Categories
Fashion
Rigid thirteen ounce cloth has given way to light stretch blends, and the reason sits in the returns data rather than in any studio. What elastane does to a pair of jeans across two years, and why the fades people admire cannot occur in a garment built around a filament.
Text
Camille Osei
Duration
9 mins
Fashion
A silk bodice of about 1878 carries more spare cloth inside it than most jackets sold today. Turned inside out, it reads as a set of instructions for its own future. What the seam allowance was for, and what modern manufacture quietly removed.
Text
Marek Sandoval
Duration
10 mins
Fashion
Forecasting is not a mood board exercise. It is a commercial function governed by the dyeing and spinning calendar, and its decisions are taken around two years before the resulting garment reaches a rail. That gap explains a great deal about what appears in shops, and when.
Text
Camille Osei
Duration
7 mins
Fashion
Pilling is a fibre length problem, not a care problem, and it is settled before the yarn reaches the knitting machine. Staple length, ply and gauge explain more about how a jumper will age than the word cashmere on the label. One of them can be read at the shoulder seam in a few seconds.
Text
Marek Sandoval
Duration
8 mins
Fashion
An expensive garment that fits badly reads worse than a cheap one that fits, because the failure is more visible and the excuse is thinner. A short account of which alterations repay the money, which are wasted, and which cannot be bought at any price.
Text
Marek Sandoval
Duration
7 mins
Fashion
Vintage sizing is a fiction that shifts by decade, country and factory, and the only currency that holds its value is the tape measure. Four numbers settle most purchases before the price is even discussed, and a short list of faults rules out the rest.
Text
Camille Osei
Duration
8 mins
Fashion
The shoulders come first, because they are the one part of a jacket that cannot meaningfully be altered. After that, the inlay at the centre back seam, and the question of what is actually holding the front of the coat in shape. A checklist that can be run by hand in a fitting room.
Text
Marek Sandoval
Duration
11 mins
Fashion
Climate, commute and the actual distance walked each day shape a working wardrobe far more than any seasonal collection does. Most clothing is designed and photographed for a life spent between a car and a restaurant. The gap between that life and the real one is where unworn garments accumulate.
Text
Camille Osei
Duration
8 mins
Fashion
A winter coat is the most heavily engineered garment in most wardrobes and the one most often bought on impulse. The difference between fifteen winters and two is not the label, and it tracks price only loosely. It sits in cloth weight, in how the chest is built, and in the allowances left at the seams.
Text
Camille Osei
Duration
9 mins
Fashion
A Goodyear welted shoe can be taken apart and rebuilt five or six times. A cemented shoe cannot be rebuilt at all, because the upper is glued directly to the sole it is standing on. The difference is visible from a chair in the shop, and it decides everything that happens afterwards.
Text
Marek Sandoval
Duration
10 mins