Boston Fashion Industry Meetup with Jay Calderin, Boston Fashion Week

The group photo was taken by Domenico, at the Boston Fashion Industry Meetup, July 24, 2012. We are the six organizers: Joseph Gualtiere, Vicky Anson, John Bilotti, , yours truly, Shirley Willett, Kathy Benharris, and Ron Ranere. If you want to know more about our meetup, go to  http://fashion.meetup.com/1/   We would love more fashion people, especially designers, to join us.

 The other photo is Jay Calderin, founder and organizer of Boston Fashion Week. He gave a great talk about all the exciting details of the week in the fall. If you want to know more about Boston Fashion Week, go to http://www.bostonfashionweek.com/

I have great news about myself. I will be the feature article in the fall issue of Boston Common Magazine. They are doing a Boston heritage issue and will talk about my involvement as Boston’s number one designer in the 1950s and 1960s, and then my suede manufacturing in the 1970s. I am not sure when the next issue comes out, either August or September. If you want to know more, go to

  http://bostoncommon-magazine.com/

DIY (Do It Yourself) Manufacturing

DIY (Do It Yourself) manufacturing is actually a very old idea brought to the 21st century through new technologies. A recent newsletter from IMT (Industry Market Trends) asks:

"Is This the Era of DIY Manufacturing?"

Traditional models for manufacturing are rapidly evolving, as increasing demand for customized, individually-oriented products and the desire for "personal fabrication" capabilities are drivinga revolution in do-it-yourself production. Coupled with the latest advances in 3-D printing and digital fabrication, which are bringing sophisticated technologies into the home, the world many soon be entering a new era of DIY manufacturing.

Most of what is happening commercially is in industries other than apparel manufacturing, except in basic clothing. However, as IMT further discusses, "mixing traditional mass production with individual production", I am convinced, could really be the new future for creative design and manufacturing.There is a great deal to understand in order for what I call mass customization to evolve. And this is exactly what young creative fashion designer-entrepreneurs need, and the more creative and personal clothing consumers want, but at an affordable price.

I have personally been dreaming of these ideas in some ways, since the 1950s. And today, after a very successful manufacturing business of high fashion design for 20 years, I am still devoted to both the fashion consumers and to young fashion design-entrepreneurs, some of whom I mentor. In the early 1960s I composed a booklet Creative Kits, which shows my passion for consumers, and wanting them involved. Some pages from the booklet are seen below. The cover shows a suede trench coat that the consumer can put together themselves by punching holes in the right size of marks for them. They are supplied with rivets and the tool to rivet the coat together. No sewing! Just fun. Page 3 is a suede coat that is whipstitched together with suede lacing, and me modeling. You can figure that next year I will be 80!

The next one on page 5, was the best seller. They punched the holes according to a pattern, and were given various bright colored lacings to embroider with. Page 7 is a man's laced suede Eisenhower jacket, and page 20, riveted pants for both men or women. The crocheted vest, page 14, and the latticework vest, page 25, I also made complete ones for the store Apogee, owned by Marylyn Riseman - a very popular store on Newbury Street in the 1960s

I ask everyone to please study the past and help me and others with ideas for the future success of the apparel industry. Remember my slogan, History teaches the present how to redesign the future. I look forward to hearing from you.

Cover of booklet

P3. Whipstitched coat

, 

P5. Embroider weskit

P7. Laced Eisenhower

P20. Riveted pants, M & F

P14. Crocheted vest

P25. Latticework vest

DesignEd Symposium by DIGMA

DesignEd Symposium by DIGMA (Design Industry Group of Massachusetts

May 4, 2012: There were some questions proposed to answer. The one that attracted me" How should Massachusetts design education evolve?"

[Photos by Jay Calderin, Boston Fashion Week & SFD.]

Rather than go into all the points about the question, I talked more about the critical problems that the fashion apparel industry was facing today, not only in Massachusetts, but all over the country and all over the world. It is not something that education alone can answer, but has serious consequences for fashion design students, who can no longer find jobs. I made the decision to send the following paper to a group of those who would be especially interested in the critical problems of the fashion apparel industry. It doesn't answer the problem, but identifying the problem is 50% of the solution. I hope my readers will read and think about possible solutions. And I will put some ideas in my next post. 

"History Teaches the Present How to Redesign the Future" (Shirley Willett) 

__________________________________________________________________________________

Pattern Design and Engineering is the Beginning and the Foundation for Fashion/Apparel as an Industry

The textile industry was brought to America in the 19^th century from England. But the apparel industry is an American creation later in the Greater Boston area by Jewish tailors. Prior to their efforts garments were made individually for each woman by dressmakers. These Jewish tailors became aware of some commonalty in the shaping, fitting and making of garments, and pattern making for production was born, one pattern to  fit more than one woman. They developed a mathematical sizing system to accommodate most women with very few patterns. As businessmen they continued developing these patterns to become paper “information systems” engineered to control quantities of exact reproductions in cutting and stitching clothing in mass production systems. 

It was in the 1950’s, graduating from college and working in the design rooms of New York, that I learned something very different about fashion schools and colleges.  Teachers were primarily “dressmakers” and emulated the Paris couture system – and they taught this to other teachers, becoming a narrowing circle of knowledge and experience. All workers hired in design rooms were taught in schools, not from apprentice experience that taught critical production knowledge. I easily excelled way beyond them with a technical pattern expertise learned from my own experiments as a teenager coupled with the knowledge of stitching in production. Creators of high fashion styles today make “First Patterns”, which they spend endless time redoing for quality, but never preparing for production. While creating high fashion styles my First Patterns were “Engineered Patterns” to immediately reproduce creations into ready made garments for cost-effective manufacturing. A positive effect from these fashion schools is that America began producing more creative designers, but the negative effect is an ever widening gap between creative design and pattern engineering. In my National Science Foundation grants,1980s, I designed a graphic that explains it well: “The Wall Between Design and Manufacturing”. By combining great creativity with unequaled technical expertise, I became extremely successful as a high fashion designer and manufacturer of quality designer clothing at low cost, selling nationally to all the top retailers from the 1960s to the early 1980s. One driving point I continue to make in my grants and to students is that decisions of marketing and production, costs and quality must be made at the “Point of Design”. (P.O.D.)

