Kat's Adventures: New York City Tour of Garment Industry (Day 3)

Today was the starting moment where this elective started to feel like a class. Our appointments to meet and talk to those working in the industry was about to begin. Our first stop, bright and early in the morning, was the Trim Lab; a company that specializes in providing zippers, trims, hooks, D-rings, bra cups, and other small findings to help develop and create a collection. They provide their services for anyone including designers fresh out of schooling to high end brands such as Ralf Lauren and others. They also provide the option to create special molds of your brand name to uniquely create special supplies just for your brand. An example of this customization would be zipper pulls with your recognizable brand name or symbol.

Their most distinctive orders were the John Glass cord lock zippers and DBF and their golden zipper pulls. This company taught us how important it is as designers to pay attention to the little details in your collection. To make sure you have all the right notions and to make sure your budget on those supplies isn’t too high or too low. One of the biggest mistakes designers make with their collections is that they are too broad about what notions to use when developing their garments. These guys were very kind and welcomed us to come back any time we needed them in our careers.

The next appointment we attended was with M&S Schamlberg; a 99 year old company that creates beautiful silk flowers. Their clientele varies from high end designers (such as Coco Channel), theater and operas around the world, the Disney Company, and even offer children’s birthday parties for locals. With multiple orders coming in every day 24/7 this company produces over hundreds of flowers per day to keep up with the high demand. Schamlberg utilizes many unconventional materials to make their flowers such as velvets, faux and genuine leathers, pleather and PVC, and rubber. We learned how each flower was made from cutting out the shapes with their special cutting tools to steaming the pedals into the 3D shape with heated tools to layering 4 to 10 pedals on a long wire and gluing each piece together by hand. They were highly specialized in manipulating their materials in such an interesting way it was extremely incredible to me. And their final products were just stunning. One of their distinctive orders they filled was producing the flowers for Rapunzel in the movie Tangled.

At the end of the tour they were so kind to allow us to shop their back storage space to buy their pretty flowers and gave us a free sample to take home. They were a very kind company with passionate employees and I hope they stay in business for another 99+ years.

And now it was lunchtime. We had a very short hour to eat and our tour guide took us to a small area of town that didn’t have a huge variety of lunch choices. But Tia and I made the easy choice to go to a noodle bar where I had a huge helping of a chicken noodle bowl. After our lunch we walked around a local farmers market and shopped for some sweets.

Our next appointment was going to be Nanette Lepore, but there was a last minute change where they were not available for a tour so instead we met up with RMC a sweater designer brand. RMC provides high quality and distinctive product to their clients including their biggest customer Anthropology. Their team of 3 freelance designers, sales people, technical designers, and product development team work vigorously 4 seasons ahead of the game to produce their collections. RMC works with the companies to discuss what trends, styles, and looks they need for their stores by creating story books and inspiration packets that thoroughly describe the customer, target market, prints, colors, materials, fabrics, textiles, and illustrations of designs they want to carry in stores. We had a very unique chance to talk to an actual New York designer who understood best the struggle of being a student designer looking for their career in fashion. When asked the head product developer Marline and one of the freelance designers what they look for in a designers the response was to be technical, truly understand garments and how to make them, what will work in the market and how to adjust to small changes, and to be visual. You also should be skilled in Illustrator and Photoshop. When asked the freelance designer what was her experience in finding a job after school she responded with this: “when you start out and find a job, you don’t designing clothing; you start small as an assistant. You have to work your way up to fashion design.” The advice they gave us as students looking for jobs and our careers is to find your interests. Find a company that makes and manufactures what you are into. Find a goal and reach for it. Be open minded, flexible, enthusiastic and be willing to do anything. Talking to these professions was truly insightful for me. It made me feel somewhat secure in the choices I’ve made in my career.

Our last appointment for the day was with Earnshaw a children’s wear magazine publisher covering the latest children’s wear trends. They also have a separate magazine covering women’s fashion and footwear. The person we were able to ask our questions to was Trevett McCandliss the magazine’s art director who graduated from SVA in New York with a journalism degree and had a passion for art and visual design. He was the director of the creative themes and visuals of the photoshoots and the magazine layouts. I was curious about how to spot children’s wear trends (its not like babies and children have the buying power like adults do). So when I asked him this he told me that him and his associates will travel to national and international trade shows and walk the floor and look around to see what’s going to be in season. When they see particular garments and displays they get inspired, get creative, and plan out photoshoots for their next issue. The creative team highly enjoys creating a story line with each photoshoot with specific esthetics at play. I was also curious to know how they interact with each designer in their photoshoots. They responded by explaining how their fashion editor/stylist keeps a list of designers and brands that they have worked with previously. And by going to the tradeshows they talk to those brands and make connections and plans to work with them on future shoots. The collaborating process is a bit of a dance. You sometimes have to reach out to people (or stalk) and make your own connections. Depending on the trends/goals that Earnshaw has to achieve they will pick and choose who to work with. Trevett tells us how he loves to work with the kids and how easy it is to work I with them at photo shoots. They are playful and easy to entertain once you give them snacks. Listing to what Trevett had to say about his job made me think about trying what he did for a change. Directing photo shoots, being a creative director of something. It sounded really interesting.

For dinner that night we had Contemporary American (whatever that meant). The restaurant was very high class looking and resembled Italian restaurants, in my opinion. The food was extremely expensive. I ordered a simple chicken breast salad. When I order a salad I am very simple: no vinaigrette of any kind and no vegies I didn’t like eating. And when I order chicken I like to drown it in honey mustard. So when I asked them to remove at least 3 different ingredients and add honey mustard as my salad dressing they wouldn’t allow the custom dressing and wanted to charge me for altering the meal any further. It was stupid. And when I got my salad, the chicken looked too pink. I sent it back and it took forever to come back to the table. I was not satisfied with the dinner; completely overrated. Although, their desert was to die for! I had a chocolate mousse pudding.

As for my nightly activities me and some people went to a huka bar. It was very hard to find. We walked up to a door that looked like an entrance to a sex dungeon with no signs. We walked around the block trying to rap our heads around where this place could be. It turned out it was within a back room of a restaurant. The huka was very expensive at $35 a huka. We ordered two flavors to split between the 5 of us (or 4 cause one didn’t want to smoke). The flavors were Double Apple and Safari Mellon Dew. They were both SO GOOD it was worth the price. By 11:30 or 12 I went to bed and waited for the next day to begin.