The creation of fashion collections is reinvented
In spite of the confinement, we continue the creation of our next collections, a complicated stage to realize at distance and in video, but we adapt!
17H10 started from the project and the desire to offer "common sense" clothes at a fair price. Very beautiful products made in small quantities, close to a local and valued craft industry, and above all, clothes answer the daily life of active women.
We believe in the magic that can sometimes happen when a set makes us feel confident, professional and invincible. We want to highlight inspiring, independent, positive women. The ones you meet every morning in the subway, who lead several lives at once and who love it! For them, we design elegant, comfortable and easy to live with outfits.
We tell you how we imagine and create our collections.
We started by interviewing many women and listening to their needs. What do they think about in the morning in front of their wardrobe, what makes them choose this piece rather than another, in which cuts do they feel beautiful, what do they need, what is important to them...
We have identified which cuts you prefer to wear, and not surprisingly these depend on the different silhouettes. We tried to answer the different morphologies with, to begin with, trousers, skirts, jackets, adapted to you, and more pieces to come as we go along of course.
You told us that you prefer natural materials, that careful finishing and attention to detail are key to you.
It is on the basis of all this information that we work.
1/ Drawing the collection
When we design a collection, we want each piece to be sublime but also to be coherent in a whole. We think about cuts that complement each other, colors that go together, we are inspired by our daily lives, art and fashion icons.
At 17H10, our ambition is that our pieces are timeless, that they go through the different fashions, that you can wear them often, for different occasions, accessorize them differently, always with pleasure.
For the first tests and inspirations, we sometimes take the needle ourselves to see if what we had imagined on paper works in fabric and in volume, all that will be of course long studied and refined then in model making.
2/ Model making
We believe in simplicity and elegance. And in pattern making, that's the hardest thing: beautiful lines, perfectly cut, no frills. No frills to hide an unfortunate fold or an ill-fitting piece, the fit must be perfect!
All of this is the work of the pattern maker. We have a great one and owe her a lot of the success of our pieces. Our meetings always start with a brief in which we detail the pieces to be created: we provide her with our drawings, and our possible first sewing tests.
Our pattern maker first works on a canvas: that is to say that she makes our model in a fabric less precious than the final material. Like a draft. This fabric is often clear because it is necessary to be able to write possible modifications.
When the canvas is satisfactory, we move on to the prototype.
If imagination and creativity can adapt to the confinement, for the realization which requires material and teams, it is more complicated. We fall behind. In general in most stores, be prepared for the next fall/winter collections to be incomplete and arrive later. We obviously can't have a meeting with our pattern maker or move forward on the prototype part with the workshops we're talking about right after.
3/ Prototypes
A prototype is a first test of the model in the final fabric. It allows to adjust the cut, the fall and all the details. To validate that all the elements of the garment work well together and fit nicely.
This is a very long step and it is often necessary to make several prototypes to obtain a perfect product.
When everything is validated, we order the necessary materials and supplies and it's up to production to take over. We talk about this step in our previous video.
To conclude
This crisis is currently causing great debate in the fashion world. Great designers like Armani, are offended by what has become: an overproduction that has lost touch with reality.
They denounce the frenetic rhythm that imposes to present new products all the time, a collection that has just been launched is obsolete in a few weeks and replaced by the next one.
They also think about the absurd shift in seasons: summer is sold out in early July to install coats and boots, while in December we are presented with swimwear and light dresses with the "cruise" collections.
Since we are talking about design,let's not be influenced by ephemeral trends that downgrade clothes as soon as they are acquired. Let's choose timeless pieces, which are adaptable and long-lasting.
"Less but better" must become the new mantra for designers but also for customers.
