Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 8 - Shopping the market, a day with Julia.

We had a bit of a change in pace! Neither Fran nor Susan were present int he office that day so Julia planned for us to get some market time in the stores to teach us a bit on her side of things, Merchandising. We headed out and went to Macys as our first stop, JcPenneys as our second, and finished off with Lord and Taylor, all the stores that Pastourelle items hang in from 3 different tiers of the market; the middle market, the lower end market, and the higher end market. Marmellata is sold in Macys and JcPenneys while Pippa and Julie is sold in Lord and Taylor. 

Not only is Julia a very nice and helpful person, she is very insightful and really knows a lot about the market. She asked us to make observations on the merchandising strengths and weaknesses of the different stores. If I had to rank them...

#1 LORD AND TAYLOR

I would rank Lord and Taylor number one in terms of sales floor neatness and the fair presentation of the different brands. There is a clear quality difference between the items in Lord and Taylor and the other stores clothing. Also of course the price tickets reflect that. 

#2 MACYS

Macy's in the middle, because they seem to oversaturate the sales floor with too many pieces and there is no clear branding for each individual dress company, but there is still an equal representation of the different brands nonetheless.  

#3 JCPENNEYS

By far the worst ranking. All the dresses were littered in with some other random items that didn't compliment them at all. All the holiday dresses were shoved in a random corner in a very displeasing way. I'd say they were really failing in terms of the way things were merchandised. Nothing good about them at all. 

It's apparent that the market level does reflect the quality of the merchandising. However, it varies from store to store I'm sure. 

It was quite a nice time shopping the stores and giving Julia our feedback and observations She seemed pleased with the things we realized and observed. As a designer, and for me personally, it's important to understand every level of the fashion industry.

At around 12pm we returned to the office and reviewed our work with Julia for the first time. She hadn't been there for every step of the design process so she thought she'd get her chance to look at our progress. 

She gave us the merchandising perspective, and told us to take what she said with a grain of salt as she doesn't see things in the same way a designer would. Personally I felt that her insight was even more valuable, because I think in the end, a compromise between the designer and the merchandiser is what makes for a successful product sale. Actually it's an overall team effort (Designer, Merchandiser, Sales).

Julia gave us her input, combing through each of our finished lines, looking at each garment one by one. We both needed some minor changes and alterations to things such as color and silhouette. I changed my color story slightly for my "Clara's Christmas Dream" line for Marmellata, as Julia said the colors were reading very spring like and some of the dresses looked like Easter dresses rather than Christmas dresses - something I was quite afraid of with such a pastel color palette. I tweaked a bit, changing some of the pastel blues to a plum purple, which is still appropriate for the subject and theme (Sugar Plum Faires anyone?) 

As of right now, I think my stronger and more concise collection is the Pippa and Julie "Marionette Masquerade" line, as the colors reflect more of a Christmas and decadent mood and the designs are much more elaborate and fanciful, but it still makes sense as it is the more high end line. 

Ideally, I want to design more from a technical and marketing perspective, so I will be heeding many of Julia's advices. 

Until next time~ 

I hope to have my figures done next weekend and my presentation finalized by the week after that. Time is running short, but I have to pull together and make it work somehow. I'm narrowing down my rendered figures to 3 - 4 per collection as I want to focus more on the technical aspect of the project and also because time is fleeting.

Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 7 - Marketing, Sales, and Merchandising

So after a tumultuous past week, the Hurricane disrupting and upturning everyone, it was finally time to start getting back on track after a lot of confusion and extreme difficulty.

We arrived at the office, that post-election day, a little unsure what to expect. We got there to a mostly quiet office, Susan still in China, and Fran wasn't around yet either. We ran into some confusion because since Susan was away, the relay message that we would be coming in that week got a bit lost in translation. But no matter, it turned out to be a new learning experience instead.

VP of Sales, Glen, spoke with Fran on the phone, and since she was going to be a little late (post election win excitement), he decided he would get a chance to speak with us, as he hadn't had a chance to really give his input on what he does since we've been at the company.

So Glen gave us an overview of what he does at Pastourelle. He used to work for Kahn Lucas, but decided to come to Pastourelle because he was taken by Fran's integrity, design vision, and her skill at running a company. He seems very happy and confident with his career direction and the prosperity the company has had even in these tough economic times.

He stressed to us the importance to staying true to your values ad a company, never skimping on quality for quantity, always trying to find a way to make a garment that is what you want as a designer as well as living up to the expectations of the customer at the same time. It's about the balance between cost effectiveness and putting out a product that you can stick by and are proud of selling. 

