This is the first post for a series I will be doing about people working in various creative and research based professions. I will be exploring the different work processes, routines and tools that are used across various fields. Along the way we’ll discover relationships between their work processes and tools and the ones we use as User Experience professionals and hopefully gain ideas and inspiration for methods to try out that we hadn’t yet considered.
Fashion designer, Bridget Smanten of Fridget Apparel
Can you explain what you do?
I manufacture women’s ready to wear from start to finish, it’s a one man operation. I’m focused on the 27 - 40 year old young professional woman.
Do you plan for a season?
No, I like to just make things when I want them. My customer gets things when I want things, so if I want a new party dress, there’s a party dress available to my customers. It works out really well for my customers, they like it.
So essentially you’re designing for yourself?
Yes, exactly. And then I mass produce it for my customers.
Can you walk me though your design process?
My intern and I were trying to come up with a way that we could use up all of my scraps of knits that I have been sitting on for five years. I had about five bins worth, and we were working on shirt designs.
We started by sketching, which is where a project always starts. The sketch is never what the finished result will be obviously, it’s just the idea for when we start drafting. Normally I don’t sketch too much and I just go into pattern form because the pattern will determine what it’s going to look like anyways.
From the sketch I go into drafting the pattern. The first piece I make for a design is always an extra small because I use myself as a fit model, which won’t work once I have babies and my body is weird but right now it works awesome.
After we make the pattern we sew a shirt from it and then figure out what adjustments need to be made, make those and sew the new pattern. We usually go through that process six times before it’s finalized.
After it’s finalized we then grade the sizes (*grading is the scaling of a pattern to a different size by incrementing important points of the pattern using an algorithm in the clothing industry). If you see all these fractions here (see below, top image), it shows how much things move out when the size goes up. My large customers love it because everything fits them the same way it fits an extra small girl. I take way too long with the grading of the pattern which is my favourite thing to do even though it’s the least rewarding because no one knows how much work it is, but I love it.
For designs where I’m also screen printing what I would do is stack cut and then I have a pile of shirts and dresses and silkscreen all of them before sewing.
Then we stack up everything in piles by sizes and sew everything at once.
The last thing I do is sew in the tags because I’m superstitious. It has to be the last thing to finish the garment, like how for tattoos you don’t colour in the eyes of the dragon until the whole tattoo is done. It’s the final thing.
What kind of research do you do before you start a project?
I don’t think I do research as much as I’m learning from one garment to the next. All fabrics are different, drafting things is different, even though everything is knits I do a lot of wovens that maybe I don’t grade and give to the public but I always try and keep myself up to speed with what’s going on in the sewing world.
Do you look at trend forecasting or anything like that?
No, I just find that it kind of blurs my mind, plus I don’t want the market to be over saturated with the same necklines and the same colours so i don’t look at any of that. I have no idea what other designers are doing, I'm just in my own world.
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
Rock and roll. Music runs my life. I wish I cared as much about fashion and designers as I do about rock and roll.
What do you like to have around while working?
Music, cake.. hmm, just this studio. it has everything I need.
Do you make image boards or anything?
I sew all my own stuff so there’s no time. If someone else was manufacturing my stuff then I’d have more time to do sketches and more elaborate things but right now I’m just keeping it simple and just 100% just me.
Do you want to eventually get your stuff manufactured somewhere?
Yeah, I’m just not ready emotionally to have someone else do it, because every time someone else does an item there are mistakes and it’s not exactly the way I intended and until I’m comfortable with someone else taking on my sewing I’m not ready for it. Right now I love that a customer will try on something in front of me and I’ll know there aren’t going to be any problems with it because I did it from start to finish.
How do you deal with creative blocks?
I don’t think I have creative blocks as much as I just get frustrated in general. The best thing I can do when that happens is go buy new fabric, it always saves the day. I think anyone would be inspired by new fabric.
What other kinds of issues come up while you’re working?
I think I try to convince myself there are no problems because if something breaks or is getting frustrating I’ll just to a different project and then come back so I usually avoid problems so that it feels like I don’t have any. I’ll just put the frustrating project to the side and convince myself that something else has a higher priority instead of thinking that project 1 had a problem. I trick myself into thinking that everything is ok.
Can you show me what a typical day looks like for you?
Posted in Opinions on February 11, 2010
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