enjoyed every minute of the process! The development process is complex, but carries its own charm - between the usual steps of laying out and cutting the fabric and sewing, one adds putting in the grommets (hammer and anvil!), the bones and the busk, along with finishing and lacing.

I also love the fact that though a corset is custom made for a particular body shape, the ultimate fit is handled through the lacing, hence no fiddling with small adjustments at the end of the process!

I was interested in corsetry also to learn more how to use boning to shape a garment. Although I'm very happy with my first effort, I shall need to experiment more to feel that I really master this latter issue.

There are so many different types of corset, the challenges seem endless - one can do historic corsets, fashion corsets, corsets for men (an area I could definately get into!), corsets for burlesque shows, ultra sexy corsets, underbust vs overbust corsets, corset variations (basque, corsellette, etc.), overwear corsets, the list goes on. And there is a kind of "subculture" of people who "dig" corsets, whether making them or wearing them.

Intermediate-Level Sewing at the London College of Fashion

2010-08-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

During the third week of July, 2010, I took an intermediate-level "short course" at the London College of Fashion - it was called "More Sewing Skills". As a self-taught sewer (seamster?), I felt it would be useful to "even out" my skills a bit by taking a formal course, and also, the descriptions of the course included sewing stretch and on the bias, skills I have yet to master. I had no idea what the experience would bring me other than these very general expectations, nor who would take such a course. (The image shows the lovely little courtyard next to the entry to the Curtain Road building.)

The course was held at the Curtain Road facility, which I understand to be a more industrial setting than most of the sites of the LCF. London was in the middle of a heat wave when I arrived, although it cooled off over the course of the week.

Upon arrival at the site on the Monday morning, the cafeteria area served as an assembly point for the students, actually for two courses being given at the same time (I'm not sure what the other course was, actually). Although several had already arrived when I got there, I took a table on my own. After a few minutes, first one young woman and then another joined me at the table. We got to talking and I discovered one was Greek and the other Italian (but living in Ireland).

In a few minutes we were introduced to our teacher, Ms. Siaw-Lee Priddle, a diminutive Chinese woman, who took us to the back of the building to the rooms that were to be ours for the week. Within a short time it became clear that Ms. Priddle knew precisely what she was doing, but her English diction wasn't always easy to decipher! Nonetheless, she impressed me with her evident expertise and, over the course of the week, what I came to recognize as both a passion for sewing, and a passion for passing on some of her knowledge to others. I found her to be an excellent teacher, and would have no second thoughts recommending her.

Over the course of the week, we made miniature versions of a shirt, a lined dress (just the top part, actually, above the waist), a stretch t-shirt and a lined skirt cut on the bias. It was implied that these were children's versions, but at one point over the week, we discovered that the patterns were all in Ms. Priddle's size! She had recycled several patterns she had developed for her own clothing for our use!

Although I have made lots of shirts and several dresses and skirts, I actually learned a lot about different ways of doing these things. Ms. Priddle taught us to do things quickly and efficiently, with a minimum use of pins (which is usually where things slow down a lot!). She didn't actually forbid us pins, but whenever someone suggested using pins, for example, to set a sleeve, she laughed and told us we didn't need pins to do these things.

Unfortunately, over the early part of the week I developed a very bad cold with a hacking cough, which reduced my energy level and left me exhausted every day (with the cough I was having trouble sleeping). I ended up "skipping class" Thursday morning when my energy was at an all time low. This cold made it difficult to get the maximum benefit of the class (and the time in London!).

Overall, however, I've very pleased with the class. I believe I "honed" my skills - I learned a lot of tips and tricks for doing things faster and more efficiently. I finally understood what the issue is with sewing on the bias - it wasn't all that complicated, but it's hard to explain in (or learn from) written texts. It's the kind of thing you need to see, and then you understand it. So I got more or less what I wanted out of the course, despite my low levels of energy as a result of the cough.

When I asked Ms. Priddle what she thought might be appropriate as a follow-up course, eventually, she more or less said that I didn't really need one. She did suggest that the course on Jackets might be useful, however, which confirms my own opinion. She paid me a very nice compliment at one point in the week - I took in my finished corset to show them, and when she saw it her jaw dropped and she said "I thought you were joking when you said you'd made a corset!"