Unfortunately, as Boston firms went south in the 1960s and then overseas in the 1980s, to reduce increasingly heavy production costs, Boston's technical expertise faded dramatically. No longer were there firms to apprentice pattern designers, so pattern making was only taught in schools from books. Overseas manufacturers, in Italy, France, London, and today in Japan, China and Korea, copied these systems as well, but none of them learned it by hands on stitching and other work in production that makes an expert pattern maker. The result is that today’s pattern designers and engineers can reproduce the sameness of clothing design, but cannot create technical pattern design and engineering systems, nor can they ever work with creative styling to make them into efficient production systems. 

Adding to the demise of creative technical expertise are the CAD/CAM vendors selling technology into the apparel industry production systems, which had to emphasize “sameness” to justify the costs. Those elements that are  mathematically oriented, such as “grading of sizes”, and “marking of layouts” for cutting, are very efficient technological systems. But no CAD vendor has designed a pattern making system that can deal with creative styling, or fitting of differences in women’s bodies. The result is that all over the world we have an anathema of sameness in the  mass production market, and far out creativity that is enormously high priced  - with a gap that is an ever-widening schism. 

When I sold my manufacturing business in the 1980s and won the NSF grants, it was for the sole purpose of using our great history in technical pattern design to create technologies that could work with and for, creativity. I have been accepted all over the world for my creative technical expertise, but not by the American fashion industry, nor by their schools. I reached an apogee in representing the whole American fashion industry at an MIT workshop on comparing design practices between industries. Now, in the 21^st century, I am determined to do whatever I can to “redesign the fashion industry in America”, by teaching my “Stylometrics Pattern Design” and developing a system of apprentices to become Fashion Design Leaders.

Fashion schools graduate thousands of fashion designers that can’t succeed in fashion nationwide. Consumers are frustrated and bored with sameness, not finding creative, quality fashions that will fit them without paying thousands of dollars. Consumers are becoming involved in designing in various ways. I hope that my creative methodologies will be adopted, and you will take them for your personal success and to show others. 

The Wall Between Design and Manufacturing

The plate and the text comes from a Willett paper, “Syntax and Semantics of an Image Communication Language for Design Management’ presented at the Technical Design Conference of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1990.

For communication tools to be useful in design management, they must be based on a language that supports standardization of representation, linkage of production requirements to product representation, use of building blocks to avoid repetitive effort, and incorporation of syntactical information to aid in understanding of the represented product. The Stylometrics language was designed with these goals and purpose in mind. 

CAD technology has exacerbated the problem by developing programs for apparel design that have little regard for the users. Perhaps the primary cause of this wrong direction is the total lack of understanding and respect for what design engineering is, and what the design engineer does. 

Problems in Fashion Design & Production – Ideas for Solutions

The following paper was presented by the Organizer of Boston Fashion Industry Meetup, Shirley Willett, and founder of Boston Design Laboratory, February 19, 2009. The paper illustrates her continued commitment to create solutions for the problems and difficulties faced by young design entrepreneurs in the fashion industry today. See more at http://fashion.meetup.com/1/

THE GREATEST CHALLENGE TODAY FOR FASHION DEs IN AMERICA IS AFFORDABLE PRODUCTION.

1. Their production lots are too small to do it overseas – with expensive shipping costs, and paying someone to carefully watch quality control.
2. Production knowledge is not taught anywhere. In the past it was learned by apprentic-ing in the factories. All fashion schools teach 19th century couture for first patterns, which is the process done in the design rooms – making a wider and wider “wall” between de-sign and manufacturing.
3. DEs must increasingly do everything themselves, their own patterns, their own selling and increasingly their own stitching.

MASS PRODUCTION AND “SAMENESS” EQUALS LOW-COST

Frederick Taylor at the turn of the 20th century developed mass production, especially for the auto industry. The basic condition was quantities of sameness. Ford was known to have said: “The customer can have any color they want but it must be black.” Mass production and factories in the apparel industry were developed by Jewish tailors in their patterns created for production of quantities of the same style. They continually developed ways for lower and lower costs.
With the advent of the computer, design rooms disappeared and product development took its place. Everyone designed – sameness, and more sameness. Young DEs can not compete with the way all of them work today, producing one or very few of one style. The solution is to build a large collaboration of designers, whose patterns are all built on one common set of standard (same) pattern templates (Stylometrics). There are many other ways to build some commonalties or sameness as the foundation,(fabric pooling) (systems for cutting and stitching) etc. while uniqueness, customization, and personalization can be done at a higher level. Boston Design Laboratory is committed to research and create ways to achieve affordable production.
This system has not been done yet, but it CAN be done. Only it will take time and the right people – and commitment.


The suede evening gown in the photo was designed in Shirley Willett’s manufacturing business in the 60s, 70s and 80s. She created a totally new production system with sketches on stitcher’s machines with numbers and letters. They made the shell of the gown in 15 minutes. Willett could not sell it that cheap so she made a 60% profit on each. The photo is by Ron Ranere www.positiveimage-boston.com

COSTING CAN HELP SEE THE PROBLEM CLEARLY.
1. Start with a competitive market price of a product – say $200 to the consumer.
2. 50% (often 60%) on average to the retailer. This leaves $100. Selling direct is better, but there is still costs and more labor involved – but reduced by collaboration.
3. To be very general and using my mfg. business as example, make 50% for factory, design, pattern, and other overhead. (Overhead can be reduced substantially here by collaboration.) This leaves $50.
4. If splitting it to $25 for materials, trims and supplies, the materials must be bought wholesale in order to only spend $25 for a garment that the consumer will pay $200 for. This is do-able by collaborating and pooling resources.
5. That leaves only $25 for all labor costs, cutting stitching and pressing. Think of how fast it must be produced to make a quality $200 garment and still get a decent hourly wage. The only way this can be accomplished is in production patterns, and collaborative production systems.