Sometimes, he said, you need to make financial sacrifices along the way, losing out a bit here and there, having to settle with a smaller salary at times, but if you are dedicated to the products you put out there, then it's worth it. 

His advice was great, I highly value it and agreed wholeheartedly. It was a nice change to hear a bit of the sales and marketing aspect of the company.

Then Glen gave us a challenge, and it was to take the items from the new Spring 2013 samples and then decide which items would be for Pippa and Julie and which ones would be for Marmellata. Piece by piece we carefully contemplated the qualities that go into placing certain garments into the line for each price point and customer.

We did rather well actually!

We had placed the items we believed were for Pippa and Julie on the hanging wall. Glen came in as we were going through them and he seemed impressed with our choices. Then Fran came in to see what we came up with and in the end we'd only missed 2 items (out of like say 40 pieces on the rack!) I call that smarts! 

We explained why we chose what we chose; Pippa items being more sophisticated, more unique and creative in design, more details, higher quality fabrications and finishing details, as well as a less mainstream color palette consisting of navy, pale peaches, ivories, greens, and intricate printed patterns - not just your basic stripes, dots, and florals, but batiks, geometrics, and watercolors. 

I was happy that we both have soaked in a lot in terms of the company aesthetics and branding the separate lines. I'm glad because I feel like I'm really listening, and that in the real working world I can apply these skills.

So the project continues, theres still quite a bit of work to be done. I'll share everything in class next week. Until then~

Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 6 - Flats all Day Flats All Night, and I couldn't be happier!

This will probably be a rather short entry as not much has happened since last week. 

Susan is away inspecting and visiting production factories in China, so Fran was the only one to work with us today. Casey and I have begun drawing out our computerized flats and we showed what we had. She was really pleased with the quality of our flats as well.

I must say, my flats have improved tenfold thanks to a gathers, ruffle, and trim brush set that I downloaded form mypracticalskills.com. There, I was able to buy a file that consisted of all the beautiful and pre-drawn embellishments for my flats to come out FLAWLESS.

I seriously have never drawn better flats in my life, I'm so serious!

Let me let the preview do the talking...

I swear, these look just as good as what I draw by hand and I never thought I would ever think that about my computer flats! I was never able to draw gathers, shirring lines, rusching, or ruffles properly on my own. I never liked how they turned out when I did them in the past. Whenever I made my own brushes, they looked really unprofessional and didn't flow nicely, and they took me a lot of time to make (and only for lack luster results). 

I was devastated initially at the thought of doing all these elaborate flats by computer, and now I'm actually having fun drawing these and I don't want to stop! I've already gotten through 6 of the Marionette Masquerade flats and it's only been 3 days! It may not sound like much but that's a huge improvement. With this brush set I'm able to draw out my styles in record time, about 30 minutes per flat, that without these brushes would have tacked an hour onto that time easily. 

At this rate, I'll have all these flats knocked out before next week...just when I thought this would take me an eternity, an eternity full of tears and frustration, I instead made lemonade from my lemons so to speak!

I like drawing dresses on the computer so much that I will probably never go back to hand flats, and with good purpose, as the children's wear industry is highly CAD based.

The next skill I want to work on is creating custom prints and graphics beautifully and efficiently.

Now I figure that the more difficult part of this project will be rendering 20 figures to coordinate with these! Along with the figures I need to do for Fashion Art. I'll be rendering 32 figures in about 7-8 weeks, yikes!

Thus is why I'm being disciplined and spending a portion of everyday doing something for this project until it's done. EVERY DAY. At least one flat per day until they're done, and then one figure per day until they're done - of course doing as much as I can when I actually can. 

Right now, it's all about balancing the workload.

Anyway, until next week when we meet back in class, I'll have my flats and fabric ideas by then to share.

Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 5 - Setting the Stage + Insight on Production - Avoiding a Nightmare...

Day 5 was in fact a quick day, we left a bit early as things were quite busy. That morning there was going to be a meeting with buyers from Saks, and a lot seemed to be getting in motion to go on.

Fran and Julia first had us sit in on a merchandising run through for a buyer from Costco, a new run that they will be doing soon. We were joined by Cat, in charge of CADs, who would be redesigning the prints and motifs from older silhouettes for the Costco customer once their buyer comes in and gives her input. It was very interesting to witness and be a part of the overall process. It was insightful and I really appreciate being able to see that.

Next, there was a surprise visit, and this is where the story gets a little interesting.

So, a couple came in the design office, a contact that they had been referred to about a prospective production factory right here in the city, literally right around the corner from headquarters. Fran thought it a good idea to let us sit in on the impromptu meeting.