Two Cities, Two Fashion Cultures

2010-08-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

Last month (July, 2010) I spent several days in Madrid, Spain, followed after a short interval by several days in London, England. Somewhat to my amazement, I found people in both cities to be highly fashion conscious. I have been reading lately in the academic literature on fashion a number of criticisms of so-called "street fashion", writers who are disappointed with the apparent lack of imagination of everyday people regarding fashion. I must say, however, that my experience in several cities does not support this jaded view. I find street fashion to be quite fascinating, especially as it seems to differ in "flavor" in different cultures. I wish I could share more photos from Madrid - I took several photos while there, but I then lost my camera with the images still not transferred to my computer, to me great frustration. I could have accepted the loss of the camera if I hadn't also lost a number of great pictures!

Madrid in July is hot and humid and filled with people - lots of tourists, yes, but also lots of locals. In the evening, the city is abuzz with places for eating tapas. There are streets more devoted to tourists and others which seem to cater more to the indigineous population. I went down one set of streets that clearly catered to the young crowd. (The photo is the only one I've got from Madrid - it just shows me in a restaurant that could be anywhere in the world... but it is a kind of "proof" I was there :) ... )

Everywhere you go, people dress up - they are extremely chic, men and women. The ones who don't are actually more the tourists. Fabulous clothes, many quite originally, for the most part very sexy, even, I would say, sensual. None of it in bad taste, none of it crass or vulgar. Often, very elegant but also very simple clothing, but lots of attention to how the clothes move with the body and not just how they look when you're standing still.

Madrid struck me as a very livable city, with a vibrant lifestyle and many different areas of quite different character. I understand it is listed as one of the world's most liveable cities - I can see why.

London, England, provides a very different sense of fashion, but no less trendy or interesting in its own way. The one label I would use to describe London street fashion (obviously more relevant to women than to men) is "cleavage, cleavage, cleavage"! This is very different from Madrid (or Quebec, for that matter). Londonians seem to think that cleavage is sexy (well, it is, too, but it can be rather overwhelming and not always appropriate, in my experience!). I would say that well over 50% of the women in the streets display a lot of cleavage, and this includes young teens as well as women in their sixties. Where women might wear a man's shirt in other cultures with the top one or two buttons left undone, in London it is likely that the top three buttons are left open, if not more. (The photo shows some cleavage, but is not a great example of the fashion-sense I found in much of London - perhaps more so in the green dress... I have to say that I discovered that the second floor of London's buses makes a great platform for taking interesting pictures!)

Londonian clothes in general I found to be eclectic and chic, but not stuffy or overly conservative, as I half expected. No doubt it depends which parts of London you visit, but I was staying in North London (Hackney and Islington), working in Shoreditch and visited areas in Southwark, Kensington and Greenwich/Blackheath. I'm sure if I hung around in more business areas, I would have seen more conservative dress, but overall I say a wide range of clothing and fashion styles.

The trip left me intruiged by the whole issue of street fashions. I wish I hadn't lost my camera, because I become convinced that good photos would help reveal these cultural differences from place to place. The world could use more "sartorialists" I think!

The moment of commitment

2010-04-08T10:12:00.000-07:00

One of the most intense sensations when designing and sewing, I find in my own practice, is the moment when I must commit to cutting the fabric following the finalization of the pattern. When you are working from a pattern someone else has prepared, you also get this in a milder form - have you selected the right size and traced out all the lines correctly? But when you've worked for days coming up with a pattern that you think serves and must commit to turning the pattern into a garment, this moment is particularly intense. It is true that you can make a muslin shell rather than use the good fabric, but even for that, you are committing to several hours work that may be less than adequate if you need to rethink the design at that point. As long as you are working on paper, you are not "committed" to the design, but after switching to laying out, cutting and sewing, mistakes become more serious and what you do has direct consequences.

It is both a terrifying and an exhilerating experience, even for the most modest garment. I'm sure if you did this professionally, you would learn to manage this moment more routinely, but I'm not sure even then that the intensity of the moment of commitment will every quite disappear!

What I do...

2010-04-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

Several people have asked me recently, online, what I do. They may have seen me write that I'm a scientist and they are curious about what kind of scientist I am. Some people are themselves scientists, and want to know what my specialty is, partly out of professional interest. Also, I have stated in several locations that my passion for sewing has begun to intersect with my scientific research, and, of course, that catches people's eye and they want to know more.