FIRST STEP TOWARD A SOLUTION
A database management system of offers of skills, needs for skills, and project ideas in the Boston fashion industry. Hopefully we can start with “MyZDesign” See www.zweave.com

SECOND STEP: CREATE SELF-EMPLOYED COLLABORATORIES
(SEC)

1. A leader establishes a possible project, and searches database for right people.

2. Each person involved in the project is self-employed & responsible for all their own business processes, and for all decisions. Each has registered on the database what skills they offer and what skills they need.

3. Each buys from others as they need, or forms separate collaborative groups to own a part of the pattern design, production making, promotion or selling of a total project or product.

4. For every transaction a contract is agreed upon and signed dealing with price, time and conditions when paid.

A Position Against Copyright Law in Fashion Design

On June 9, in Newport, RI, The Copyright Society of U.S.A., had their annual meeting. I was asked be on the panel of “Copyrighting Couture”, to present my position on the recent legislation going through Congress on a copyrights for fashion design. I presented two plates shown here. What follows is first the 2 minute talk I gave, and second the paper that everyone could download.

1. The battle in copyright law is really between big brand, celebrity designers – most of whom do not do their own designing, and whose profits protect their old hat production – and with tiny (DEs) design entrepreneurs, who have no voice in Washington - and with the copyright law would soon be extinct.

The “Wall Between Design & Manufacturing” is a plate for an NSF grant in 1989 – showing design and manufacturing not communicating. The wall was built by fashion school graduates who didn’t learn how to produce and romantic media promoting that designers didn’t have to know – only celebrity matters. The copyright law in design would make an even bigger schism – and further kill our industry in America.

Innovative production and pattern technologies help reduce prices and raise quality, and are more integral of the true fashion industry – than the look of styles – and doesn’t get, and doesn’t need, government protection. Fashion design is nothing without manufacturing. There are top brand labels copying themselves now, with fast, inexpensive and quality productions - that is the future. AAFA, representing manufacturers, are against the present copyright law proposal.

Promotion to sell my name wasn’t necessary – I sold great products I manufactured myself – such as this evening gown in suede. The stitchers could put the shell together in 15 minutes, and it wouldn’t sell that cheap, so I made 60% profit. How silly to copyright the look. Production is far more important. I designed tools that made buttonholes much higher quality, ten times faster, and the look from the tool helped it sell more. None copied it because I wasn’t media famous.

Today, I am devoted to a new fashion industry for young DEs, for consumers, and to help empower the disadvantaged – giving them my Stylometrics innovative pattern and production systems – for free to copy. Everyone’s a designer – everyone copies – everyone makes money on making – producing at low-cost. Fashion ideas are a dime a dozen.

2-1. Copying has always been an integral and accepted practice in the American fashion industry. (Learned from 60 years experience: apprenticing in 1940s factories, owning 3 corpo-rations (one design &manufacturing), & research in National Science Foundation grants.)
In the 18th century, dolls with French fashions were sent to American dressmakers to copy. In the 19th century fashion magazines printed “patterns” for American dressmakers to copy and cut. At the turn of the 20th century, Jewish tailors in Boston innovated production pattern making, and American fashion apparel, as an industry, was born. These technical designers still copied crea-tivity. Mid-20th century, fashion schools and colleges started – teaching French dressmaking methods, with design creativity, but with no production pattern knowledge. Toward the end of the 20th century, big fashion brand labels hired young designers to exploit their ideas, with fast turnovers, and big name retailers set up their own product development departments to copy, and with most doing offshore production. Young, creative, designer entrepreneurs (DEs) struggle for survival, with no respect from big business, little practical production knowledge, and very little availability to get small production lots made in America anymore.
* A graphic in all of my grants, “The Wall Between Design and Manufacturing”, shows the separation is getting increasingly worse, caused by the lack of communication between the two. Kurt Salmon Associates, 1989, reports, “Merchandising, what manufacturers call designing, is the least-effective function apparel companies perform…a process of creativity and luck. … Re-quirements can change as many as 50 times [from design to making].” The chart, (late 1980s) shows Brand Name Manufacturers as top control. Today that would change with Retailer Brand Names as top control.
* CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) (big names) started the battle for a copy-right law. Their president, Diane Von Furstenberg, says, “My job is to protect the [big name] designers, but the clothing manufacturers want something else.” – validating the bigger wall be-tween design and manufacturing, as well as between big and small designers.
* I fought for these DEs against “big business” as a delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business in 1986, and again as an evaluator of Manufacturing Technology Centers for the National Research Council in 1992.
* Chris Sprigman, in Virginia Law Review, adds: “The global fashion industry produces a huge variety of creative goods without strong IP protection. Copying is rampant as the orthodox ac-count would predict. Yet innovation and investment remain vibrant.”

