While I was gone, I…

… travelled to Indiana to spend some quality time with my family. Wine with Grandma on the porch and fishing at the pond with my dad.

… shot my first gun. I can’t take credit for the hits inside the target, mine is the one right outside the black dot :)

… attended my first liquor tasting… well, I watched (rough night before)

… enjoyed San Francisco’s beautiful view.

… spent the week packing (we traded our amazing city loft for warmer weather… bittersweet moment)

… and finally, I spent the day at Napa with some of my favorite people.

It has been a great couple of weeks away from the crazy schedules and long nights, but now it’s time to get back to work. I’m very excited to show you all what we have in store for Fifth&Brannan.

-Katie

It’s been a while. I’ve been in the process of moving (more on that later), so I haven’t had much time to keep you updated on what’s new with Fifth&Brannan. To be honest, I haven’t even gotten much work done with the line, but now that I’ve settled in, I’m back to my old, more productive routine!

Hopefully soon I can post more updates as to the progress I’ve been making.

Something I did want to point out was that fifthandbrannan.com has a new look!

We did away with the dark tones and typical blog-like format. I wanted something brighter with more room that placed all the emphasis on my photos, so Barron designed this for me.

We may have missed something so if you notice anything wonky, let us know. Hope you enjoy the lighter layout and upcoming large-format pictures!

At least once a day, I have people ask me about my “shirt company”. When I tell them we have an entire assortment, (pants, shirts, outerwear, and accessories) they always seem surprised. Maybe I haven’t made myself clear in my posts, but we DO have other items besides shirts :]

Now that I have bored you all to tears over my shirts and the issues I have been having with them in recent posts, (remember that difficult sleeve?) I will introduce you to my pants.

I currently found a wonderful fabric converter carrying a large selection of 100% cotton twills. I originally contacted them in hopes to find interfacing for my shirts, and they surprised me with a huge book full of fabrics that I have been searching for since January.

The book contains twills that are both 100% cotton and cotton/poly blends. Since I am only interested in using 100% natural fibers for my pants, I was pleased to find a wide variety of colors to choose from.

Most fabric cards consisted of 8-9 oz. twills which are too heavy for lightweight summer pants. I did find a 4.5 oz. French twill that I loved but I’m afraid it’s too light for pants, it could be perfect for shorts. I have narrowed my selection down to 6.5 oz. 100% organic cotton twill.

I have a great selection of in stock colors to choose from and the weight and price meet my requirements. And the best part of all… the fabrics are DOMESTIC! This means I no longer have to worry about paying customs or shipping, hiring a broker, or waiting on ridiculous lead times.

My options of fabric these days are endless! If you would have asked me last week, I probably would have wanted to gouge my eyes out thinking about my terrible experiences with sourcing. Everything has done a total 180 and my spirits have been lifted!

If any of you would like to see my other options for what else I will be offering in the line, please don’t hesitate to ask! I would be happy to share what I have found with all of you.

-Katie

Lately, I have been having a lot of trouble sourcing fabrics. I want to make sure my customers will have the best, so my requirements are high. The fabric must come from a respectable mill, consist of all natural fibers, be of top quality, and have outstanding properties. I have been using numerous resources to help me locate mills such as The Small Design Company’s Guide to Wholesale Fabrics and Trims, Alibaba, and recommendations from other designers. Some mills have been very helpful, others have let me down, and some just don’t respond at all. Either I find a fabric that I really love, but they don’t have the exact color I want… or I find the right colors and fabric, but the mill is extremely shady.

After graduating FIDM, I never thought I would be turning to my books for help. I have come to find that they have been the most helpful. I have been able to reeducate myself on the weights of fabric, the properties, and how to spot quality. Of course designing for another company has helped me greatly, but I am surprised how much knowledge I held onto from school.

The Small Design Company’s Guide to Wholesale Fabrics and Trims has a section for fabric converters (an individual or organization that buys greige goods and sells them as a finished product to retailers, cutters, wholesalers, and others) which has been the most use to me. After emailing several converters, thinking few or none would contact me back, I received an overwhelming amount of responses. Each person I dealt with was so supportive and offered to send me free samples (that’s not common) without hesitation.

I should be receiving my samples this week and will give you all a peek of a what goes into your garment that you may not be aware of :)

I am now starting to feel the stress of making my deadline for the S/S release. Besides working every free minute I have, I also design full time for another clothing company. It becomes frustrating when I use all of my creative energy at work and come home to source fabrics (one of my least favorite things to do). Hopefully this week I will have good news for all of you!

… sigh!

Katie

I have narrowed my options down to ten fabrics and I’m crossing my fingers I’m not too affected by the increase of cotton prices.

My next step will be to finalize my accent fabrics and make sure I am incorporating key looks for the spring and summer seasons.

I know it’s a long ways from now, but what are you looking forward to most for S/S ’11 that you didn’t see this year? Fabrics? Colors? Textures? Please leave your comments below, I would love to hear what you have to say!

-Katie

Because being a perfectionist is part of who I am, I have decided to push my line into S/S instead of rushing into F/W.  There are a few things I would like to tweak before I send the line to production. This was not my first choice, but I felt that releasing in July would have been a poor decision.

