I know I promised a while ago to start posting my thoughts on starting on your own clothing line, as a part of my Becoming a Designer series and as much as I’ve meant to, I kept getting stuck on what to talk about first.
So I decided to start with the most important thing in any career. Learning.
All too often I receive incredibly sweet emails from budding designers, who have been sketching a lot of and have lots of ideas – but can’t sew. I always tell them the same thing – learn to sew. Being able to draw and having ideas are both incredibly important, but unfortunately unless you can implement them into a garment – you really can’t call yourself a designer.
I’m not going to comment on whether you should or shouldn’t get a degree in Fashion Design, because I don’t have one, and for independent designers I believe that’s a personal decision, and will largely depend on what your specific plans are. So I’m only going to talk about what I think with respect to people who want to do what I’ve done. Obviously if you want to pursue a design position with an established brand, you will absolutely need a degree – and I really can’t talk with an authority on that process. But I will say this, whether you decide to study at University or teach yourself, make sure you do it seriously and thoroughly.
I think since fashion design is classed as a creative field people think they can skip the fundamentals. But that’s not the case.
I find it really frustrating when I come across home sewers who declare themselves to be “self taught”, and yet have no understanding of standard techniques. What they really mean is “I figured it out on my own”. Teaching yourself is a completely different thing to making up your own methods. And in all honesty, I have no patience for people who have made up their own methods, use sewing terms incorrectly, and then act as if they know everything. No-one knows everything about sewing, and if you want to teach yourself, you need to do it seriously. You need to study.
I taught myself to sew, and I taught myself to draft patterns. But I am very confident in my knowledge, as I did it all from books – I learnt from experts. I acted as if I was studying. If you asked my husband, he would tell you how many nights I spent practicing my pattern drafting. How many practice swatches I made of various techniques. How many times I did boring, tedious exercises to make sure my technique was correct. How much time I spend still doing that – because I still don’t know everything (even though I would love to!). You cannot escape the fundamentals, and I would argue that you absolutely 100% cannot be successful unless you have a good understand of all the necessary techniques. You must know how to draft your own patterns, you must know how to sew at a very high level.
The reasons are simple.
- You cannot use commercial sewing patterns to sell clothing (even if you think you’re altering them a lot)- it’s illegal. So you need to be able to make your own. You need to be able to alter them, you need to be able to fix them if they’re wrong. You need to understand why they’re wrong, and you need to be able to discern when they are wrong.
- You will more than likely start out sewing your own designs, and if you don’t sew well, you will sew slowly and it will be of poor quality. And no-one wants to buy something that looks like it was home sewn.
- When you finally move on to using a sewing contractor, you need to be able to talk to them as a peer. To know what you’re talking about. You need to be able to provide patterns, explain them – and know enough to identify when there are mistakes in the samples.
- Your level of knowledge will dictate what you make – there’s nothing more tragic than having to scrap a design because you simply cannot figure out how to implement it. I know, it’s happened to me.
I’m not trying to sound mean, and I honestly don’t know everything – but I do think that whatever you pursue in life, you need to do it properly in order to succeed, and design is no exception.
So there it is, if you’re wondering what the very first thing is that you should do if you want to start a clothing line…
{Next week I’ll be sharing a list of the books I recommend reading if you want to teach yourself to sew}