2-2. A copyright law in fashion design would further smash young design entrepreneurs’ hopes, because every idea would have to be tested against all existing ideas.
* AAFA- American Apparel & Footwear Association (manufacturers), has come out in opposi-tion to the legislation and sent a letter to each member of the House and Senate explaining these concerns. If enacted, these bills would make legitimate companies, and their legitimate designs, vulnerable to a litany of excessive litigation and bogus claims. The inherent subjectivity in both the “substantial similarity” standard for infringement and the “distinguishable variation over prior work” standard for protection would expose footwear and apparel companies, retailers, designers and ultimately the consumer to unneeded costs and uncertainty that could stifle fash-ion design innovation. Moreover, we believe there are practical logistical considerations that would make such a design registry difficult, if not impossible, to operate.
Design (fashion or any industry) must not be separated from its technical design and manu-facturing. Young DEs are the future of America and its free enterprise system. Please, let’s not force every young designer to be controlled by big brands, or by a government that only works for big business and does not understand entrepreneurship and innovation

2-3. Copying great art and design is critical for students to learn what “excellence” is, especially technical and production excellence.
In the Renaissance all learning was by apprenticeship to the great art masters, and is the way fashion apparel, as an industry, started at the end of the 19th century, learning from pattern de-sign masters – and in Boston!! It is the way I approach it today when guiding creative protégés who already have active and successful small business enterprises, but need continual help with technical design and production. My number one protégé, Teresa Crowninshield, is a rising de-sign star in New England. Her cashmere and silk coats and jackets are exquisitely innovative, but she builds each one by copying my fundamental pattern templates, and by copying, for study purposes, other designers’ shapes of myriad parts. In the 1970s on Seventh Ave., New York, pattern makers from different firms would exchange and copy each other’s specific patterns, such as a collar or sleeve, to assure excellent shaping.

2-4. The attention that fashion design innovation is getting is a positive even though I am against a copyright law for it.
What lawyers, academics, and business people – on both sides of the argument, and for all indus-tries - can do is, first, clearly define what design innovation really is; and second, attempt some methodologies for measuring/evaluating design innovation. On the New York Times Freako-nomics Quorum, April 25, “How Can We Measure Innovation?”, John Seely Brown was quoted and names 4 types: “Incremental innovation, cheaper, thinner, faster and, of course, more features. … Architectural innovations, involve a restructuring of the very building blocks of a product family, industry, or infrastructure. …Disruptive innovations, from a societal point of view… . institutional innovations, enable society to function.” Because apparel is 3D, great fashion design through history are architectural innovations. But, like architecture it-self, it cannot be separated from its tangible building and production processes. My very success-ful evening gown in suede in the 1970s is an example of architectural innovation. The production process of setting up images on the machines so the stitchers could make the shell of the gown in 15 minutes was even more innovative that the unique patterning of seams. No one ever copied this gown or any other successful style, because – as I learned – they could not copy my efficient production system. My Stylometrics image language, for which I received 3 NSF grant awards, and today I call “Foundation Pattern Templates”, is an architectural innovation, involving build-ing blocks for fashion apparel designs.
Please let’s learn how to solve our design and business problems without government con-trolling our lives and our businesses.

2008 NEWS from BOSTON DESIGN LAB (BDL)

HAPPY NEW 2008!

The purpose for Boston Design Laboratory™ (BDL) is to redesign the fashion industry in Boston, through creative research of new production technologies and new business structures – for consumers to obtain fashions at reasonable cost, and to help DEs (design entrepreneurs) and dressmakers to make a good income – increasingly more difficult in today’s markets. Our research divides the industry into 4 design functions, and forms collaborations of self-employed DEs to develop the new systems. The 4 functions were determined by Shirley Willett, the founder of BDL, in a 2004 paper prepared for Massachusetts Institute of Technology to compare design practices in the fashion apparel industry with other industries, as architecture and automobiles.

In the 21st century every DE must have skills in 4 functions, or collaboratively link to all 4 – because services aren’t available. Each function requires designing – meaning pre-planning.

1. CREATIVE DESIGN is the initial fashion idea with a plan for the functions of: 2) patterns, 3) marketing and 4) production.
When meeting, BDL functions as an informal Design Room, in which we critique each others’ designs, play with fabrics, study ideas for the right consumer, discuss the patterns and any technical problems, and plan the production of the first and repetitions. We are planning a small collaborative collection for 2008, to test BDL’s technology and business ideas. We are also considering a catalog of diverse design ideas at different stages for selling to DEs, dressmakers, and customers.

2. PATTERN DESIGN & ENGINEERING: Patterns are information systems, planned and engineered for production processes, and includes information on specific consumer types.
The Stylometrics Pattern Templates, a foundation pattern making system, was researched in NSF grants and tested by many designers and dressmakers, for making pattern design easier, faster, ready for produc-tion, and more adaptable to custom design. They are ideal for flat 2-D work or for creative draping as on an armature in sculpture. We are building an instruction booklet for selling them.

3. MARKET DESIGN & SELLING is the presentation of fashion products to customers for their acceptance, and must have a pre-designed plan.
For DEs and dressmakers to make a better income, without high prices which will destroy selling in today’s markets, many expensive middling costs must be studied and eliminated. In BDL, we are discuss-ing a possible Fashion Consultants collaboration for selling direct to consumers through trunk shows, home parties, etc. We are also planning some “fitting standards” for mass-produced custom.

4. PRODUCTION DESIGN & ENGINEERING is the plan and management of production processes: cutting, sewing, pressing, trimming - one, many, custom.
Stylometrics Templates are designed for efficient production. BDL is designing a Boutique Production system for collaboratively making quality small lots or custom for less cost. Eventually we hope to collaboratively structure a “Timeshare Factory”, a place for Boutique Production.

FASHION as a BUSINESS

Success for Design Entrepreneurs (DEs) in 21st C. Boston


Boston’s Jewish tailors started the apparel industry at the turn of the 20th century by creating production patterns, teaching apprentices, setting up manufacturing shops, and copying creative designs. By mid-century dressmakers in New York and Boston fashion schools began producing creative designers. From the different learning backgrounds, a “wall” arose between creative design rooms and efficient manufacturing and pattern designers – with high costs from poor design management. As manufacturing went offshore in the 1980s, retailers began their own product development, adding CAD systems – and sameness took over.

Young designers who dream of creating “a collection” have presently no path, nor the knowledge, to materialize quality design ideas that can be produced efficiently to make an income. If they could find a pattern maker and a contract shop, the costs would be prohibitive. Boston Design Lab (BDL) evolved to creatively solve these problems through the Stylometrics system (developed in National Science Foundation grants), and by innovating business structures. DEs must be willing to collaborate, working together to create these new systems in Boston. The aim is to eliminate many middling costs from designer to consumer, without losing quality and uniqueness, and to set up IT (Information Technologies) to solve product lifecycle problems at POD (Point of design).

