Software’s For Clothing Designers…

Nowadays, designing clothes has become easier with the use of clothing design software. With the use of such software, creating clothes has never been more fun. If you have the creative flair to create what has never been seen before, then all you need are state-of-the-art tools, and we have five of the best for your perusal.

C-Design Fashion

With C-Design Fashion, designers are able to automate and modernize the entire creation and production process for its collections. C-Design Fashion is a complete and efficient software package that is designed specifically to meet the needs of the ready-to-wear industry. Leveraging the superior graphics capabilities and ease of use that CorelDraw is known for, C-Design Fashion is the most powerful software for fashion design and technical pack creation on the market. Now customers can choose a single software solution that supports the full creative life cycle including design, textile drawing, technical packages, collection plans, line sheets and visual merchandising.

kaledo v3r3

This software specifically dedicated to the fashion industry’s design teams to meet all their requirements. The Kaledo range includes the Kaledo Collection application for designing collections along with Kaledo Print, Kaledo Knit and Kaledo Weave, the textile applications for creating original prints, knits and yarn-dyed woven fabrics respectively. This innovative offer lets them produce more designs and validate collections faster by improving the communication flow between designers and everyone involved in product development.

Realistic Apparel Templates Pack

Realistic Apparel Templates Pack (Front and Back) is a tool for use in the presentation of custom t-shirts online with both a front and back custom image. This pack comes with over twenty preset apparel templates which can be varied by color, lying flat of ghosted, or even tight or gently wrinkled versions of the desired t-shirt image. Users are able to utilize this software for many of their t-shirt image needs, including high resolution product previews. The image clippings are easy to place and can be used with PSD (8 and 16 bit), PNG, TIFF, or High Resolution JPEG.

Gerber Accumark 10.

Gerber Technology, a world leader in integrated solutions for the apparel and industrial markets. With Accumark you can quickly create new patterns or modify existing ones, use powerful shortcuts to automatically apply common pattern changes. You can also perform even the most complicated grading calculations instantly. Accumark allow designers to share 3D images and motion files, furthering collaboration and centralization of data. Designers will have a real-life visualization of designs and be able to make pattern corrections that can then be seen in 3D

Phimatrix professional

• phiMatrix gives you a design tool that overlays any image in any other software.
• You’ll use design templates based on nature’s secret of design, the golden ratio.
• You’ll select a template to complement your project with just a few clicks of a mouse, or easily create your own. (See examples of uses)
• You’ll make great composition and design decisions in seconds.
• Your results will be as unique and creative as you, yet use the same principles of design found in nature. Others will see them as natural and innately pleasing.

For more please visit www.designerstuffs.com and be part of the change where we can make it possible.

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5 points that all aspiring fashion designer should know !!!

There are some very important things that aspiring artists should know before they try and make it as a professional. Just because you have the creative ability to mold perception and shape moods using color doesn’t mean you have what it takes to make it as a designer.

In fact, being creative and being talented is rarely very lucrative. Being a professional fashion designer is as much about tenacity as it is about talent.

It takes a lot of concentrated energy, impressive levels of ability and commitment, and a combination of luck, timing, and business savvy to succeed as a fashion designer. It’s definitely not easy, but neither is it impossible — especially if you know what to expect when you are first starting your career.

Observe Trends (Then Avoid Them)

Keep current on the state of our industry by reading books, magazines and blog, and attending conferences. RSS feeds will allow you to quickly skim design- and culture-related content. Avoid design annuals as a source of inspiration, as they’re a record of what’s already been done. Study the work of other to understand it, not do duplicate it.

Be realistic about the customers that you are designing for.

“Designers often create the generic customers with impossible capabilities. I often call these the imagined Credit Card Model customer: She is young, fashionable, rich, stylish, travels the world, lives in an expensive apartment, eats at high-class restaurants, works in a highly stylised office. She also has a gorgeous boyfriend who drives a fast car and when they kiss, fireworks explode in the background … All these are marketing images to entice customers, not a realistic target market model.

“The typical Singapore customer is often the girl who is living in a flat with her parents, takes the MRT to work and eats at hawker centres. She likely works as administrative staff in a company, loves a bargain and dates a guy who isn’t interested in fashion, and prefers to play computer games than take her out shopping.

“I once had a designer who told me that she is a little bit sad that her customers are middle-aged aunties. At which I said to her that in this competitive industry, she should be thankful to actually have customers buying her stuff.”

SEEK CRITICISM, ACCEPT PRAISE

As a designer, listening to your ideas being questioned and your hard work being ripped apart isn’t usually very pleasant. However painful, though, constructive criticism of your design work is the most effective way to grow as a visual communicator. Remember this when you leave the critic room of design school for the boardrooms of the corporate world. Build a network of friends, co-workers and mentors where you can use to collect feedback on your work.

