sifr 2011 : holistic design 0.1

We are going to be releasing a set of unedited anecdotal videos from our production trips in Jakarta, sourcing trips in Japan, to our day to day operations in Singapore. In this series of posts & videos we will be touching on everything from production based techniques to things we learn about in our visual merchandising that we've picked up over the last two years and employing in our brand today. Hope you enjoy the footage!

In this video Suraj is touching briefly on "stitches per inch" something that is integral in constructing any garment. SPI has a direct impact on the strength of the seam, the appearance of garment, and can affect the elasticity on certain fabrics and seam puckering. Seam strength depends on several factors: fabric weight & type, stitch & seam construction, stitches per inch, the type of thread and its size, and balancing the tension between stitches. SPI differs from garment to garment, fabric, weight and so on.

Consistency is also mentioned in the video something that resides in our design process but is visually distinct once the garment comes into reality.

jason fried, marketing by sharing

we've recently started using basecamp in the office, this is a great talk given by one of 37signals founders, jason fried. we will do a post on a how basecamp has impacted us later this month. in the mean time enjoy the brilliance of this video.

Fashion or Garment Construction/Assembly

Most of us tend to be highly influenced by "Fashion" etc.

I need to ask some of you out there what you're influenced by; "Fashion and it's idea" or the actual process of "construction and garment assembly"? Please enlighten me because for a while now, people haven't really noticed the latter.

From personal experiences at Fashion School in New York, the class was most definitely divided into two different schools of thought and you could categorize people as soon as they walked into the studios. I'm reminiscing. All this happened about 6 years ago so it's slightly hazy.

Strangely so, it was easy to spot the people who were more interested in the "idea" than in the actual process. Most of the people that signed up to be part of the "idea" dropped out within six weeks or headed right into depression after the 3rd day. It was a humorous sight that'll always remain as a firm reminder for the rest of my production days.

The idea of this post is to ask what you guys are thinking. Are we moving into greater appreciation for construction, quality? With the ascent of Menswear at the moment, we're now lucky enough to really see great clothing that is focusing less on the "idea" but rather on the actual garment, the styling and the people the garments resonate with. Are you happy with this?

As far as I know, the situation in this city is one that is currently still behind the international circuit. We're still in the midst of embracing the "idea" when we hear of an event or launch happening. We're enamored by the parties, the overly stylish yet seemingly uninteresting attendees and the desire to really be noticed. Seems like we're not actually promoting or cultivating a great design scene but rather just a "scene". This is what makes this city really interesting to me because in the not so distant future, we're probably going to be laughing at this phase and thinking about how strange we all looked.

I did a couple of gigs with CJ at a local college for design and in those discussions we always tried to promote the idea of fashion as a whole and not just the good bits. Are you interested in making a "good" shirt first or are you dead set on making a shirt that looks really cool? We posed that question continuously and hoped to the powers above that we'd get people interested in the first half of that question.

So what are you? What do you peoples think?

I'll leave you guys with a really good article on some of the types of people we relate with. Get it here.

"Yet interestingly enough, fashion is not a word that inspires Adeline. “I don’t like this word, fashion,” she confides. “There are two things for me. There are clothes, and there is fashion. Fashion – it’s trends, money, industry, and companies. On the other side you have clothes – construction, fabrics, and people who want to know about clothes. How we make clothes, how we wear them, how we feel in them. It’s my way to see the clothing, the exchange between my customers and I”.

Unlearn Your MBA

A friend passed me the link for the video below a few days ago. A talk done by a programmer and main partner of the web application company 37signals, David Heinemeier Hansson. Although Mr.Hansson's talk is related to programming and code rather than fashion, visual aesthetics and design the underlying business concepts transcend many barriers that define distinct avenues of industry and enterprise. A lot of what is talked about pertains to smaller scale companies. Ideas and insight that can traverse laterally across many forms of product &/or services. If you've got an hour to invest into some great concepts regarding innovation and small business management then please click the video below (Excuse his humor).

The More You Know The Less You Know

Below are three music maps, not fully comprehensive mind you, of the following artist: Thelonious Monk, Madlib, and Bach. As most things supposedly go, 'the more you know the less you know know'. The cycle is endless. The most important thing is to be greedy.