Pattern Templates are part of the Stylometrics system, upon which DEs develop creative design ideas (by draping or flat work), to result in a pattern that is ready for efficient production. Sameness in product and processes give speed, efficiency and low-cost in production. The Templates are a foundation of sameness for creative 2-D art or 3-D fashion sculpture, and works to eliminate many costly repetitions

Some innovative business structures in BDL are:

“Boutique Production”

; a

“Timeshare Factory”

; training fashion consultants to work with DEs for selling direct to consumers in trunk shows, expos, etc.; software, such as “Self AWear™” for collecting consumer preferences in databases; critiques for saleability to myriad market demographics; linking with a sewing professionals association, for making custom or small lots.

BOSTON DESIGN LABORATORY™ Some information

The purpose for Boston Design Laboratory™ (BDL) is to redesign the fashion industry in Bos-ton through creative research of new production technologies and new business structures – in order that fashion design entrepreneurs and dressmakers can make a good income – increasingly more difficult in today’s markets. Our approach encompasses all aspects of the industry, collaborations in the ways the self-employed work together in creating solutions to problems. There are four divisions, determined by Shirley Willett, the founder, in a 2004 paper prepared for a Massachusetts Institute of Technology workshop to explain the future design of the fashion apparel industry. Information is collected in databases and other technologies for designer quality and efficiency at the Point of Design (POD-IT)

1) Creativity, Research & Resources.
Problem: Much creativity in the fashion apparel industry has been lost with the mechanization of CAD/CAM technology, which has opened up extensive copying and repetitions.
Future:. All BDL designers and dressmakers start with the Stylometrics Pattern Templates, researched by Shirley Willett in a series of National Science Foundation grants, for achieving more beautiful, creative shaping, quality fitting, and efficient production of one-of-a-kinds, small or big production lots. The system is highly efficient for development of creative ideas and can reduce necessity of copying and sameness.


2) Pattern Design & Engineering.
Problem: Commodity apparel is completely mechanized in CAD pattern systems for low-costs in design and production – while high fashion is too random and expensive, poor time management from design to market. Unfortunately, there is nothing in between.
Future: The Stylometrics system is structured so that while designing and making the first sample (prototype), the pattern is also ready for production. The Templates are ideal for easy manipulation of flat 2-D work, or for creative draping as on an armature in sculpture.

3) Production Engineering.
Problem: Sameness in product and processes give speed, efficiency and low-cost, but results in boring styles. Manufacturing in America of high fashion design is extremely limited and costly and non-existent for very unique ideas, small lots, one-of-a-kinds, or custom.
Future: It is integral to BDL’s mission to solve these problems through technical innovations linked to the Stylometrics system, which has a foundation of sameness upon which to build great creativity. BDL is working with the Professional Association of Custom Clothiers (PAAC) on “mass-produced custom”, and is proposing a “Boutique Production” concept.

4) Marketing, Selling & Customers.
Problem: Too many middling costs, and distortion of consumer desires from the distance between designers and consumers.
Future: Trunk shows, direct sales, and creative, collaborative marketing are integral parts of our research. Our dream is to make the customers an active part of the fashion industry, with a software program, “Self A-wear™” which will collect consumer desires, and a “Willett Design Room” (WDR) that can maintain the unique selling relationship.

Emma left a comment on the last post:

what are the styleometrics pattern templates? I am designing and making a modern wedding dress and was needing some help with how to make a pattern

Some of your question is answered above, but I realize not in any detail. If you live in the New England area, please contact me, and I can suggest some ways to help you with patterns. You can also read my website at http://www.shirleywillett.com You can also join the Boston Fashion Industry Meetup. Click http://fashion.meetup.com/1/

Draping a Dress from Stylometrics Pattern Template

The blue and white silk crepe dress is on me when I received a "Boston Fashion Week Ladder Award" sponsored by the Fashion Group International in September. It was for all my work to help young fashion entrepreneurs up the "ladder". The photo was tajen when I received a unique bouquet of roses from my fashion protégés at our Boston Design Lab fashion show.

In a post on 12.26.2006, "Drape Dress" I showed the design for this dress, and the AB-1 Empire Template on which the dress was draped. I added the big bow. All the darts and the empire line was transformed into draping, which is something I love to do. By draping from a Template the dress maintains a "standard" of sizing and shaping,the lack of which is a significant problem that consumers face, especially with haute couture from around the world.

I love comments and questions. If you have any about this process I will reply.

Boston Design Lab Fashion Show

First, I apologize for such a long time since my last post. But I am now going to be doing many posts, lots of photos from my fashion show, "Boston Design Lab" at the Hotel Commonwealth during Boston Fashion Week in September. These are two photos by Ron Ranere, Positive Image. You can see many more on his web site,http://www.positiveimage-boston.com/bdlweb/index.htm
There are also more photos on BostonFashion.com at http://www.bostonfashion.com/directory/bostondesignlab.html

I will be getting up more this week, and will work out the problem of leaving comments. Thanks for your patience.

Sketch Pattern Shapes That Will Make This Volley Ball

The volley ball is pictured with two views. Try “sketching” the shapes of the pattern pieces - the FEWEST PATTERN PIECES - that it takes to cut the fabric pieces for sewing together to make the ball. The 2D “shape” is what is important, and the relationship of shape to each other pattern pieces.

