[malaika78]

wow, the stuff you gals have come up with is amazing! I love that sketch moonstar of the dress you did, it looks awesome.

the purple is really cute as wel!! I have so many of mom's old saris lying around, thats a great way to use them!

[Sha_]

Originally Posted by MoonStar

1-Those fabrics look slippery, must have been tricky to sew, and it looks so neat! Nice job!


2-As for patterns, do you get Vogue/McCall/Simplicity/Butterick patterns there? They have modern designs, but yeah it's never an exact fit.

3-And yeah it's a lot of work, making the pattern is the hard part for me, sewing it is easy because most of the main work is done by then and it's just connecting the pieces.
4-That's good that you're taking a class though.

1-No they werent too slippery, it was ok, n thanks for the compliments .

2-We have one sewing matierials shop in town and they have two pattern books. im sure its one or two of those names. But it could be that they just have a book and/ patterns from yonks ago. i just looked at simplicity online. i liked a few things, but i still felt that styles were *slightly* older agewise (as in i dont see a lot of stuff that i could see sold at shops where i shop like H&M, new look etc), but there were some i thought were okay or adaptable at least. But yeah i guess i should look around online more, i might find something..thanks for the names

3- sewing could also be the hard bit at times, if you make a mistake, you have to spend half your time unpicking it! but in a way, thats what i like about sewing, i learn from my mistakes everytime because i dont want to be sat there unpicking for hours!

4- i went to enroll in class today. Its over two years which i didnt realise untill today coz it wasnt explained clearly anywhere before, so it'll be running through my third year of uni..so i dont know if i'll be able to keep it up all that time. But to be honest i dont mind [that much] if im unable to finish, coz my main rason for doing the course it to get my skills up to a better standard. course fees are £156 which isnt bad, for 70 3hr sessions. the tutor was really nice and friendly and funny. the fashion department is gross though. it looks like a factory/ prison . theres dark green dusty small corridors, and a room for cutting, for machines, one with mannequins etc . But alhamdulillah im glad i got in and am doing this now. i'll see how it goes..

[Sha_]

Originally Posted by malaika78

the purple is really cute as wel!! I have so many of mom's old saris lying around, thats a great way to use them!

yep its a great way to make a totally free bag. and before anyone (else) compliments 'my' awesome idea.. it wasnt my idea . well i saw some sari bag in a desi magazine, but it was shaped a bit differently. the layers and the beading and lining was my idea though .

[Sha_]

Vogue/McCall/Simplicity/Butterick

I’ve looked at all of the above now and I am a little disappointed with the (lack of) upto-datedness of them. They all have nice evening dresses though, but for normal daywear stuff I’d have to say the better ones [the most updated] were probably McCall and Simplicity. [I noticed that a lot of the patterns on all the sites have the ‘Misses’ title, does that mean their made by the one company, distributed through different suppliers? ]

But the reason as I said is age target market for styles- some are okay but there’s not a huge amount of those…and the youngest styles seem kind of early20ish+
And the other thing with a lot of them, is the fit of the style, because it *appears* to be targeted at a certain age range, the fit isn’t right either.

It’s like at Dorothy Perkins the age range for clothing seems to be [roughly] 25-30+ though their styles are often quite similar to that found in younger age range shops [but somewhat toned down] and quite fashionable *but* the fit is different. E.g.-the trousers there never fit me properly because the thighs are made wider which makes them sag and not drape properly and the whole thing looks funny…[but! I found a great pair of jeans there because these days there’s slimfit everywhere and none of the jeans at the shops I normally shop at fit me!]

For example one time I got a dress pattern (I think from mcCalls) kind of like this [ok i cudnt find the exact pattern so i drew the sleeve on this one to demonstrate ]:

For my GCSE Textiles project (year 10-11) I wanted to use it to make a trouser suit (the kameez part) and this was the closest thing I found that was the right length with the right size sleeve. I thought I’d just take the bottom half out a bit so it widens instead of narrows, and put in two side splits, sew up the back split and create my own neckline. But then once I made it and tried it I found the shoulders were kind of square-ish and stuck out a bit making the top half look kind of big and poofy whereas it was supposed to lie softly and flat and not look sharpish. I thought I could adjust it enough to make it look okay but the whole shape of it didnt seem right for my target market. It only seems like a small thing (so I never really thought anything of it before I started making) but it kind of makes all the difference to the look. I realised its like this because the original pattern is meant to look like that coz that’s how the styles just meant to be. It might be to do with the size/shape/angle-ing of the armhole or the distance between the shoulders I don't know :s. But different age bodies have different types of fit that suit/make a garment look like its made for a certain age range (generally speaking) so i think there needs to be more up to date stuff aimed at 15-24’s-ish type age in terms of fashion and fit...

