How A Fashion Collection Comes to Life step by step

Have you ever wondered how the sketches of a designer come to life becoming the finished products we wear?

Bringing a fashion collection to life takes a team of many skilled designers, pattern makers, product developers, and more. The garments we see walk down the runway had hours and hours of work poured into them and many people involved. 

The process begins even before designers sketch their ideas. 

The development of a collection starts with the research phase. Designers look for the inspiration that will drive the entire theme of the collection. To do so they look at the archive of the brand, they take inspiration from art, history, movies, and nowadays from social media as well.

Although the designer’s creativity is a fundamental part of the development of a collection, the inspiration of the designer is not the only thing that a design team takes into consideration before designing the entire collection. This initial research and brainstorming phase includes also looking at business and market analysis, numbers and data including past sales and future trends to make sure that the products meet consumers’ needs. Although a brand wants to create an amazing fashion product,  what makes the clothes, bags, shoes.. successful is their sales performance. And in order to put out there a collection that sells,  it’s important to understand what customers want to buy. What are trends going toward next season? What will be the best fabrics and colors? Will next season be more about long or short coats? Normally is the trend forecaster that gives data about future trends, colors, fabrics…

Collection Merchandisers will instead produce the collection grid based on their analysis with information about what the collection should include (X coats, Y dresses…) that designers use as well. 

Once the inspiration and collection grid is established, then the design process can begin.  

Even when the design process has started then the production is still far away. 

Maybe you imagined that the sketch of a designer goes straight into production but in reality, there is another step in between to transform the sketch into a technical design that can be produced, this middle step is done by pattern makers.

Pattern makers in fact translate the sketch of a designer into the product that factories can produce. 

The sketches of fashion designers are beautiful on notebooks but they give the vision of the product. What the designer normally sketch is in fact never the final wearable product. It’s then the pattern maker that produces patterns from the designers’ sketches that are used by factories to produce in bulk.

Once pattern makers have designed patterns, they are sent to factories, and production starts. Of course, not all quantities are produced initially. They just produce the first samples of the collection that need to be confirmed before producing in bulk. When the first samples arrive, fittings begin.

Fitting sessions give the team a chance to see how the garment really looks, how the fabric moves, if the print works, what needs altering, does the overall design look right. The first samples are almost never the final ones because normally garments need more adjustments. It’s in this phase that the pattern maker suggests any adjustments to the fit of a garment, points out and removes defects, and resolves technical issues to execute the design’s intent for the garment. Designers are there as well to suggest edits and to check if their vision is now well represented in the final product. 

Samples go back into production back and forth multiple times until the product is perfect. At this point, fast fashion brands begin production in bulk, while fashion brands use the first samples for fashion shows and presentations, and production in bulk begins after buyers have placed their orders. 

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