So many have requested my “Fashion/Pattern Design for Beginners” online, that I decided to try this first step of a class I teach at the Brookline Adult & Community Education (Boston area). This first step is a test for whether my pattern making system can be taught online.
http://www.brooklineadulted.org/bin/catalog/bldCatalogPage.pl?Key=36&File=CraftsandSkills.txt
This is a very different approach from any other pattern making book, class, online, etc. It is a non-mathematical pattern making system called Stylometrics, that I developed through National Science Foundation research grants on engineering design for the fashion industry. The purpose of my system is "to build the ability to SEE inside the mind, and for designers to CREATE solutions to their pattern problems”. Most pattern makers use math & rules, set up in books, and answer the same problems over and over again – which is OK for mass production of commodity styles, and competition between designers and pattern makers, and CAD systems – but not for creative high fashion designers. It’s what Frank Gehry, the world-famous architect, said when he began designing jewelry for Tiffiny’s: “Beauty Without Rules”. My dream is to set up STANDARDS in “Primitive & Generic Patterns” so that designers can evolve "creative high fashion styles easily" and also mass produce them easily. From what I have learned from others, I believe I had the only “mass-produced high fashion clothing manufacturing in the world” in the 60s, 70s & early 80s. Eventually those standards will involve consumers and dressmakers, so consumers will be responsible for their own "fit" (variation from the standard) with their dressmakers. It's a whole new fashion industry.

The Pattern Shapes for Cutting and Making the Volley Ball

Here’s the pattern shapes. How did you do? Go back and forth between the pictures of the ball and the pattern pieces. The “fewest pattern pieces” are 2. First note that there are six sections of 3 cut pieces that are alike. Then note that there is one center piece of that 3-pc. section. That is the one pattern piece pictured that says “Cut 6”. With further study you will see that the pattern pieces on either side of the center one are alike in shape, but, like our hands, are left and right. Just as we call a PAIR of gloves for the hands, we can use the same pattern piece for the left and right, by cutting a PAIR. There are 6 pair of this piece for the ball. So, the conclusion is that the “fewest pattern pieces are 2.” Please comment or email me about how you did, and what you think of this exercise.

Judging from some responses to an earlier post, and the difficulty in what must be expressed in words for online, I cannot set up any kind of online teaching of my unique pattern making process, Stylometrics. I will be continuing to answer the many wonderful questions I get from these posts. So, keep your questions and comments coming.

Cathy Horne, NYT & Creative Technological Solutions

Cathy Horne, the fashion editor of the New York Times, has started a blog. Her articles are excellent, especially about the Haute Couture. I was so impressed by her blog post today, that I made a comment. Please go to the blog and be sure to click on the Digital Flipbook at the end of her blog, and you will see an entire collection of steps that Alber Elbaz, the designer at Lanvin, went through to create a technological solution to a problem. The two photos here are from that Flipbook. You can see the post at http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/?th&emc=th

The title of her blog today, is HOWJADOTHAT? She starts: "From time to time on this blog, I’d like to show you how something is done, in the hopes of better explaining the creative process. Not long ago in New York, over lunch with the now-pinned Alber Elbaz, we got to talking about the trouble with futurism. At the spring 07 shows in Milan and Paris, futurism was suddenly the buzz word. But, as Elbaz pointed out, tomorrow is actually a difficult place to reach. ... He asked an Italian mill to produce a fabric that was 100 percent polyester. Yet, as modern as the fabric looked, the seamstresses at Lanvin had trouble sewing it. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing — a fabric that rejects pins,’.” Elbaz said. “Some fabrics are very stubborn. They don’t want to be told what to do.” Nothing worked at first. “We tried using elastic. Too Adidas. We tried using jewels. Too cheap-looking. You start questioning yourself.” Eventually Elbaz found that if he basted silk organza underneath the polyester, he could get the voluptuous shape he wanted. “It really challenged me,” he said. “You want to give up and you want to win.”

MY COMMENT (They printed it on the NYT blog)
Thank you, Cathy Horne. I have always loved your articles because you are not afraid to "shoot from the hip" when necessary about the haute couture. Your blog, again, shows what is necessary to be said. To reveal what "technological" work some designers go through in their research and experimentation is so needed by the young and often foolishly romantic designer entrepreneurs and fashion school students - who worship the ridiculous Project Runway as their ideal.

After almost 60 years in the fashion industry as a designer & manufacturer of high fashion, and winning engineering design grants for the fashion industry, I know well what it is like to spend effort on creative technological solutions like Alber Elbaz on lining polyester with silk organza to achieve the desired result. Today, as a mentor for the very few young designers who can achieve something worthwhile for the future, I motivate them toward excellence in researching technology to compliment great creative ideas.

Fashion Future: Crafts, Consumer/Designers & SELF

The new postal stamps, with “Quilts from Gee’s Bend” are very inspirational and timed well to what I see as an extremely important development in the fashion industry for DEs (Designer Entrepreneurs) and consumers. For those who are very creative, and love to play with art, graphics and colors in fashion, the spring/summer season is great for experimentation, especially for those DEs that sell directly to consumers. The sleeveless jacket and skirt is one from the 1980s of my huge vintage collection. The photo is by Ron Ranere, Positive Image, http://www.positiveimage-boston.com. It is in Ivory colored leather with the leaf patterns (front & back) in different colors of lambskin suede. It could sell very well this year, but I’m not selling anymore. I simply want to inspire you. Can’t you see using some of those color combinations or even some patterns of the quilts as appliqués or pieces of the garment shape in a dress, skirt or top?

I have been very busy helping DEs locally in Boston. As you well know, I am organizer for the Boston Fashion Industry Meetup, for all aspects of the industry to help one another, by meeting face to face locally. http://fashion.meetup.com/1/ You also know that I organize the Fashion Product Development Meetup, that is now completely virtual, online for CHAT discussions. I make announcements on this web site for when I will be online to talk. You can join (anyone, anywhere & free) and then learn when. http://fashion.meetup.com/221/ I now have just added a third meetup, Boston Craft & Fashion Sellers Meetup. Ivy Glass is my assistant organizer, and we hold the meetups at her studio in the artists spaces at Fort Point. It’s purpose is to research all the craft shows, fashion shows for DEs, and set up some as well as trunk shows and home parties in New England – all for selling direct to consumers, that helps you to make an income. If you go to the web site, you will see the same photo of my leather outfit with the leaf patterns. Click: http://craftsellers.meetup.com/76/ We will be having our first meetup Feb. 8. I’m telling all of you about it because eventually, once we get it well established here, those of you in other parts of the country could also set up a Craft Sellers Meetup (and I will help you). Then, we could even exchange products and help each other sell over all parts of the country. Wouldn’t it be great to have that kind of “organized selling power”?