[MoonStar]

I haven't seen many of her collections but she and her husband seem so cool. I like his Nordstrom ads, they stand out among the photographed ads.



Here All Along, a Fashion Designer Arrives
By ROBIN FINN
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/07/nyregion/07lives.html

THERE are three naked mannequins, anatomically impressive and each tinted a different skin tone, lounging in the hall outside the fashion designer Isabel Toledo’s Midtown studio. It is a spare work space where water bottles hang above ironing boards, connected to the steam irons by plastic tubing reminiscent of hospital IV drips, and unassembled dresses, a sleeve here, a pocket there, lie flat on the boards like patients.

“Don’t look! Don’t look!” the artist Ruben Toledo, Ms. Toledo’s animated, pencil-thin husband-helpmate-muse, shouts in mock embarrassment as he leads the way upstairs, past the mannequins, beyond his own studio to their penthouse loft. Besides sketching her fashion lines, he is busy with a Nordstrom ad campaign.

The spidery Ms. Toledo, 47 and darkly, angularly beautiful, waits in the vestibule in a fluttery broomstick silk shirtwaist dress and four-inch-high espadrilles, both of her own design. Except for Levi’s, Ms. Toledo, who began making her own clothes after a baby sitter taught her to sew when she was 8, dresses in Isabel Toledo; so does her husband, whom she met in high school and married in 1984. They are childless, he confesses, at his request: “I’m selfish; I want all her attention.”

Like them, their loft is idiosyncratic and demonstrative and vaguely Latino (both escaped Castro’s Cuba for West New York, N.J., as children) in a lush, jungle-ish way. Ms. Toledo grows specimen cactuses and evergreens that brush the glass ceiling of the living room, and her fashion vision is as pristine as her thumb is green, hence the decision this year by the $5 billion conglomerate Jones Apparel to hire her to reanimate its venerable but floundering Anne Klein brand.

Ms. Toledo’s spring show, which featured 43 sportily sophisticated Anne Klein outfits and was her first runway show in a decade and Anne Klein’s first since 2004, drew raves, even tears, from the fashion police. Her fall show for Fashion Week is scheduled for Wednesday in the Promenade Tent at Bryant Park. Is she nerve-racked about putting forth her sophomore collection for Klein? Nah.

She seems to take it in stride that she is slowly achieving star status in a business preoccupied with novelty, newcomers and celebrities. “I’m so old that now I’m new. The beauty of being able to start at the very bottom is that you’re always on the way up,” she said, settling into a chair at the banquet-size dining table.

Ms. Toledo, a low-maintenance type whose lengthy black locks — her husband cuts her hair and she trims his — are speckled with gray, is clearly comfortable in her own skin, and in the home she decorated. Nothing froufrou.

HER favorite cactus, a 10-footer she grew from a seedling her mother gave her, is decorated like a desert-dwelling Christmas tree with tiny ornaments; names of deceased loved ones are carved into its body — she uses a pin and, she says, the cactus “bleeds in white.” The cactus, which Ms. Toledo refers to as “she,” is recovering from a fall taken when Woody Allen shot scenes for a film here a few years ago and, against her instructions, redirected its location. “So many of her arms broke off,” she laments. The broken branches, replanted by Ms. Toledo, yielded the hardy four-footer that anchors the dining area.

Replications of Ms. Toledo’s preferred form of exercise and meditation since her childhood in Camajuani, plastic hula hoops in orange, pink and blue dangle from the living area’s ceiling. Mr. Toledo’s paintings enliven the walls. The model for the brooding faces and sylph-like figures in bold black and white? Always his wife. “I’m the cheapest model he could find,” she jokes.

Ms. Toledo studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of Design but didn’t picture herself designing clothes until serving a five-year apprenticeship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute; her boss was the inimitable Diana Vreeland.

An indie-type designer (she has never had a backer) of her self-named line now priced from $800 to $10,000 (for a very special lace coat), she stitched her first collection in 1985 after Mr. Toledo, a struggling artist and a shrewd advocate of his wife’s talents, swiped a few dresses from her closet and sold the styles to Henri Bendel and Patricia Field. “I got chained to the sewing machine,” she recalls. For revenge, she taught him to iron.

