Fashion Industry Lingo. Be in the Know!

1. Introduction, Fashion Lingo: Every industry has their own lingo, and the fashion industry has some pretty creative ones. So I wanted to go over those today with you and share my top favorite fashion industry lingo. So I'm sure they'll cherry. I'm a costume designer for feature films, and I own a school for sewing and fashion design in North Carolina. And I was a fashion designer nineties. I had my own design studio where I made high end evening gowns for the Hollywood crowd. Then I switched over to costume design for feature films, and I love to do comedies work out of Los Angeles for movies, and they kind of travel. It's everywhere they started teaching about nine years ago. So my goal is to help fashion designers get a leg up and get into the industry. Need the fashion design or costume design? So I thought I'd start with this fashion industry lingo. I've got out worksheet here on the top ones that you'll hear there's many more. Probably do it. Another video on the rest of them. We're gonna start with our 1st 1 and that is called Crow Keys 2. Designers use croqui's: cookies are basically fashion templates, and they just helped the fashion designer draw just fashion instead of having to draw the the bodies. So this is one of we use in our school. It's just very basic. Straight on, they come in all different poses. You can even draw if you're really good at sketching, drawing them yourself. Thistles are have the basic. What I teach here was called eight head figure. They do the nine in the 10 hits. You might hear that around. It's basically proportionately a body using the the inches of head that you put here. She's one inch to go one inch down, one inch down. Gonna do another class on how to use these croquettes Also, So those are some basics. I call this my red carpet pose because it's red carpet. They'll come in men's shapes, Children shapes. I keep different files on these, like this is my child Template folder, and I have different posted is for kids and sometimes get movies with just some designs with the kids again back views that IHS different shapes on the back fuse. Sometimes what do the front of the backsplash designing the wedding guests Gallimore. They're always back. Actually, every fashion design should have back few there. There's also accessory templates. You're doing it to do a shoe or something with half purse bracelets. Those these templates also will help you to design, just not have to worry about the foundation of the drawing and just design it. Also, you can draw your own. I use thes thes from a book that I used to sell a fashion line on, and I just traced thes and made up my own crow keys. I love the faces and their poses. You can actually draw your own if you're really get on the computer, do that. I also hired an illustrator. My strength isn't in sketching. It's more in the sewing part. Find fashion designers are good with, you know, sewing construction, understanding the patterns and all. Or they're good with, uh, sketching on paper. If you're just going to sketch on paper, you still really need to know the sewing part, because how do you understand how fashion garments lay and are put together if you don't know just leased the basics of that, But this is a croquet. I had Thies to several other more, and they're just designed just for me. So when I do a sketch, I like to just use my own, um, specific poses and faces and all that kind of trademarks mind design. And I don't share these with students. Get them other ones. You can also shrink them so you can just keep these in new, smaller portions. So that's always a good idea to those are Crow Keys spelled C R O Q U. I. And if you Google croak E, you're gonna get some weird websites. So when I just Googled fashion templates and then you'll get a little also, they have all different kinds of cookies on the Internet to so our next one, our flats. 3. Sheets and Forms: so flash are real important. These are actually the technical you have to do. These technical the different lines. Knees means something. Um, the boulder lines will mean not really familiar with what they mean, because I don't work in the fashion industry's first production wise at all. And but these are for the spec sheets and the lion sheets, and also how to communicate with your pattern maker, how to show them where the lines are and how wide it is, where the pocket is, where tops to Tina's. The buttons are that kind of thing. The real specific part should give a pattern maker a sketch. We're pretty sketch, but they're going Okay, what do we do with this sport away? What's your thoughts on this? That's what they're thinking. They also have great templates. This on a Web site, I will give you the what side I found this on at the end titles. They were very genesis, a basic templates that was such a great website. But these are the lines that will. You can follow and draw your design, your flat version of the design on their But these are some examples of like a Gene. Uh, Matt, Some just basic camisole flats once really detailed, worried to love this one shows all the tops to change in your pockets and the buttons. And so this a pattern maker could take this on, do the pattern off of here, and then this also goes onto the line sheets and the tech packs different. Also really be able to communicate with the factories that are making these. So those are flats. Then we have specs. The specs are speculation. Sample speculations, specification, sample worksheet. So this is Here's your flat. This work. She gives you all the details pointed out with words on it listening a The words on descriptions The inches like the caller is 10 inches around four inches deep. It's 10 buttons pocket with a placket top. Stitch all the details on here, but what kind of buttons? Tops to chain. Is it dying to match thread? Which means you see the word dtm. It's dyed to match our work on here. Fabric. Um, all that all that basic stuff that goes with factory goes with each each garment has these things and really