There’s some other things that keep me very busy as well, all for helping young DEs. I am a business consultant for the Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) in New England. They have the best and cheapest business advice and classes. If any of you are in this area, you should check them out. http://www.cweonline.org I just met one of their clients that is really interesting, and represents the wave of the future in fabric coloring. She has been doing customized fabric dying for chains like the Gap, Ann Taylor, etc., and now is going big. Everyone is interested world-wide because she has established STANDARDS for fabric coloring, globally, and will be having it digitally as well. In my talk with her, she knows that the future is for consumers, and small businesses on the web, and eventually will have something for you as well. I will keep you posted. Go see her web site. http://www.precisiontex.com/index.php

All the work in SELF (Self-Employed Laboratory of Fashion) keeps mounting, because the group of members are all each making a tiny collection of dresses for spring/summer that are based on my Generic S-Patterns, both to test them and to help the members develop their styles. There is a great deal of graphics and craft influence in what we do. Unfortunately for you, this is completely local. We are having a meeting on the 3rd. and will keep you updated on what we set up. We also have one member that I’m helping to set up a business for sourcing cottons and silks from India. Once some of these things are set up then we can offer it to you as well.

By now you must realize that I do not have the time to set up an online teaching structure for learning about the S-Patterns. I’m sorry that some of you had hopes of this. Maybe I will meet someone in the local area that I will teach and she or he could do it?

If any have questions, please ask me. I love to answer them. My commitment is to help young DEs for a very interesting 21st century future.

YOU, Time Person of the Year, SELF & S-Patterns

I have been asked about the difference between SELF and S Patterns. SELF (Self-Employed Laboratory of Fashion) is fundamentally a Laboratory doing Research & Development (R&D), and is a non-financial entity. That is, each within it has a self-employed business outside of SELF. But, we work together within SELF, creating, researching, developing new ideas and solve problems in creating fashions, engineering patterns for production, and marketing & selling. SELF is not an entity that sells anything itself. Rather, the resulting products like the S Patterns, are sold through individual self-employed businesses, who are working together in SELF. Right now we have six of as potentially researching some aspect of the fashion industry. In other words, big corporate retailers & manufacturers have their important R&D departments. YOU, tiny DEs, have us. It is very exciting to be creating a 21st century new fashion industry for YOU. We have ideas for business structures, technologies, marketing, sales, etc.

The choice of the 2006 Time Person of the Year says it all. It’s YOU. Gerry McGovern, who is the best consultant on the web, about the web, wrote the following in his blog, which I totally agree with about the future for all industries as well as the fashion industry, YOU & the web. http://www.gerrymcgovern.com
“The Web has become the organization. An organization of a billion people with a billion things to say. And a million ways to work together. … The Web allows for new forms of organization that will have a profound impact on how we live, work and play over the next twenty years. Traditionally, the tools of organization belonged to a powerful elite. … Today, your office can be at Starbucks, while your network is wireless. You can get a complicated job delivered to the highest standards without any fulltime employees; just your network of independent partners who agree to work towards a shared objective. This is a new way of working. This is different. [This is also SELF] … This organization of you, me and us doesn't need to listen to the old organizations as much any more. We don't need to be told what is cool by some fashion guru, or some clever ad campaign. We decide. … "A person like me" is more trusted than doctors, academics and other such experts. In the U.S., trust in "a person like me" has shown a dramatic increase from just 20 percent in 2003 to 68 percent in 2006. … Those organizations that do not become truly customer-centric will be severely punished by the Web. … This is the age of customer power, customer collaboration, customer content; the sprawling, highly networked organization of YOU. “

S-PATTERNS Will Be a Part of the Future Technology Wave

First, I must apologize to all those to whom I said the 3 “Fashion/Pattern Design” classes for understanding how to work with the S-Patterns would be online by this past weekend. I’m sorry but it is going to longer to get it set up for the web. At this point we’re not sure, but maybe another week or two. Meanwhile we are continuing to develop the Primitive and Generic Patterns so they will be available for delivering to you.

(From the Boston Globe: "A modified iRobot Create can pick up a piece of paper. iRobot, unlike the Roomba, does not vacuum or clean.)

My “Chemise Theory” and Robotics today
Some of you, who have read my posts last September, might remember the one I wrote about my successful “chemise dress” I designed in 1957. (Click September in right column if you want to read the whole story.) The chemise was a fad, died and then was reincarnated as the “shift”, and has been a successful seller ever since for high fashion or commodity designers. Even more interesting is that the chemise is having a great high fashion comeback for spring, 2007. In all of my engineering design papers, related to my NSF research grants, I explained the story of the chemise dress, and used it as a social theory to explain how most fads rise, die, and come back again as more ubiquitous and not faddish. The primary example for which I used the chemise as analogy in the late 1980s was robotics, and I predicted its comeback. That is, robotics, at that time, was a “fad”, big in the media and everyone talked of the great things it would do for people at home. Robotics then died in the public eye, only being considered in robotic arms on factory floors.

For awhile I have been watching robotics making a slow comeback into importance, as I predicted, as the Roomba, vacuum cleaner. Now, it’s evolving. In yesterday’s Boston Globe, 1.8.07, “Technology clears a path for putting robots to work … emphasis is beginning to shift away from robots that entertain and towards robots that labor in the home and the office.” But, the most exciting and key aspect is the “development of a common platform like Create or Microsoft Robotics Studio that will allow hobbyists, students, and entrepreneurs to play around with creating robots without having to become an expert in every aspect of robotics. …software that allow people to use their products as a starting point to create something of their own….build on top of it and go further. …after finding that robot hobbyists were trying to customize the Roomba.”

