What is a Tech Pack and How to Create One…

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apparel, apparel manufacturing vendors, apparel production, Fashion Business, fashion designers, fashion illustrations, fashion startup, garment, garment files, garment manufacturing, measurement charts, patterns, sizing, start up fashion brands, start up fashion labels, style, technical design, technical designers, technical specifications, technology, techpack, what is techpack

Anybody looking at the fashion industry from the outside sees a lot of creativity and glamour. But behind the glitzy glamor and the creative capabilities lies a tremendous amount of hard work and effort. Those of us who enter the world of fashion entrepreneurship soon realize this. Fashion design does not just start and end at the drawing board. Just like a beautiful monument without plans detailing every minute element, or a race car without an exact engineering drawing, garments cannot move from the concept to the production stage without a tech pack.

What is a tech pack? It is to a fashion designer what a building plan is to an architect – a complete map of the product to be created. A tech pack essentially converts your design from a dreamy concept into a practical piece of clothing that can be produced, in small or large quantities. It tells a garment manufacturer what elements need to be included and where, the type, quality and dimensions of the fabric and other elements

Tunic techpack for a women’s casual wear brand.

A good tech pack consists of a combination of images and measurements, made in such a way that every detail of the garment is captured. It usually consists of:

• The flat sketch of a garment from front and back, with close-ups of the complicated sections
• Details for the stitching, fabric, trims and embellishments. This may include details of the suppliers as well, and can include a swatch of the fabric as well as samples of the embellishments such as lace, buttons, etc.
• Measurements of all the important dimensions including the size of any added portions or cutaways.
• Details of the embroidery, print, patterns and labels to be used.
• Packaging instructions

With a tech pack, a designer need not be present during the entire manufacturing process, and the garment manufacturer can execute production of the sample and final order to specifications. Be sure to include as many details as possible. A good tech pack will help you with grading, pattern making, calculating cost and yield of the material and determine your approximate cost of production.

At times, modifications may be required due to technical constraints in the production process. These changes are incorporated in the tech pack and the new one is used, just as building plans may change marginally when construction is in progress to account for unforeseen obstacles. Keeping the tech pack updated ensures everyone has a clear idea of what needs to be done.

Unlike fashion design concepts, tech packs are purely technical tools with strict guidelines. However, it is essential for any designer to be able to create a tech pack, so that you know the intricacies of the design. This makes it easier for you to guide the factory and ensure that the garment created meets your requirements. You can create a tech pack using tools like Adobe Illustrator, or work with a technical designer like Fuel4Fashion, who will convert your sketches and concepts into production-ready tech packs.

With a tech pack, you are now armed and ready to convert your concepts into a physical garment that the world can wear and flaunt. If you need any help, do get in touch with me at here with your queries.

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer, Sourcing and Manufacturing Consultant helping fashion brands to plan, design and develop new collections with small quantity garment manufacturing. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest Instagram

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Growing Your Fashion Label Basics: Design Studio vs. Freelancers

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creative, fashion, fashion designers, fashion illustrations, fashion sketches, freelance fashion designer, Fuel4Fashion virtual design studio, global fashion designers, global platform, new fashion brands, pattern, Product design, start up fashion labels, style, trends, upcoming fashion designers, Virtual Fashion Design Studio

The Relative Merits of Using a Fashion Studio vs. Independent Fashion Designers

As an upcoming fashion label, you would want designs that are cutting-edge, attractive and can make a mark against established brands. Price is a factor and hence you need to ensure that your costs in designing and producing your collection are kept within your budget. One of the ways to do that effectively has been to outsource the designing work to freelance designers. With platforms like Elance and Freelancer, it is possible to find hundreds of freelance designers who will work with you to create your fashion collection at a fraction of the cost that an in-house full-fledged design team would require. And you will be able to interact with them directly, so getting your ideas across is simplified. You will also get more personalized attention from a freelancer.

Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/R44vWt

While you are likely to find a number of good designers on these platforms, identifying them can be a difficult task, involving contacting dozens of them and filtering the ones that you can get along with. At the same time, you have very little guarantee that the freelancer will deliver the work as per your timelines and specifications, since (s)he is usually a lone worker with no backup. Fledgling fashion labels on tight timelines can be stuck at the mercy of such freelancers.

So what is the solution? What you would ideally be looking for is a combination of the best parts of both sides. You would like the reassurance of a talented designer team that can be selected and deliver as per your design brief in a short time. At the same time, you would like to keep your costs low and have the assurance of an experienced professional handling the project. With virtual design platforms like fuel4Fashion, you can get both.