It is actually not all that easy to tell you what I do. I can tell you what academic department I work in ("geomatics", sometimes called "surveying" or "surveying engineering"), and what discipline my Ph.D. was in ("astrophysics" - actually "observational cosmology" if you want to be precise). But my current research is very, VERY interdisciplinary - I work at the intersection between "rehabilitation science", "new media and performance art", "geomatics", "cognitive psychology" and "computer science", more specifically "artificial intelligence", and, more recently, "fashion". For example, I am constructing a new media laboratory within a physical rehabilitation hospital that incorporates a range of sensors (cameras, microphones, touch sensitive devices, pressure-sensitive mats, data gloves, physiological sensors, radio frequency identity tags, etc.) and provides a wide set of perceptual experiences (via mono and stereo projections on walls and the floor, loudspeakers located throughout the room space, motorized devices that engage the body, etc.) with the goal of exploring the impact of new types of interaction between the self and the environment, on our ability to adapt to changes in our body or to learn new ways of understanding who we are.

Furthermore, to a large extent, the "science" I do is less about "measuring" and more about "engineering", or "designing" environments (although we do some assessment as well). This is where fashion issues come into play. One of the lines of inquiry we are following involves developing garments that showcase dynamically moving images, and investigating how certain dynamic images may be used to change our postural control, for example. For example, imagine that you are wearing a shirt which displays a horizontal line - no matter how you hold your body, the line is always horizontal with respect to the surrounding environment! Does this absolute horizontal reference affect how you stand or move?

I'm not sure if that is any clearer, though. You'd have to see us in action to really understand what we are doing, and since the lab is presently under construction, it is hard to actually show you concrete results at this point. There isn't much to see, yet...

The Perfect Shirt

2010-03-28T14:55:00.001-07:00

I've made four different shirts for myself over the past 18 months now, each using a different design (and incorporating a number of mistakes). Now I'm working on the "perfect shirt" for me (see Figure at right). There may appear to be nothing particularly outstanding about the design shown, but it incorporates a number of features that are important. First of all, it is wide - the design is made to fit my girth, not my waist. Secondly, it uses a dress shirt style hem at the bottom - this ensures there is lots of fabric below the belt so that when the shirt is tucked in, it stays tucked in! The top of the curves at the hem at the bottom are low enough that they also stay out of sight, even when the fabric pulls up (such as when I do stretching exercises). Third, the neck line is much lower than for most commercially-made men's shirts - it is closer to a boat neck in overall form. This allows me to button the shirt up to the top without putting any pressure on the neck - I hate how regular shirts are too tight around the neck, even when they are "loose". I like wearing a shirt I can button up to the top (without a tie - I don't wear ties!) without feeling like I am being strangled! Fourth, the fabric extends several centimeters past the Centre Front line, so that when the shirt it buttoned up, there is no possibility of the shirt gapping open between buttons and showing skin underneath.

The upper part of the shirt may or may not be modified into a yoke - I have tried both, and I generally prefer the non-yoked versions of shirts over the yoked versions. I tend to make my shirts without a pocket, also - I've taken to put the things I usually put into my shirt pocket into my back pants pocket instead - I like the uncluttered look of a shirt without its pocket. I've also found that most ready-to-wear shorts have too long a shoulder and I have shortened the shoulder seam (and moved it towards the front slightly for my particular case).

I have experimented with several collars for shirts, including a mandarin style collar and standup collars - I prefer the latter. I've also experimented with wide cuffs (which I like), and wide sleeve openings (which I don't like as much).

I like the sleeve to be fairly wide at the sleeve cap - I narrowed the sleeve on one of my shirts and found the results to be uncomfortable.

I found that offsetting the buttons slightly from where the collar fastens gives a slightly asymmetrical feel to the shirt front which I like, very different from ready-to-wear shirts. This is particularly effective when using high quality fabrics like hammered silk, where the quality of the fabric highlights the design features of the shirt that make it different from a standard shirt.

I'm not sure whether my "perfect shirt" is right for everyone, but for me, after a considerable amount of experimentation, I think I have found a "look" that suits me and that I like, while still remaining dressy and chic.