S-Patterns as a common, foundation, platform.
This is precisely what I am trying to do with the technology idea of S-Patterns. The purpose of the original Stylometrics system, in the 80s & early 90s NSF research grants, was to be a “common platform” for the American apparel industry. They would not accept it, as Sears Roebuck and the Dept of Defense had also tried to do, for 20 years previously. So, in 2004, after my workshop at MIT, I decided to take Stylometrics, my “common platform” for pattern engineering, to you, Designer/Entrepreneurs (DEs) and to consumers. It’s purpose, likewise, is to allow you to play around with creating high fashion clothing without having to become an expert in every aspect of the fashion industry.

In my nine Primitives for NSF research grants, I validated that they could be a common platform in women’s wear, for every style that ever was, is, or could be. The Generic Patterns that we are now developing are an “evolution” of those Primitives, necessary for making the system simpler for developing some more complex styles. As we go in SELF (Self-Employed Laboratory of Fashion) we will develop more complex shapes, to gradually make more styles easier for you. However, please realize that all of this will take time. I no longer have any grant funding, and don’t want a business that makes money. But I do have some devoted people, self-employed, working with me to help, and I am deeply appreciative of that. Eventually (much later) we will set up what I call “FitAWear” standards, to simply changing patterns to fit some common problems. We even have “StyleAWear” and others under the umbrella of “SelfAWear” coming over time – all for you.

When we say a “common platform” or “standardization”, that means that every pattern style evolves from the foundation Primitives. You will note in the 12.9.06 post “More on SELF…” I showed the sheath dress sketch, or AB Primitive. Next to it I showed the sketch of an empire waist sheath, or AB-1 Generic. Size and measurements of the two are identical. The jewel neckline, sleeve, armhole are identical. The only difference is the waist and midriff, which is not as simple as it seems at first glance, because the empire waist indents under the bust more, and therefore also needs more length under the bust. After we have more generic dresses, tops, skirts, blazer, etc., we will also have generic necklines, collars, sleeves, etc. Later we will do pants. And even much later we will do some foundation construction technologies. All this for you at low cost, and some things will be free.

I’ll keep you updated as we get things ready. Happy New 2007!

S-Patterns and SELF (Self-Employed Laboratory of Fashion)

As an important reminder I will mention about S.E.L.F. structure on each blog post, that we are a Laboratory for research and solving problems in couture and high fashion design and production – for DEs and consumers all over the world – because you are the ones that need our help, and to whom I am committed. The same solutions can be used in lower priced apparel and big name manufacturers, but it is the high fashion market that desperately needs to learn quality yet also cost-effective ways of producing.I could give you many examples of bad shape/fit and poor workmanship on shape/fit on $2000 and up brand label apparel. But, if you truly want to sell and you’re not a “brand label”, then consider trying out our “S-Pattern” system. Yesterday’s blog post gave you a little on the S-Patterns for developing a fashion style. And in order to get these patterns you must learn first how to use them – in 3 learning lessons.

By January 6, 2007, we will have the first lesson on the web for you to do. You must email me of your interest to get the URL in an email reply.
1) The first lesson is about learning to SEE inside your mind, the 2-D & 3-D translations, which is what creative pattern making is all about. That is my Stylometrics system which I spent years researching with grants from the National Science Foundation, and is a non-mathematical system. You must have experience in sewing clothing to comprehend the system. Hopefully you have the ability to send me some sketches of shapes you draw by email. If not, then you can send by regular mail.
2) The second lesson is the experience of manipulating a primitive pattern to a new shape, still a creative, observing methodology.
3) The third lesson is the experience of adding seam allowances in such a way that an industrial stitcher can make the style cost-effectively.

Some have been asking me questions, such as learning ways to get better fitting. This is way down the road, and there are many new things to learn first about a new system. “First things first” and “One step at a time”, are some philosophies to guide you. Remember that the S-Patterns are “standards”, that are used to evolve all styles, shapes, and fit from. It’s the key by which we can help you with every pattern evolved from it. I’ve had a university in Singapore quote and praise the concept in the mid-1990s. A CAD vendor in Germany in 2001 contacted me about using the Stylometrics system. We emailed back and forth, until I realized he wanted me to design a way to put my system on top of his CAD system. I said no way, being a “standard”, he had to design a way to put his CAD system on top of my pattern system. We failed to agree, and I now realize that it’s best to teach it to the young DEs and consumers, and forget old hat CAD vendors & apparel manufacturers.

Please email me and let me know your interest, so that as soon as the URL is ready I will send it to you. Meanwhile, have a Happy & Successful New 2007. Shirley

Generic S-Pattern & Developing a Dress Style Idea

On 12.9.06 I showed you the Generic Empire Sheath, which we are now calling “AB-1”, and is shown again here on the right. “AB” is the title of the basic sheath dress as a combination of A Bodice and B Sheath skirt. I just designed the draped dress, sketched on the left, and it will be developed from the Generic Empire Sheath Dress, or AB-1. The new style has draping that takes the place of darts, something I love to do. By developing it from the generic, the dress will maintain a “standard” of sizing and shaping, which is an imperative for those who are repeating a style for customers. The new style is a “simulated wrap”. That is, the piece diagonally crossing over the front covers the side zipper and is attached after putting the dress on. There are some complexities, but they are in the “construction”, not in the development of the pattern shape. As we are developing the many generic patterns for DEs (Designer/Entrepreneurs), we are also going to develop a small collection for spring/summer that will test these generics, and will be sold to consumers. Not only can DEs buy the generic patterns, but they can also buy the patterns for the styles we develop.

I know I said I would give you more on setting up for beginning instructions on S-Patterns. But, this was all I could get done today. I will continue tomorrow.