We sat quietly to the side and witnessed the talks. We were joined by VP of Production, Kathleen, whose knowledge and approval was vital in the deliberations. 

First some back story...

Fran had told us in the past that ideally they would love to be able to produce higher end garments under the Pastourelle directly named line in high end boutiques, in which the garments would be made right here in the USA. Right now of course their production is based in China mainly, which is still the only cost effective notion at the moment, but Fran's dream is to bring production right back in our own country (something that I can only wish will also happen again one day, fleeting dream I know...for our economy's sake!)

Anyway, I digress...

So in the meeting, the couple introduced themselves to everyone, and I could tell outright that Kathleen was a little skeptical. They proposed they had a production factory of 4 sewers who could produce garments for children's wear. The woman brought in a sample they had made, and it looked legit. They were nice people, and insisted that Kathleen could stop by their facilities that same afternoon to check it out for herself. Fran and Julia were optimistic about the possible endeavor, but Kathleen wasn't so much.

After the couple had left, Kathleen went on to voice her slight discords. 

In her words to us...

"You can't just trust anybody!"
She joked, but there was a lot of seriousness to this.

There are constant horror stories about worker mistreatment and moral and ethics issues when it comes to garment production factories. Inspections are rigorous and sadly a lot of things still go on unknown, so Kathleen had all the right to be a skeptic. Only 4 sewers? Sounded a bit fishy to me as well.

I wonder when the verdict on this place was after Kathleen's in-person inspection...I should ask about that next week...

To end, we ended the day by going over our design tweaks, fabric choices, and design details with Fran once again, and her input was rather helpful. She suggested to me to inspect fabrics more to make sure I have all my fabrications appropriate for the dress it will be made from. 

I'm overwhelmed with swatches, but I'll manage!

I'm going to rework my color story for Clara's Christmas Dream again.

Lastly, Susan wants to see the makings of tech packs from us next week, so I'll be working on those. I also want to get all my flats done in 3-4 weeks for both collections, ideally in 3, so I'm not working on them at the same time as flats for Portfolio class. Once all those flats and tech packs are completed, then I'll breathe easy. 

Until next time~

Practicum at Pastourelle: Day 4 - Time to get started...

Had another pleasant and productive day at Pastourelle today, it started off slow, not really having perfected a direction, but ended with a lot in place. 

We'd visited on our own on October 4th to get a short word in with Fran about the thumbnails we had drawn initially, and got some simple feedback then, and we are now working from those initial suggestions.

Our task for today was to narrow down our designs from the thumbnails we had drawn, pick size ranges for said designs, and finally to finalize our fabrics. 

For me, it started out with a mess off fabrics, and my thumbnails cut apart (and flying everywhere because there was some phantom breeze of sabotage blowing the entire time, frustrating!) so I was able to switch certain styles between collections. 

Fran suggested that I switch some of my more innovative designs out of Marmelatta and into Pippa, and my more market level designs from Pippa to Marmelatta, so that's exactly what I did. My designs for Pippa are a little more embellished, have much more refined fabrics, and have more minute details compared to my Marmelatta designs, that though embellished, have a more marketable customer in mind. 

So today I finalized exactly what dresses I would be doing and got a great handle on what fabrics and colors everything will be. The organization is still a mess and now that I've edited I feel as though I still have some fabrics missing, but I will be remedying that soon. I'd say I'm about 90% there in terms of having everything ready to go together. I think I'll just organize it a little better for myself this weekend.

Fran suggested I take the red out of the "Clara's Christmas Dream" collection for Marmelatta, and though a true Christmas red is ideal for a Holiday collection, she felt that I could omit it because I was having so much trouble trying to make it work with the icy blues and pinks in my collection, which I completely agreed with. So there is no more red in it, and it's for the best. 

So for next week I will definitely want to have all my fabrics set and ready, laid out and organized perfectly, their colors finalized, designs tweaked and altered where needed (which is only maybe say 2 dresses). It's 20 dresses total between the two collections which worked out just fine. I think I will be able to manage it. 

I will be adding custom prints to my collections, one in each. I have the harlequin diamond design for Marionette Masquerade, and I was thinking of incorporating a ballet dancer border print to a dress, but I think I have to re-evaluate for sure where that will go. 

Once I have everything ready and set to go in terms of design, color, and fabric choices, I will move on to illustrating my technical flats on computer, as that's the most difficult and time consuming task for me. After that I will move on to my two tech packs, and finally the actual rendered illustrations. Maybe I will do my pencil sketches beforehand, but at this point the flats are the most important to me as I really want to better my technical skills. 

9 weeks to go...the midway point has come and I must stay afloat!

Until next week...