important to get your things produced. Then Thetis specification wants a speculation. Specification works. It's also part of the tech path. A pack is goes with each core meant to the factories. Gives more descriptions that fabrics the whole everything they need for you to communicate with factory on making that garment. Sometimes you're working with factories that have different languages are, uh, in a communication barriers. So all this detail has to be on here so that you get the right garment so real important. Next, we have go over to line sheets here, so light sheets are the garment for buyers, not factories. But for the buyers, what colors they come in the season. The delivery day wholesale prize. More details about the dress has got zipper in the side. Seen gathered six inch slid style number all those details so they can come in different. These will have different, like this is from free. People there looks very different than this is a basic dress from Nord Strom. You put your artwork on here doesn't have to be a specific line part, but so that the buyers can really see the shapes of it. His illustrations can really over glamorize pieces. That's the line sheet so next we have tear sheets. Tear sheets are This is a my 2017 packet. I say magazine clippings. Tear sheets are basically magazine. They are. I say that every year. This is one of my favorite things. This inspires me a lot. I do a lot of designs with this. I save. I go through magazines and clip out stuff that really speaks to me on. Then also, try to keep up with the trends. I'll do like specific trends going on. Marie Claire has some really great magazine pieces on that. I just go through and save up in a file every year. So take up much room and then you can refer back to them. I started this in the mid eighties on, became a costume designer in the mid nineties, and I actually ended up doing to the eighties films and then doing flashback parts on a film and having to go through back through the eighties actually had all the tear sheets right there. Didn't have to go through and do a lot of research, say, before the Internet got pretty popular when it was, but I would have to go through the library's ing look through research and all that. I had a lot of it all right there. So keep a file of tear sheets and helps you fashion designer and get inspired and do designs every year. 4. Inspiration: we'll go to mood board and this is where you're tearsheet can come in. And mood boards are basically for the designer to get their collection together, that all their inspiration in one spot to help them keep inspired. And in the theme of their collection, this is Teacher just getting Out of Design school. She made up this board that I used this for my students to show a simple mood board, and she her thing was sunflowers and Senator Summertime. So she did a whole collection. That was her thing. You would see the theme runs throughout her whole collection, and this kind of helped her put her thoughts into aboard here. So she did. The sunflowers got some prints. She really liked stripes and polka dots with the straw, anything that inspires her little flowers, some lates and do a collection using those themes. So mood boards are pretty fun to work with. When I worked on a movie and Oregon had a some actresses that were playing the part of equal warriors, they lived in a tree, so my whole wall in my office became their mood board. So trying to stay on the theme of they lived in a tree. And what colors would bounce off that and found like hemp macro made pieces to make belts out of and the flowers and I would stick leaves and stuff like that board and people come in there, go what this is. But it's very creative and it kept me in the mood. It was pretty fun. That's mood boards. 5. Designer collections: to oh couture, an avant garde. So oh, couture is, um, high end fashion custom made pieces ranging thousands to tens of thousands. Usually you see him in evening gowns because where people are going to actually spend that money and they are beautiful, one of a kind pieces. Sometimes a designer will do a few of. But there will just got the beautiful fabric details in the embroidery. Elegant stitching, beating so haute couture. And here's another piece. This is avant garde is, uh, very one of the points he says. They're from usually in fashion shows. They're pretty. It could be wacky pieces I love this one's got an eyeball on there and can't remember who designed that. But here's another wacky one. You'll see that this is really good for artists. Expression, fashion shows, publicity on it. Really, how designers can express themselves and make some fun. Edgy outfits. Lady Gaga, Actually, where's the zone? Stage? A lot. So, um, and making menage he will. Do you think that's silly of? But, um on guard is fun way to it, for designer to express themselves. Credit Port A is just high end ready toe wear designer line so you'll see Exit Prada. Valentino was doing their own line of clothes. This magazine actually says Pret a Porter collections. Now these magazines there's use only worked with this one. Also, these are runway magazines. This one I know, I know. You don't get rid of these, you don't come up. Some people might come up with these air about 100 bucks apiece, sometimes more. I find him on the newsstands in Los Angeles, in New York. I haven't seen him around elsewhere, but you can Sure you can. Amazon these anywhere Thick collection. This is pretty port A. That was interesting. The whole magazines called that. So that's just lines the designers ready to wear line that still on the higher end. Granada's expensive this tour, and also they they make many more of them. So they're not mass produced, like a mask. Budget lines. But they're high end designer lines 6. Fabrics - the designers medium: hand and trade. Han is, uh, how fabric feels. Designers are like, has a nice hand. I've seen them documentaries and nursing has a nice hand. When people are going, what does that mean? So this hand of this is soft, drapey