Creature of Pattern

Pattern.
When I think of that word, I think of what a creature of habit I am. Patterns of my life I trace each day, in the way I start with coffee, move through shower, lunch, long walk after work, dinner, bed, repeat. Within that pattern is another one- the pattern of how I create. I start with an idea, one simple detail waiting for all the other details to follow. The ideas get sketched, fabric gets draped on a form, pinched and pinned until it becomes- what? A Pattern. The garment pattern is traced on paper, tweaked, re-sized from small to extra-large, and those patterns are used over and over again, much the same way my life pattern flows from coffee to sleep. For me, there's a comfort in predictability. Henry Ford understood this concept and automated the world with the Assembly Line.

I admire the designers who make just one of something. They are inspired by an idea, they create it, and it's never made again. My guess is they never sleep on the same side of the bed or take the same route to work. Sometimes I try working that way, and yes, it is inspiring and a little scary to think that what I made can't be made again. As a businessman, I know that all the time spent on that one garment has to be reflected in the cost, and there's just one chance to say what it's worth. The way I do it, making the garment over and over, the time spent on developing the pattern is spread out over how many we make and sell. The original pattern then becomes a reference point to work from. You want it in another color? Two inches longer? Relax the hips? Can do. You get what you want, I know it's going to work, no guesswork, no extra cost. The beauty of Pattern.

One more example of pattern, then I'm done. I actually call it Print, just so I don't get it confused with the paper patterns, but it's essentially anything other than solid color. Floral, dots, stripes, plaid, you name it. Over the years of making Regalia my strength has been in the rich solid colors of linen I use, and the combinations of colors that happen. I believe that certain combinations can trigger emotions. Just take a look at the expressions on someone's face when you show them red and orange versus blue and green. It's the same with print. We react to the flow of line and color and the ways they are placed together and arranged by the artist. On a small level, it's the way you decide if you'd rather wear paisley or stripes. At the museum, it's your choice of the Cassatt over the Warhol. Many people visiting crop circles reported being overwhelmed emotionally just by gazing on the pattern they see etched into the grass. I showed one of these prints to a couple in my store the other day. The wife said "Oh, that's gorgeous! The husband said "it looks like it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down." It goes to show what different reactions one simple floral print can receive.

This season, for some unexplained reason, I am attracted to pattern. Maybe I'm trying to spice up the palette by mixing pattern with solid, maybe I just can't resist some of the amazing prints I've been seeing in the stores. But here they are, one after the other, rolled on tubes and spread across my cutting table ready to tell me what they want to be. As they become garments hanging on the rack I get excited to see what kind of reaction they draw from you. I expect to hear a lot of reminiscing about how you had a skirt like that as a teen or how your grandmother had curtains like that, since most of the patterns have a retro feel, and in many cases I'm using actual vintage fabrics. Whatever the emotion or memory they trigger, I hope you like them. It's going to be another amazing season here at Regalia. Join us any way you can, in whatever pattern you like.

The Design Process

How does an idea become a rack of clothes?
Follow along- I'm working on my 2010 Spring line right now, and you can see the process first-hand.

All Winter long many ideas pop into my head. Most make it onto paper. Some are ripped out of magazines and catalogs to remind me of a cool detail or interesting color combination. If I find a great piece of fabric, I cut a swatch and pin it to my wall along with all the other ideas, so it ends up looking something like this photo- an odd collage of images, nothing concrete. In the real fashion world, a designer's line for a particular season would begin years in advance, making it necessary for the designer to predict the trends. I'm lucky in that my work happens in the moment, though it would be nice if I had the self-discipline to have started this back in December. The other good thing about my work is that I don't start over each season with all new ideas. My "Line" contains over sixty designs from the last ten years, perfected to work together, or mix and match, allowing the client to build a wardrobe that works with itself. If I can add seven or eight new designs each year that I feel are timeless and classic, then I'm happy.

Last week I panicked a little when so many ideas swirled in my head I couldn't decide which to try first, or which had already been tried. So I channeled my Virgo side, took all the little things I'd been seeing in my head and sketched them quickly onto the backs of old business cards. Some were new items, some were changes I'd been wanting to make to old designs (always perfecting), and a couple were designs that came out of my "3-dresses in 3 days" challenge that weren't quite ready for the racks. Some even had variations- for example, one skirt had four different ways it could go. Then each card was assigned a letter- "Skirt A", "Pants F", and so on. When I pinned them up in a row, I was surprised to see 16 new things to try! Gulp! So I created a chart to document the work done on each design, knowing that each garment will have to go through four stages: Prototype, Pattern, Parade, and Promotion.

Prototype- From a sketch, I make the garment, usually in a size Small. The sketch may not have all the details, those are usually filled in as I make the pattern. (Side note: the pattern might be draped on a dressform with muslin, then transferred to paper, or drafted straight onto paper, then cut and sewn. For more about this process, scroll down to the 3-dress challenge from a couple months ago.) Here you can see a dress that morphed out of Dress #2 from the "3-dress" challenge. The challenge dress is nice, and will please several clients, but I kept looking at it and thinking- "This has one more incarnation before it's ready". You'll have to scroll down to the challenge to see its predecessor.


Pattern- If I like the prototype and feel ready to commit, the next investment of time is to take the Small pattern, make any changes noticed in the prototype, then draft all the other sizes. In most cases, this means I draft four patterns- Small, Medium, Large, and X-Large. If a design is not too fitted, I may take it up to a 2X for Plus-Size. This process of "scaling up" the design is called Grading, and usually takes 3 to 4 hours, depending on the design.

Parade- I just coined this term! I used to call it "1st Run", but now I'm going for alliteration. After a pattern is graded, we have to make one in every size to make sure the proportions translated correctly, and that they really fit the sizes they are marked as. I have 4 dressforms in the studio with measurements that fit my standard size chart. If the garments fit their respective dressform size correctly, I proceed to make another run or two, to have a variety of color choices on the rack. (I will post a picture of all four sizes when that's accomplished.)

Promotion- Once a new design is on the rack, I have to let people know about it. And what a wonderful world of options is out there for me now as opposed to when I started this 10 years ago! Here I sit blogging, hoping someone has found this interesting enough to check out my website or join my email list, or follow me on Facebook, and so on... This year I have chosen to take my line out to four larger cities in my vicinity- Dallas, St Louis, Little Rock and Kansas City. Each show is booked 3 weeks apart, which gives us very little time to re-load the racks and fill custom orders in between, much less what we do through the showroom in Eureka Springs! The Postcard you see here is for the first show- in St Louis on April 17, at the home of Mary Ann Kroeck and Laura Cohen at 4128 W. Pine Blvd, 12-4pm. Join us if you can! (Now THAT's promotion!)
The final bit of promotion is a slow process- updating my website to include all the new garments. They have to be photographed and described with text that my web designer can upload as I feed it to her. And with all the other jobs I do at this time, she waits patiently.

Thanks for reading this post- I hope you found it interesting. I'll try to add some additional postings as new items hit the racks or other things happen that I think you might like.