Fuel4Fashion is a virtual design studio that brings together talented design professionals from across the world, giving you a diverse talent pool from which you can choose who would work on your project. You get a chance to view their previous work, and have the assurance that a team of experienced professionals is managing the design process at an affordable cost. The additional advantage is that you get a variety of designs that you might not find in your local talent pool – African prints, bright Latin American colour combinations, and the style and cut of sophisticated European design houses become possible with this platform. You are assured of timely project completion, access to new ideas and efficient communication that ensures the outcome is as good as, if not better than what you visualized.

Image courtesy: http://www.fuel4fashion.com/about-us.html

While working with both freelancers and agencies have their respective advantages and shortcomings, using a virtual design studio like Fuel4Fashion gives you the best of both. This will ensure that your fashion label will make a strong impact and yet you keep your creative costs within control.

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion, the first virtual design studio that caters to new and upcoming fashion design labels with a diverse portfolio of design services. She is a member of the Cherie Blair Foundation’s Women Entrepreneurship Program and has over a decade of fashion industry experience with international labels and start-ups.

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Influence of colors on fashion designing

Fashion designing, that is creating pretty garments and party wears centers around the use of colors like red, green, yellow, blue, orange etc. The prime job of a fashion designer is to look for fresh and innovative ideas to spice up the designs and this job will stay incomplete if there are no colors thrown in it.  There seem to be a lack of understanding as to what primary colors can do for you, so there were thousands of tints and hues innovated every day to give in a new blush to the garments.

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 Designs by colors

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 Fashion color spring Pantone

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seamlessly colorful

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Pantone colors of the years

Earlier there was a time when fashion industry was full of dark tints and hues which were mostly consisted of the ethnic tribal prints, where maroon was the favorite color of the woman’s attire and black was the favorite color of the gent’s suit.

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Title: Colors of the bird called fashion

With changing times, many other things have also changed like people gradually saw the replacement of cultural and gaudy prints with sober and stylish prints. Also maroon was replaced with other primary colors and soon people started using lighter shades in pairs with each other like sky blue and pink. Also men started using shades of black like light and dark grey. People started becoming more open to colors since the stereotype was broken.

Image Courtesy: http://goo.gl/I1fTpO
Influence of Art as well as colors

Then the new era brought with it the dazzling and cutting edge designs which were showcased during the trendy Fashion Week. New designers, sexy designs and dark colors dominated the first few fashion weeks. Later with time some of the same designs will turn upside down with fashion becoming less on work and more on colors and fabrics used.

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Colors everywhere

Nowadays people are more and more inclined towards the use of bold colors that produce a statement like cherry red and funky orange.

Sometimes cheeky, sometimes tacky these eccentric colors hold the key to our heart and makes us more fashionable than we were earlier.

What’s your opinion on these changing trends? I would love to hear it in the comments section.

Fashion sketches with graphic software

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Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, colors, concepts, corel draw, croqui, fashion blog, fashion designers, Fashion Sketchpad, freelance fashion designer, garments, Indesign, proto, sketch, stick figure

In your entire lifetime one must have at least once wondered that how good sketches of a professional designer looks.  True, the sketches drawn by a professional fashion designer do looks smooth and clean but it’s not an easy task. However today I will give you some techniques to create fashion sketches and that too very neatly.

Image Courtesy: http://goo.gl/FpE4Y0
Traditional method of painting

To create sketches, there are other platforms available other than just paper. Graphic software is such platforms. A graphic software or image editing software manipulates visual images with the help of a computer. One such software is Adobe Photoshop. Also to improve the creative process there is another tool called Fashion Sketchpad which is a revolution to the designing world. If you want to get rid of the preprinted female croquis then it’s much easier and faster to get a professional quality and proportionate designs on paper but my advice is to start off with a pencil so that one can learn the ABC of designing.

Image Courtesy: http://goo.gl/JrEOki
Sketches

Now To create a sketch of an elegant woman of 20’s, follow the steps:

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Fashion Sketchpad

1. Always start with the balance line, also known as the body’s center of gravity. This is the line along which the figure is balanced and it extends from the base of the neck till it meets straight to the ground. Then draw the head at the middle of the line. To draw a head sketch, a large circle and a smaller circle on below it. Connect these two on sides as shown.

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Step first

2. Measure the head and draw nine small dashed of equal distance apart then number them from chin(#1) to bottom(#10). Then for the top half body and extends it from 1 ½ heads as shown below and you are done.

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Step 4

Now to create a body with movements, draw the balance line and put down 10 marks then tilt one side on the shoulder line. Tilt the right hip so to show the walk movement but with opposite side higher.

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First step.

Thus by tilting different parts of the body the rest of the body movement will follow suit. Anything that is above the high hip will follow the bend of the shoulder and anything which is below the hip will follow with the bend of the hips.

Also another cardinal rule is that the leg that comes from the high hip cannot be tilted and this foot must be on the balance line.

Image Courtesy: http://goo.gl/UX1lKU
Moving figure

Easy wasn’t it? Apply these techniques and let me know how they went.