little gummy. You could feel it. It has that silk feeling, so that got me feeling this'd is it's dripping of, you know, it's got a soft but has some Christmas to it so they'll be describing with hand is. Then there's drape. Then they will be going has very fluid drape. Very, very drapey fluid soft will be another way to describe it. This eyes a still like a sham tongue. Or do be only so piece to get those reversed. This is a very crispy drape, a stiff, medium type draped, good for love of law kind of thing. So draped in hand you'll hear those a lot describing fabrics. Next, we have strike off. The strike up is a small piece of yardage to sample the color pattern and print quality of a fabric. You want to do this before you order yards and yards of fabric. And so that that I did this a while ago I got this fabric piece. It's a strike off, had my design printed and totally hated it. It's a so great fishing that just didn't work out. This was my sketch that I wanted to work with. And it is just this is wanted it dark like this and a little glossier and what I got. So that's a strike off. I I didn't invest much money in there. I wasn't what I wanted. And then I had a chance to work in back out. I actually ended up doing something differently, so it worked out. There's also this was another piece. This is about three yards of a Kona cotton. That I designed was a little collection I was doing, and this was what I wanted. Waas This sketch of reverse. I wanted it to be dollar, and I ended up with the brighter ones. So I'm really glad I didn't invest more money that also so, strike offs, if you're gonna do any kind of fashion collection, are important and you hear that strike off. That's what that means. Land. It's our dipping just pieces of family into the dye baths. Getting a run of it you'll see don't come in no cards and show you like what di percentage they did and that kind of thing. What fabrics? They're all under the cotton wool and gives you a chance to pick out the right color. Die because they'll look differently on cottons versus silks and all that. So you want to do lab dips First, I had to do this movie I was doing and that we needed a certain gray to match the footage of another movie, actually a complicated project and that must have had 50 lab dips and never got the right gray. And I ended up having to diet myself. The trick was soon as they went into the dryer to drive the fabric it turned can agree. So gray is a real tricky color as well as purples. Blues can fool you, too, so lab dips are important. Get your right color. Then we have color cards so color cards are simple. Just groupings of colors seem on paper like this. I find these in books and all kinds of color associations, you conjoined and groups that all work with color. Color is so important in fashion having people by and all that. This is a color card with some cotton. It's from incorporated, and they had it showing what yours actually looked like. Colored cards can also I just have, like a bucket of paint chips from the paint store and from various books. And also what they look like and glossy will give you the measurements. Just keep on hand right here. Doesn't take up much room right here. So you're working on a mood board or some kind of grouping collection? You have the color chips right there and called color cars. That was pretty simple. Was going to about family right here. Our 1st 1 is peace. Die peace Die is when the fabric has died after a right on top of woven fabric. And how you can tell is simply it doesn't. I kind of see it through the other side and doesn't we've all the way through so that peace is died right on top of the great good, great, good. It's strange that word there, right on top. So all that, Then there is your guy. Your die is when the yarns are actually when this woven the norm is the color, it's supposed to be. So this one happens to be a blue in a black, and you can tell it's on. Um, it's the same front back because it's actually woven with the color of yarn. So your died and these air much more quality fabrics. They stay true to their colors longer. They don't die out as much. So the your specifically died much better. Also, Piece dies. You can see sometimes the white slugs of thread through it didn't pick up some of the dying . So kind of you to tell those now over die is when you die a garment. It could even still be fabric, and you take like, say, a blue and dip it into brown and it creates a whole different color. Are orange, maybe took a blue in, dipped it into orange and creates just different artworks. Really could be pretty and fun to play with. That's over. Die. Then we have placement or engineered fabrics, and those are when a fabric is has a specific artwork placed on it like a border print could be just so that actually goes into the construction of the garment on this world top . This is smart top here and then on the skirt part is a pattern of something cool, and then it's got these lines pattern here. This is all one fabric was just If there's a side seam in here, there iss one seem overhears. This truly mass produces over locked together. It looks like it's a sign seen, but it literally is just one big piece cut into address. This'll top to show you. This is also a placement print, so this is There's no seams in here. It's just the whole print itself. It's on a border print here. Even the sleeve is cut on the border print here. That and then it's up on the top. So it definitely a placement or engineered print. You've all seen border prints. These air would be considered that to. That's when the border is different. Do you have the solid fabric and then the border? You could do that whatever you want with it, but usually a skirt would have to cut this on the cross grain, and to use that border up or you can laces will have us a lot to where you can cut it off and engineer it into your design. Somehow that's a border 7. patterns & production: we have a cad. You guys probably all know this. This is a computer aided design. I got out of design school