The Uniform Project LBD for sale!

After what seems like an immeasurable wait for some, the little black dress that Sheena has been wearing for nearly a whole year via The Uniform Project is now finally for sale!  Not the actual dress she’s been wearing, we made 365 limited edition dresses right here in New York City, and they’re selling out fast, so if you haven’t already, get yours now!

Above is a pic of yours truly wearing the dress with floral tights from ebay, gold Diesel Style Lab boots (so old the company no longer exists), a hand knit Marjan Pejowski sweater from Kokon To Zai in London, and my favourite knit chain scarf from etsy-lebrity Yokoo.

Making a dress… part 3

I picked up the almost finished samples of the dress today.  Michelle from my sample room did a great job with the finishing.  Basically I brought her the original dirty, pinned, tacked, unlined sample that barely made it through a runway show, a music video and a selling season.  Not only did Michelle perfect the fit and the trim details way better than my limited sewing skills could have allowed, she also lined the dress so there’s no risk of seeing your bright orange laundry-day panties through it now!

All that’s left to do is make the corded necklace that finishes off this sample and they’ll be ready for their debut at International Playground this weekend!

Making a dress… part 2

I have been very spoiled doing production overseas all these years.  As a designer, when I sent a design to my factories in India or China, there was always someone there coordinating the fabric, trims, pattern, and sample making for each style.  Doing production in New York is very different, all those details have to be taken care of by me.

When I ordered zippers for this dress I mistakenly ordered 12″ long zippers instead of 14″, so I had to reorder the zippers.  This means there will be a new batch of brass / cream zipper accessories available at the International Playground shop very soon!  I made sure to order YKK zippers because of their environmental policies, but there was still unnecessary waste due to my error.

I already appreciated all the work my factories overseas did for me, but as I slowly take on all their responsibilities myself, I’m developing an increasing respect for all the work they did.

Tomorrow I’ll show you step by step how I made the necklace part of this dress.

Meet your mentor… me!

I recently joined the Awamaki Lab project to help mentor design students and pair them with sustainable and traditional production methods in Peru.  Below is the outline of the project, which I spoke about during my lecture at FIT last week.

Awamaki Lab explores the intersection of sustainability, ethical sourcing and product innovation through a fashion mentorship program that fosters cross-cultural partnership between design students and Awamaki’s indigenous weavers collective.

Recognizing the next generation of design talents, Awamaki Lab offers selected participants an unparalleled opportunity to develop a capsule collection in the serene environment of Ollantaytambo, Peru. Designers incorporate traditional Andean textiles into a series of unique, one-off garments, sourcing these textiles directly from Awamaki and its association of 36 Quechua women weavers. Over the course of four months, designers cultivate their unique vision and showcase their aesthetic versatility by combining vibrant, hand-spun weavings with their own contemporary patterns and silhouettes.

Bridging the material-culture gap, Awamaki introduces designers to the prominent iconography and art history of the Sacred Valley, with trips to museums, artisan markets, and indigenous weaving communities. Designers can use these visits as a point of reference for their work, or further their education by taking hands-on courses to learn local craft techniques, such as the art of natural dyeing. Designers have complete creative freedom to incorporate these elements into their collections, as they see fit. Designers receive mentorship from leaders in the socially responsible design sector to gain insight into fashion-market trends, volley design ideas, and finalize collection details. Designers also work with a fashion photographer – whom they pre-select from a dossier of portfolios- to develop a lookbook during the last month of Lab, which will be publicized through Awamaki’s online networks.

Through an iterative process, designers hone their artistic skills and lend a modern perspective to Awamaki’s range of products. This will improve the organization’s marketability and help to stimulate economic growth in the isolated, rural communities where Awamaki works.

Download the Awamaki Lab information brochure here.

Making a dress

I thought it might be interesting to document the making of a single piece from the Spring collection, so for the next week or so I’m going to write about the steps required to get a dress made.

The piece above (made using 2 equal squares and some organic cotton cord as trim) was part of the Spring 10 runway collection that I showed last September.  I sold 8 pieces of this style, an incredibly small quantity that ordinarily wouldn’t get produced by most companies.  But if 8 women want to wear this dress, then I’m thrilled to make it for them.  I sewed the sample in my studio myself for fashion week, but because my sewing machine is now nearly dead and my sewing skills are not as good as they could be, I decided to have it produced in a sample room in NY.

Fabric:

This dress is made from Ahimsa silk, which is 100% silk that has been produced without killing the silk worms that make it.  The fabric for the sample was a leftover piece that was given to me by Eviana of Bodkin. Because most fabric producers require a minimum order quantity that far exceeds what I would need for 8 pieces, I was a little concerned about getting fabric for my orders.  Then my friend Bahar Shahpar saw the sample of the dress and told me she had some leftover yardage of the same fabric from a previous collection (the truth is, despite the fact that there are a lot of great sustainable fabrics out there, we all seem to gravitate to the same ones each season!).  So with the original sample and 16 yards bought from Bahar’s leftover stock in hand, I showed up at my sample room in New York’s garment district with my 8-pc order.

More about trims tomorrow…