Previous entreaties from other fashion houses intrigued by her fashion acumen “never felt right,” she says, but when Anne Klein came calling last February, her collaborative instincts kicked in. Actually, it took two phone calls to convince her the company was serious about hiring her as its creative director and entrusting its namesake — Ms. Klein died in 1974 — and most upscale line to her. They provided no guidelines or strictures.

“I’m there to give them an identity, give them a DNA, and to take the Anne Klein DNA to the next level,” she said, tapping her unpainted fingernails on the table. “The Anne Klein woman today would be me,” she added, “sensible but not one-sided. I don’t do costumes. I make real clothes for real women.” Funny; that was Ms. Klein’s claim, too.

Ms. Toledo was given access to the Klein archives, pored over her sketchbooks, and came away unsurprised but inspired. “You could see the logic in her design; she sketched in squares, like chess, and as she went along you can see the birth of sportswear à l’Américaine, a total wardrobe. She had a vision, and it wasn’t fashion-driven, it was woman-friendly.”

So is hers.

[Purple_alien]

how long does it typically take to make a simple dress? I have an idea about the dress I want to wear on Eid, but can't find it in any stores. I think I want to either make it myself, or at least have someone else make it for me. Is that a good idea?

[MoonStar]

Originally Posted by Purple_alien

how long does it typically take to make a simple dress? I have an idea about the dress I want to wear on Eid, but can't find it in any stores. I think I want to either make it myself, or at least have someone else make it for me. Is that a good idea?

If you know how to sew and get a readymade pattern and it's a simple dress, it should take about an hour to iron the pattern pieces and pin the pattern on the fabric and cut the pieces out, and then sewing it could take a few hours depending how many pieces there are and how complicated it is. It could be done in a day, max 3 days I'd think if you do a little at a time.

It's a good idea to let someone else do it unless they charge so much that it'd be cheaper to buy one.

[MoonStar]

The Knockoff Won’t Be Knocked Off
By ERIC WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/we.../09wilson.html

THE drawstring anorak that Faran Krentcil considered buying one recent Friday at the Forever 21 store in Union Square was just like a signature look of the designer Stella McCartney. Ms. Krentcil, 26, the editor of a blog about fashion and style, was interested, particularly because the price of the knockoff — $35 — had several fewer digits.

She had sympathy for Ms. McCartney. She really did. “At the same time,” said Ms. Krentcil, who hunts for copies of designer looks at trendy stores to show on her Web site, Fashionista.com, “it is very understandable from a shopper’s perspective that this is happening. There is an anger that is seething in a lot of girls about the fact that they are shown image after image of these great clothes, but even the cheapest steals cost $180.”

In the struggle for control of fashion between those angry customers and the designers, the shoppers are winning. So much so that the Council of Fashion Designers of America has argued before Congress that high-end designers need legislation to protect them from knockoffs, which are showing up in stores faster and more frequently.

Yet critics — including some intellectual-property scholars and more mainstream clothing manufacturers — dismiss the notion that fashion needs protection. Copying, they say, is the normal, time-tested business model of the industry, in which the very idea of what becomes fashionable relies on the mass dissemination of trends.

And even if a law were warranted to protect the ideas and bank accounts of the designers, how would it work, anyway?

Like the Internet, which has threatened traditional media businesses by making information accessible to anyone, knockoff clothing is too entrenched in the culture to be controlled, they say. Demand is too great and defining what constitutes a knockoff too complicated. Any lawsuits filed could amount to an expensive game of Whack-a-Mole that never makes a dent in the production of knockoffs.

Enforcement is virtually impossible. In their testimony before Congress, these critics have pointed out the various and confusing ways that designs are mass produced: as counterfeits (already illegal, but thriving nonetheless), knockoffs (copied designs sold under another label) and as trends that are in the public domain (skinny jeans, trapeze tops or bubble skirts that turn up everywhere at once).

There is also the larger question of whether anything so basic as the design of a sleeve or a neckline can be claimed as original. The designers themselves, after all, are often re-appropriating styles from earlier eras and, in the pursuit of the hot trends each season, copying one another.

Further blurring the boundaries of what defines high fashion and low are the so-called cheap chic collections being sold by the marquee designers themselves, like Isaac Mizrahi at Target; Karl Lagerfeld at H&M; and, beginning today, Vera Wang at Kohl’s.

With media coverage of fashion week so broad and instantaneous, and with films and television programs about the industry so popular, consumers have, in turn, been conditioned to seek out the latest styles. They expect more for less.

And they are getting it. Shoppers have gained more access to inexpensive approximations of American runway fashion today than at any time since the postwar boom of apparel manufacturing on Seventh Avenue in the 1950s.