Learn to follow the fashion and retail calendar.

“There is a need to know when to drop new items and when customers are not in the mood to shop. Spring launches, Fall launches, Christmas launches, the Great Singapore Sale (GSS) and Chinese New Year are important shopping seasons.

“You also need to keep seasonal sale periods (like the GSS) in mind, so that customers will not go to major brands to shop for clothes instead of buying from smaller, independent labels.

“If your designs drop late  —  you’re releasing the Spring Summer collection in May instead of February or March — customers are going to wait until the GSS to buy their items.”

Freelance Regularly

Sure, you’d prefer to have one steady, high-paying job as an animator, illustrator, or designer. Who wouldn’t? It’d be great to receive bimonthly paychecks from your company, have health insurance and paid vacation days. Unfortunately, there are a lot more people like you vying for that steady job than there are jobs like that available.

Instead of waiting around for the perfect opportunity to fall out of the sky, you need to create your own opportunities. How do you do this?

• Freelance as much as you can. Expand your body of work and your network of professional relationships.
• Work with start-ups, do little one-off corporate projects, take month-long contract gigs. You never know which of the many pots on the fire is going to boil first.
• If you’ve gotten your work exposed to a lot of people, you’ll have much better odds of getting hired when one of these projects takes off. After all, you’ll already be a known and respected commodity.

For more please visit www.designerstuffs.com and be part of the change where we can make it possible.

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DEAR RETAILERS! PLEASE WAKE UP!!!!!!

The world is changing very fast and thus the style of people. Earlier people liked to go to brick and mortar stores to shop their garments, but these days a considerable chunk of population prefer to shop through online portals. Since the advent of fashion, we believed that unique designer creations are for people with heavy wallet. That was kind of a default thinking practices we have had for a long time and in many part of the world that’s what people think and believe of designer wear. But a recent study revealed that around 72% of women shoppers prefer to go for designer wear and a considerable 48% of men shopper prefer to opt for designer wear. And this is the new beginning which is going to be trend.

As in case of garment retail industry the change happens very slowly. The dynamism of market is such that the changes capture the trend and reset the trend but it is mostly unaware to consumer and thus to retailers. Whether the suburban hippy of 60s or classic formal of 80s or the forma-casuals of 90s they stayed there for a very long time. But the time taken for these trends to come to picture took almost 20-30 years and the retailers who were clever enough to understand the trend early had made a fortune out of it. Similarly till the late 90s or early part of the twenty first century people never believed that internet can go on and change the dynamics of how we see the world. But internet has changed the face of many consumer oriented industries. People used internet to save time and money and many more. And these days’ people are using internet to get through all the information at once. Today`s customers are tech savvy and they have a way of dealing with information. They use internet to grab information, finding options and they figure out the ways to save their money and time. And this particular trend is growing at a much faster rate. Within a single day sale in India, major E-tailer Flipkart sold more than 5 million garments or dresses. This is the power of online retailers. As far as offline retailers are considered, they are crying foul of online retailers and why shouldn`t they be? The predatory pricing adopted by the online retailers to sell the products have a direct impact on the offline retailers as the customers prefer such heavy discounts and low price to get the same quality of product. They only have to wait for few days to get their product in their hand, which seems fine with most of the customer.

A major question arises at this situation that how the online retailers are giving such heavy discounts where the offline retailers even claim that the selling price of these online retailers is less than the purchase price of the offline retailers. Is this the truth or simply the offline retailers don’t know how to play the game of retailing? There are many points to discuss on this particular topic, but let me put very straight that the overhead cost which includes the VAT, real estate cost, salary & wages, electricity and many more in case of offline retailers are the causes behind the pricing.

No doubt the brick and mortar stores will be there for a long time and their survival depends upon how they are competing in this tech savvy world and how they are bringing the unique changes which will attract the customers. The change may be about quality of product, price of product, uniqueness of product and so on.

So that is the reason why the world is waiting for a big boost for offline retailers who want to compete with the online retailers at a fair price level and we have to wait and see when it is going to happen and in our view we are bringing the starting point. Before concluding I just want to ask a single question what about omni-channel retailing means both offline and online?

For more please visit www.designerstuffs.com and be part of the change where we can make it possible.

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Questions – Designers Should Ask Themselves

A Chinese proverb tells us: “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.”  We usually ask other people questions, but there are more significantly those questions we must ask ourselves in order to live fuller lives.

I love questions, especially questions that can be answered in more ways than one. We don’t always give questions the time and attention they deserve, often seeing them as being simply a necessary, sometimes annoying rung up to that ‘more important’ thing – an answer. So today`s post about asking question. Let`s discuss what a fashion designer should ask to themselves before start something new.

What IF?

