Thursday, August 20, 2009

no-waste and less-waste fashion designers

The aim of this post is to provide a bit of a list for anyone interested; please do email me about anyone I've missed. I'm more than happy to update.

Holly McQuillan emailed me yesterday; her recent zero-waste garments are now online. I actually saw the process work when Holly was here for Fashioning Now and was completely blown away by it - truly inspiring! Have a look:
Precarious Cut
Wolf/Sheep

I actually saw this mentioned on Clara Vuletich's blog last year but somehow didn't check it out until this week: Flora2. Download the book, it is well worth a read. I think Dorothy Burnham would be delighted with the work, too.

Siddhartha Upadhyaya first emailed me last October and thankfully again this week about his work. In particular, the idea of fabric getting woven for a specific garment resonates with me, as a complete contrast to how things generally occur. Have a thorough look at August.

At the Fashioning Now symposium (we'll be uploading all of the speakers' audio on the website in the next few weeks) Susan Dimasi spoke of the system Materialbyproduct (the other half is Chantal Kirby) use to cut their no-waste garments. Of particular interest was their approach to sizes; unlike conventional manufacture, each size of a Materialbyproduct garment is not a replica of the sample size in terms of design. This has been a hunch of mine for a while - what is wrong with making each size slightly different - and I admire Susan and Chantal for doing away with that rule. One could say that each size is designed rather than graded. Sure it may slow things down, but on the upside, arguably each size of a style receives an equal amount of love from the maker.

At this point I should note that all of the above will require some rewriting of a thesis chapter, but I am quite excited about it. Each designer is addressing waste and each designer's handwriting is completely unique; no-waste isn't limited to a particular aesthetic.

And here's a list of people I've mentioned in the past:

The pioneers of no-waste and less waste:
Zandra Rhodes
Yeohlee Teng
Julian Roberts - not strictly a no-waste designer but his method of designing and cutting (is it possible to separate the two?) lends itself beautifully for considering fabric waste.

The more recent forays into same:
Sam Formo, a student of Lynda Grose at the California College of the Arts
Andrew Hague, also a former student of Lynda Grose; Kate Fletcher featured his no-waste shirt in her book
Mark Liu

Oh and me. Here are two garments from Bad Dogs last year:

I'm sure I've forgotten a designer or two; do let me know.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I came over after seeing your stuff on Fashion-Incubator. The jacket is interesting--I'm going to mock it up to see what I think of the drape. Neat you and a number of people are working on this idea of no waste--when I cut I do the best to make sure I have little waste and/or the largest scrap possible to be useful for other projects, but my work is nothing like this. I have used scrap for applique and patches, where I used the scrap piece without modifying the cut. What you do with the pants/leggings is interesting in this regard since you plan the applique in your cutting layout. It's hard to see exactly what the applique looks like but the idea is great. Thanks for sharing your and others work.
FYI: Cut My Cote's author's first name is Dorothy not Deborah.

Timo Rissanen said...

Oh my, so it is! I've corrected the name. I think working closely with two Deborahs recently got me confused. Thank you for picking up on it!

At the time (in July 2008) while making the leggings I felt like I was cheating with the applique but in the end I was happy with how it broke up the stripe completely. Working out the placements took quite a bit of time, and sewing them on with coverlock... Turning corners and starting in the middle of a piece, not so great with the machine, but I got there in the end, I guess.

Thanks again for the correction, and comment.

Mirvana said...

I'm fascinated. I think you have me hooked.

Mauricio Bernal. fashion designer haute couture said...

hello timo, I would like to know more about it, and how I can do, I've never seen this and it is wonderful, and I would love to help me, you have an e-mail to keep talking.
my email is
mauriciobernal.altamoda@gmail.com

dining room tables said...

This is great! I never thought that there is that kind of shop in that place. I will going to visit this weekend. I will try their service.

Timo Rissanen said...

Hello tables,
Not sure what you mean. What kind of shop and where?