Temporary tattoo

Really lovely idea.....from Yu Chiao Wang. Seen here too.

love at first site

Oh! Joy just posted some pics of Mina Perhonen's FW07/08 collections and I'm totally smitten (with everything!):

Fashion-Incubator

Anyone who works in clothing design or garment construction or fashion, should check out Fashion-Incubator. The site is run by Kathleen Fasanella with help from some loyal friends from the industry. The website is a treasure trove of wisdom and information as well as a laugh and an occasional bite. There are often great discussions in the comments as well, for F-I's readers are a smart set. Of course, the book that Fasanella wrote is the real source of information if you are looking to start your own business. I haven't bought it, only read a few excerpts, which I doubt would please Fasanella, but if I do go out on my own someday, it's at the top of my list to read. I love to be hands-on in the making process and it's a primary motivator for me in terms of starting a business. One of the hardest things working for a big corporate manufacturer as a designer is that I am so far from the making process.

Anyway, back to Fashion-Incubator, here a few of my favorite bits & features:

A simple post about washing clothes with interesting comments to boot. I'm surprised there wasn't more talk about the damage a dryer can do. I really found this one interesting because my MA collection at CSM was made of some fabrics that changed with water. I did a lot of washing machine experiments last spring! When I came back to the US this year I realized the hard way that American washing machines are much more powerful than UK ones. :(

Fasanella has two regular features that I love: Archives, links to articles from the same time last year and the year before, and News from You, links sent in from readers. Both are always full of interesting tidbits.

The site also haas a decidedly sustainable slant with excellent articles about eco habits to develop and organic cotton.

My all-time favorite post relates to my own interests (of course) about invisible components of our clothes. Kathleen was responding to a project called Carnivale of Couture by the Sewing Divas about Ritual Cloth. Fasanella wrote about a purse, backpack, and a couple of jackets that reveal as much in the pictures as they do in her words.

P.S. Pleating!!

Open Source

Patternmaker Burda is doing something really interesting: they call it Open Source Sewing. Based on the ideas in open source software development, Burda is offering up patterns free of charge on their website. You just download them in PDF format and you can print them and assemble them from your own printer. They also offer the PDFs full size so you can take it to a copy shop and print there (so no assemply necessary!). Very nice!

Of course not every pattern is available as Open Source Sewing, but the idea is supposed to be bigger than that. The two benefits they list that seem the most inportant to me are:

"Networking: Connecting designer, patternmaker, creator, seller, and buyer
Product quality and improvement: Great fit and variation through the Burda pattern making competence and the constant testing and feedback of users"

Of course there is also a lot of talk about fostering creativity and sharing information, which is all fine and dandy, and maybe the idea of networking falls in that category too. But someone in corporate at Burda was really thinking if they hope that this kind of open source will improve fit of Burda patterns!

I've already downloaded my first one (ok a pretty simple on) just to give it a try! (see above pic)

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