Back then, line-for-line copies of the Parisian couture collections were sold at department stores like Ohrbach’s and Alexander’s, and paraded at runway shows before audiences that included Jackie Kennedy, Babe Paley and Judy Peabody.

The difference was, such copies were made legally: American designers paid French designers handsomely to reproduce their works.

Today, designs are being photographed on the runway and mass produced in factories around the world, without payment to designers. The effect is that designers are no longer in control of their ideas once images escape the tents of Bryant Park.

Backstage at Nicole Miller’s spring collection show on Wednesday night, the designer was raving over the shoes worn by models arriving in their street clothes, guessing they were the latest from Yves Saint Laurent. She was crestfallen to learn they were from Nine West, a division of the American giant Jones Apparel Group.

“It makes the trends end too fast,” Ms. Miller said. “There’s so much copying that people throw away their clothes because they don’t have any value anymore. It ruins the whole thing.”

Yet Christopher Sprigman, an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, argues that the copying and quick availability of runway fashions actually encourages shoppers to buy more clothes. It is that business model, he says, that has made American apparel a $181 billion industry.

The designers today say the copying is hurting them, yet can produce only anecdotal evidence. As for consumers, even the designers acknowledge that it no longer seems to matter to their customers whether they are wearing a prim skirt from Miuccia Prada (about $1,000) or a similar one from Forever 21 (about $30), as long as they are in fashion.

“You have this sense of resentment toward designers for charging so much for their clothes, and yet this desperation, this deep-rooted passion, for owning your own style,” said Ms. Krentcil, who ultimately decided against buying the gray anorak. “You understand why so many girls feel justified in buying a dress from Forever 21. You’re going to buy the cheapest thing that makes you look good.”

[Sha_]

Missed my first proper fashion class coz of ISoc busyness+ forgetfulness .

[MoonStar]

I just dropped my patternmaking class. The one where we learn to make pants and kimono sleeves. I have too many other things going on, but I kept the textbook and learned how to start the sloper, so maybe I can teach myself later.

[Songbird]

Originally Posted by MoonStar

yay I'm glad to see other people aside from me posting in this thread.

I rarely post - I tend to read more, but I must say I like this thread.

MashaAllah such talented sisters. We really need this in our communities because some of us like to pride ourselves on looking elegant.

Keep up the good work and may Allah swt make you a success in your chosen field.

[ABCDGIRL]

I'm beginning to learn. Last week I bought some muslin cloth to practice on along with navy blue with purple flowers cotton cloth as the real thing. Im working on sewing my 3 year old niece a dress with puff sleeves and a light purple ribbon and bow at the waist and a small matching purse to go along with it

To start I made this gay doll size shirt made out of paper towels which would probably fit a doll with fat arms

[talemul_haq]

Originally Posted by Sha_

This is the sari bangle bag i made for my AS Level technology project (yr12). yeah i was feeling lazy and wanted to make something easy peasy and i thought it was gona be just 2 peices of fabric but it wasnt quite as simple as that, but fairly straightforward nonetheless.

I used a purple see through organza sari (to which i added beads), under it i layered (the end of) a navy polyester sari with yellowgold embroidery. the lining was the the main body of the sari which was plain navy.
In hindsight i think i should have used the purple sari on the top of the lining (or maybe just something else soft and plain lilac(?) so it would be more inconspicuous and professional looking.
I flipped the top edges through the bangles and hand stitched them down to create the handles, being careful i didnt stitch through the purple layer, so it wouldnt show on the front.
Once again though, i realised afterwards, it would have been good idea to have sewn in the bangles within the front layers and the lining, to give a more professional finish.
I also wanted more Indian-y bangles but there arent any desi shops near where i live so i couldnt find any in time.

But i'm really pleased with how it came out though (alhamdulillah), because it was a kind of rushed project. (and my teachers totally sucked )

that's soo cute, i totally love it. I made a purse as well, it's all round. sorry, no photos b/c i'ts packed away in some box and in storage
anyways to remove blood stians? i stabbed myself a few time and bled on the ribbon and cloth.
Seriouly, my blood went into it.

anyways, I was thinking of making a thread titled " tutorails"...for clothing, purses, etc. ( just about anything really)...but i saw this, so i'm unsure.
This is about fashion design, but not tutorails and it would be easy to just find a tutorial thread w/all the patterns etc. incluced in one thread..what do you think? Moonstar, should i make a new thread just for that? ( it wont get merged).