The Cutting Class

Disciplined Monochrome at Gareth Pugh

Gareth Pugh, SS12.

The Spring-Summer 2012 collection by Gareth Pugh built in an interesting way, especially through the disciplined black and white pieces. While there are basic forms and silhouettes that are being continually remoulded by Pugh season after season, the treatment of the shapes is always very different on a structural level. So much of what creates the interest as the collection unfolds is in the comparisons - Pugh will give you both extremes of the one idea, so you can compare the effect of the rich black and the stark white, or watch as the most rigid structure is turned into flowing self stripe chiffon.

In this particular collection the pieces came out as opposites of each other at times, identical pieces presented in both black and white, with the two opposite tones merging towards the end of the collection into stripes and grid patterns. The use of black and white striped fabric seemed newer in this context - more representative of the positive and negative spaces in the cage structures, rather than just a simple stripe. By comparing the black and white versions side by side it is interesting to see what your eye is drawn to first in each version, how it effects the shape of the body and what becomes more or less flattering in each of these extremes.

The cages themselves appear as though they could have been made of carefully constructed channels of fabric made rigid with boning - though a closer look would definitely be needed to examine this as boning typically has all sorts of issues with curling and bending, not generally characteristics conducive to hard line stripes and grids.

Images from Vogue.co.uk».

Fashion by Numbers: Range Planning

Rick Owens, AW11.

There are times when you look at the catwalk collections and the sheer volume of garments seems completely daunting, especially if you are a student who has just experienced the pressure of designing a small range, or if you are a young designer who is about to start their own label. It can be easy to get carried away with the maths of it all… if there are 40 looks and about 3 garments per look then that’s 120 garments that need to be designed, pattern made, cut, fit, altered, sewn etc… and you may begin to think that you simply can’t compete with that size of collection. The truth is though that when you actually break some of the collections down, the clever designers can manage to get maximum impact from far less than 120 separate garments.

One such example is by looking at the collection that Rick Owens presented in Paris for Autumn-Winter 2011. There is obviously some very clever designing and range planning occurring behind the scenes, as the actual number of individual styles worked out to be only about 33 styles by my count, a fairly reasonable number considering that it was a 41 look collection.

Not all designers would work with such condensed styles for such a large collection, and it is very dependent on the style of designer. This approach happens to work for the layered look that is such a part of the Rick Owens brand any way. Also due to the fact that he does the majority of the pattern making himself, there obviously needs to be some forethought about how this can be managed to complete the collection on time, so careful range planning may form a part of this strategy.

The collection images below have been analysed by giving each separate style a number. Basically every time that a new pattern would be required, there is a new number, and then colour ways are listed next to each number. The reason for analysing the collection in this way is because this is how you would prepare cut sheets for manufacturing. For example, one jacket pattern that needs to be cut in 5 colours will mean that fabrics of different colours can be layered and cut at the one time, from the one jacket pattern. 5 totally different jackets, in 5 different patterns would need to each be cut completely separately, meaning more time and money.

Here is the total list of garments with brief descriptions: