A Guide to Clothing Design
Clothing designers are artistic people who create functional garments. Art, film, fashion magazines, or history may inspire their designs. They often sketch their designs and sew a sample garment, called a toile or muslin, before creating the sewing pattern.
Simple elements, grouped in varying combinations, can create various styles. For example, adding shawl collars or bell sleeves to blouses adds interest and dimension.
Modern Edition
With an A-Z encyclopedia approach to fashion, this atlas provides a guide to the forms of clothing, from coats to skirts and dresses. It also explores the key details, materials, and colors of different styles. Its comprehensive approach will be of use to designers, stylists and fashionistas alike.
The book accompanies the first fashion exhibition to be mounted at MoMA since 1944 and explores contemporary perspectives on the design of clothing. Written by Paola Antonelli, senior curator and director of R&D for the Department of Architecture and Design, and Michelle Millar Fisher, curatorial assistant, the 111 entries investigate the complexity of relationships between clothes and functionality, culture, aesthetics, labor, politics, identity and economy, tracing how style is constantly changing—from the multifaceted sartorial journey of the bucket hat to the ubiquity of the white t-shirt and the continuing relevance of the little black dress.
The book offers a fresh take on modernist design and locates new centers of gravity for the study of fashion, asserting that it can play an active role in the broad pantheon of visual design. Illustrated with a lively mix of archival, fashion and editorial photography, illustrations and documentary images.
Pret-a-porter Edition
A pret-a-porter designer is a clothing designer who produces designs that are not made to order, but which are aimed at a broad audience. The designs are ready-to-wear and will often be adapted to specific tastes, but not to the point of being considered custom clothing. Pret-a-porter designers have the advantage of being able to offer more affordable, higher quality fashion designs than those of a custom designer.
Pret-a-Porter is a game of worker placement and resource management, in which players manage the operations of a fashion company trying to make it in a crowded marketplace. The game takes place over twelve rounds, representing months of the year divided into four quarters. Each quarter consists of two working rounds, followed by an exhibition round during which players display their collections of designs to potential buyers and judges. Each design requires a number of resources to be produced, and each one can earn a player either cash or long term victory points depending on how well it scores at the fashion show.
In the working rounds players will need to sign short-term contracts, expand their buildings, hire workers, and buy new designs from the market. They will also need to pay the upkeep cost, which is represented by a stack of wood cubes. Players will also need to juggle these competing demands, with their attention being focused on making enough money to keep the business running smoothly. This can be difficult as it is always possible for an underfunded player to lose their entire outfit, with each new design costing more and more upkeep.
During the exhibition rounds players will need to select their designs carefully. There are four areas of scoring at a fashion show, and the design that best fits each criteria will win the most awards. The winning design will then be available to buyers and judges who will hopefully be impressed by the look of it. However, it is important to remember that even a very stylish design may not sell well in the market.
A third edition of this popular fashion themed game was recently released by Portal Games. Designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek, the game takes players into the world of haute couture for an intense experience that can be played in 90 minutes. With stunning new components and beautiful artwork by Kwanchai Moriya (Dinosaur Island, Catacombs and Flipships), this updated version is set to continue drawing in the crowds, almost a decade after its original release.