in the mid eighties, right when can came out. And I was just behind the times as soon as I graduated, because everybody was starting work on the computers and doing their sketching and their artwork on the computers. And I can't even pattern making it all. And I was old school and learned all that and then should have gone back to school. But I ended up starting my own designs to the oak. Right after that, I worked in the manufacturing business, but come I just wanted to do. I was in Hollywood and I just kind of fell into designing gowns for Hollywood crowd a little over a year. So, um, it's kind of weird. Things took me, but can you be working on the fits? This is a technical session with the Fit model and the design team they call it fits. That's when a fit model comes in. She's an employee of the manufacturing company, and they usually have the same fit model because they want to use her body shape. Everybody's so different shape, proportion wise and width wise. So she's supposed to, Or he supposed to stay in the same measurements and not up and down change team. That's gonna be hard for a fit model, but they come in, they try on garments, and designers and manufacturing teams were picking and no at the close and Cephus and how does it feel? And these things definitely look different on a body than they do on a mannequin. And this way the law can see how it feels a connection, see where it lays and how it drapes and moves. And all that stuff so fits technical session that can take all day, and they try willing after the other on like that. So remember working in manufacturing plants and seeing that happen, it was fun. Her last one is grades. Hope you get a on this. Grades are when the patterns production patterns are graded out or in two do different sizes. When I went to design school, I learned how to do this right on the drafting table, changing things up, and nowadays it's pretty much all computerized, so it's good they still may make sign school do that this is I found a production section of production. Just just have a that we dressed. Drafted. This was spent around. I actually got a on a and this is all a sleeve. Like it's graded out like quarter is here in eight minutes. Here, maybe nothing here. There's a whole, um, you know, I say recipe for high grade out patterns, so that's grades. 8. End thoughts: So those are the top fashion industry lingo words I think you'll hear out there in the the industry. And if you're going out for a job in turn or first job really good to brush up on these because I have sense experiences pushing costume design when I just kind of didn't assist any designers. When I got started and I just got thrown into some movies, I had to learn all the interest in the film industry lingo, and I had to find that the forms what that meant day out days and this and that. And I kept going, What can't you know? I wish I would have just a list of how all these with these words men and I would have been more informed and didn't look like a deer in the headlight when they were talking about continent the sheets. And you know, that form and one liners they call them, and all that stuff will do a video on that, too. For the film industry geared costume designers are in so good luck out there. I only some, uh, links or not thinks, but at least the websites on the end of this I think for some websites that I liked and my website, you can get my PDF office future fashion designers dot com. And if you're in North Carolina, you want to take some sewing classes or fashion design. Look us up and good luck out there. 9. Projects : well, that is just a few of the fashion industry, Ling goes. There are a lot more those air, pretty much the top basics. If you googled some of them, you get a little more in depth with the words that might really help Google with a tech sheet looks like expect sheets. You'll find different forms of, um, those kind of are usually more the technical part, but also line sheets. Here's a project for you is designed your own line sheet template. Do your sketch how you would take a garment that you've designed and do a line sheet for it . Several garments would be good. What are the colors? It comes in the price, the wholesale price, the fabrics it is and do your own example of a line sheep for each garment. And so you were going to sell it. That's a great way to put that into the universe, that your things we're gonna be getting sold because the buyers are the ones that look at the line sheets. So those are actually always a little more creative and designers choice on that. Um, a really great project would be to actually call a fashion designer in your local area and see if they have 15 20 minutes to spend with you. And bring them this industry lingo sheet and ask them. You kind of introduce yourself and do that on the phone before you come in and then ask him , See, Can I see? Um, lam dips that you've done And how are they presented to you? Ah, strike off fabrics. How are they presented to you? Do you ever work with placement prints? Do you ever worked with, um, over died, that kind of thing. So you know some of the lingo and then you actually asked them. So you're doing for a school project? Ask them to show you some of that stuff. It'll start on all kinds of different conversations, so just takes them being brave toe column and do it. But when I started costume design, that's what I did. The costume designers were Most of them are pretty generous with their time. They would meet them for lunch, and, um, they would have a list of questions to ask him. And they're usually pretty generous toe get newbies started. So really great way to meet somebody. Get an idea what they do. Maybe get a mentor out of that. You really hit it off. Become a mentor. Maybe work there one day. So So get out there and you never know unless you ask. So that's the That's the big project for you. And let me know how you do. I really love to hear if you took that forward and what the results were and I'll see you in another video. Good luck out there.