Now, with having changed the collection to S/S, I am going to have to source new fabrics. It’s a nice change to search for cotton twills and lighter weight fabrics, but I am running into MOQ (minimum order quantity) issues.  I have found that most twill suppliers require a 5,000-10,000 meter minimum.  Being a smaller company, this is a big problem.

I have searched tirelessly for a good supplier of cotton twill. Because there are so many colors to choose from, I may have that working in my favor. Most suppliers will let you choose from a stock collection, which means much lesser minimums. Thankfully, I still have my shirting supplier locked in and I will be using them for my S/S collection.

For those of you that have been following our fittings, the sleeve issue has been resolved! The first and second fit samples were twisting because of the pattern and an innocent mistake made by my seamstress. After the pattern was corrected, my seamstress was still sewing the pleats of the sleeve incorrectly. This is what caused the sleeve to twist in the first place. However, just by looking at the sleeve after completion, you would have never been able to tell there was a sewing error.  The first thing that always came to mind was the pattern.

Once I picked up my third round of fit samples, I took them to my tailor to have buttonholes sewn on.  Industrial buttonhole makers are very expensive. So, for someone like me who doesn’t use one on a daily basis, using a tailor for these minor tasks is necessary if you want a professional looking buttonhole.

While I was at the tailor, I asked for his expert opinion on the sleeves.  He instantly knew what the problem was and assured me he could fix it. He explained to me that the pleats were incorrect, and on one of the shirts the fabric wasn’t cut on the straight grain.  I may be the one to blame for that… It’s hard cutting out fabric at 3AM and not making a mistake :)

I suddenly felt at ease that my samples were in his hands.  After a few anxious days of waiting, I had the patterns back with neat, professional buttonholes and two PERFECT sleeves! I am so thankful I was able to turn my third fit samples into my fourth ones without going through the entire process again.

Below, you will see what was my third round, but became my fourth and final session after a quick fix.  I am very pleased with the outcome, and I hope you all are too!

Next, we have some ideas for our pants, you can look for that in an upcoming post. In the meantime, please leave your comments below! We’d love to hear what you think about the fit, the styling details, our process or even this blog in general. We read every comment and enjoy hearing from you all!

When starting this whole process, I imagined I would go through two fittings, three at the most. I never thought I would run into this many problems. Today, I began the process of my FOURTH fitting. Why is this a problem? Well for starters, it costs a lot of money to have samples sewn, especially when you are having three samples sewn each time. With this being my premiere line, I am operating on a very strict budget.

Aside from money, a lot of time has gone into these samples. Valuable time. I have a career outside of Fifth&Brannan that I dedicate 40+ hours to per week. My seamstress is the mother of three children, and my pattern maker also has a full time job. It’s safe to say that our time is precious.

I am not sure where the problems with the samples started. Was it faulty pattern making? Sewing? Or was I just too tired when I was cutting the fabric out at 3AM? Any of these could be the reason we are moving into our fourth round of fit samples. I’m not happy about it, but I must say I’m glad I’m not rushing this process.

Because I pride myself on finding the best fit for this brand, these fittings are key. I would rather take the time to correct these mistakes instead of throwing my hands up. The hardest part of running into problems like mine is to see your release date slip further and further away.

I have a list of things that still need to be done, but because I am doing everything on my own, those tasks seem to get pushed to the bottom of my list. Once I feel 100% about my samples, it’s off to purchase my fabric, complete my production samples, find models, and begin the fun stuff!

I hope to see a photo shoot in my near future :)

This holiday weekend has been so nice! I was able to spend time with my family, get away from the city for a little bit, and RELAX! However, I did squeeze in a fitting with my good friend Eric (@ericEsilva), the newest addition to Fifth&Brannan’s fit models. Eric has the perfect measurements for our smaller sizes, and I was very relieved to see the samples fit his body so nicely. There is still an issue with the sleeve, but that was expected since these are the same shirts from the last fitting.

With all of the running around this weekend, I forgot my tape measurer at home, so I had to use Eric’s utility tape measurer. Not the most accurate.

Darn those sleeves!

The struggle that I’m having is trying to come up with a detail that hasn’t been done before. As soon as I think I have come up with a completely original idea, I will see it on the runway or, even worse, in stores.

Am I thinking too hard about this? What if I put something out there and I’m not aware it has already been done? These are things I think about constantly. If you look back on the hundreds of years in fashion, it seems like everything has been thought up.

That’s why, as a designer, you need to think outside of the box. However, you can’t forget about your customer. If you get too crazy, will you lose your customer’s interest? In my case, probably. I’m not going after the über trendy market, but I’m also not going after the overly conservative. I think the detail I’m looking for is discreet. A detail that only the wearer can appreciate.

Don’t you love when you go shopping and you see a shirt that catches your eye, maybe because of the pattern or silhouette, but the closer you get you realize there are all of these hidden details that you would have never noticed unless you took a closer look? That’s the feeling I want my customers to have when shopping Fifth&Brannan.

Now, if I could only figure out what that special something is…