Who's your audience? From what I recall from being a fashion design
student at two different colleges, people seem to enter college fashion
design programs for a number of different reasons:
* They want to make clothes for themselves, clothes that are custom fit
and are well made. They want to wear better quality than ready-to-wear
and perhaps save money, plus they enjoy the creativity of making
clothes. Occasionally they have avant-garde or wearable art tastes and
just can't buy what they envision themselves wearing. In my experience,
the vast majority of students merely wanted to make good clothes for
themselves. What the instructor said about, "Pay attention to what the
Paris shows say will be worn next season," or "This is how designs are
evaluated by a ready-to-wear manufacturer," was interesting, but nothing
most students really needed or cared about much. Working in the industry
sounds glamorous to a lot of people who don't really want to do it.
* They really want to enter the ready-to-wear industry. At one college,
the program for this started with stitching, in a factory-like
atmosphere with industrial machines. The students repeatedly stitched
nothing but one thing, for example, practicing attaching patch pockets
to pieces of fabric till they could do it not only perfectly, but very
fast. I dropped out after a week or so, after leaving every class with
an incredible headache and partial deafness for the next hour (because
of the noise of the machines). I did learn the principle that if you
want to get really good, practice techniques intensively outside of
using them to make a garment. As the instructor pointed out, the
techniques and machines used in ready-to-wear are different from those
used in home sewing. It's the same with the garment design process.
Note, the students insisted on making one dress for themselves at the
end of the semester and the instructor let them do it, not because the
same person usually sews the entire garment in the factory but because
the students felt dissatisfied if they did not make at least one entire
garment they could wear.
* They want to run a small business being custom dressmakers. Such
students are likely to be more interested than average in the fine
techniques used for the best bridal and evening wear.
* They want to do theatrical costume design, but the college does not
have a course specifically for that.
I think these goals are all opposed to each other to some extent. If you
really focus a course on factory techniques or on working in a
ready-to-wear business, you are likely to lose the amateur sewers, even
if they are enthused about improving their skills. If you really focus a
course on doing very good home sewing, the people who are determined to
enter the industry will find little meat in it.
Frankly, my sister-in-law was a vice-president for a couple of local
garment companies, and she can't even sew on a button. She's never used
a sewing machine in her life. And she reorganized an entire factory (to
improve efficiency) for one company!
There are many good home-sewing manuals that describe all or at least
most of the techniques a home sewer will ever want to use, except for
in-depth information on the various kinds of fancy handwork. I do not
have them all. However, some people learn visually and some learn
textually. Manuals that are mostly text often frustrate visual learners,
but manuals that are mostly pictures often annoy textual learners. You
need a manual that has a balance of pictures and text.
Fran
Lavolta Press
Books on making historic clothing
www.lavoltapress.com
On 3/10/2011 12:37 PM, Kathryn Pinner wrote:
The powers that be at my community college (where I am a theatrical costume and set
designer) have decided to start a Fashion Design and Merchandizing program (the
push seems to be from the merchandizing/businesss side) and they are expecting me
to teach the history of costume, basic sewing, and textiles. They seem to be
leaning toward using books from Pearson and the the text for costume history they
are looking at is 'History of World Costume and Fashion' by Daniel Delis Hill.
Anyone know this text and have a comment? (I suggested 'Survey of Historic Costume'
by Tortora& Eubanks -- don't know if they will listen to me). Other texts
they are looking at are 'The Sewing Book' by Alison Smith and 'Textiles' by
Kadolph. Any comments?
Kate Pinner
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