One of the most powerful questions every designer should ask themselves or their team is, What if? This is a trigger for free association that can churn up some great ideas. Brainstorming sessions can be exciting opportunities for exploring idea, no matter how fanciful. Not every idea that comes out will be gem. So it is important not to weigh down the process with the expectation of a specific result. Whether you create handcrafted vegan footwear or custom ball-gowns, before you take your product to market, experts suggest you ask yourself why, precisely, you want to do so. What’s your goal?

How can you build a platform this year for you to stand on next year?

This is an important one for me personally. I’m a planner. As unpredictable as life is (especially with an 11.5% unemployment rate), I like to have some idea of where I’m heading. So the question is, where are we going and what can we do in 2014 or 2015 that will help us get there? Even if you don’t know where exactly you want to go, but you’d like to be a great fashion designer, or you’d like to be someone who helps other to look good, what can you do this year to embody those traits? It’s daunting to look down the road and see everything that you wish you could someday be, but this year I’m going to try to look instead at the question: “what I can do today that will send me down that path?

Are you willing to take risk? Are you willing to risk loss in order to make money?

We all have a level of fear. Sometime it’s so deeply ingrained we don’t even know its fear at all. For me, it comes in the form of procrastination, of inaction, of staying too far INSIDE my comfort zone. Sometime I don’t want to try something new or approach a potential client in fear of looking foolish, being rejected, or making a mistake. I often hide it in the “I’m just too busy to do that” scenario playing in my head. Any of this sounds familiar to you?

Do you believe yourself that you have created exactly what your Client Had in Mind?

Here is the inspired part, the self improvement part if you will say. Because your client may look at your design and say yes, I like it a lot. No need for a revision! This is perfect! How do you feel about it? Really? Then you really give your client your best work. Did you work hard enough on giving them to your client? Sometime, not sometimes many a times it work the other way around. Your client says a lot of NOs to you. At this point you may toil hard to come out with your best design or you may get into that “I am too busy” mode and leave the chance out of your hand.

More often than ever

Yeah it`s true in most of the cases when designers figure out that their designs are getting accepted in the market then more often than ever they stick to the niche segment. Instead trying out something new for a larger market they stick to a niche segment and when they get any sort of competition in that segment they buckle up and leave the chance. Here just ask yourself are you really doing what you are good at? Are you really focusing on your strengths rather getting buckled up by the competition?

If you have any more questions then defiantly you can share in comments. And in the mean time you can join us @ www.designerstuffs.com .

FOUR MISUNDERSTANDINGS EVERY ASPIRING DESIGNER SHOULD OVERCOME

The Dream

I know you always dream to start and run your own clothing brand. The thought of seeing thousands of people wearing the art you created, it just feels like a rock star owning a famous band and seems great. But clothing industry is an overly saturated market. Everybody has this sexy idea of owning their own clothing line, but only the few who’ve done it will ever understand how hard it is to make a living at it. Don’t fool yourself, starting an indie brand is anything but easy, even the brands that rapidly rise to success have their struggles and trust me—they work really hard behind the scenes.

Misunderstanding 1-: it’s easy task

And on one fine morning you decide to start your own label. You create a couple of attractive designs, put them on-line, you show to your friends and get rich. The reality is, it takes more work than you could ever imagine at a normal day job. Plain and simple, this business is ferocious. It’s hard to stand out, and even harder to build a loyal audience large enough to support your business. I don’t want to discourage anyone. But you should keep some point in your mind before jumping into the sea.

Misunderstanding 2-: If you design well they will come

To be honest, this is the biggest misunderstanding. Whatever you want to do in life, chances are, someone else has been there, done that. Before jumping to something you should do a proper homework, who are your competitor, how much talented they are. Having something “great” isn’t enough to draw in crowds, you must have something original, you must present a total package, and you must learn to be patient. Just because you have some kick-ass designs doesn’t mean people are going to be crashing the servers to buy them. Think about it, how many incredible shirts have you seen online and in how many cases you thought “damn, that’s sick,” but you never actually bought it? Your designs may be awesome and unique, but building an audience will take time. Prepare yourself for that.

Misunderstanding 3-: you know it all when it comes to trends

You are not the exception. At least that’s how you need to think. Don’t think as you studded fashion you know it all. Keep up with local as well as national trends. Check for the newest fashion trends are at fashion shows. There are many fashion shows that are held throughout the year by different designers showcasing a variety of clothing designs, shoes collections and other fashion items. Watching or attending these shows can keep you updated. The best thing to do is listen to your customers. Customers will always let you know what they’re looking for, but only if you keenly follow them and try to understand. Visit your nearest wholesale mart to preview upcoming trends and new products.

Misunderstanding 4-; giving a name to your design and pretend it is the BRAND

You design a product; produce it, sale it with a name does not mean you create your own brand. You can’t tell a product a BRAND till the date everyone knows it. Till that it will be only a product not a BRAND. Establishing a brand is difficult. When we think of Establishing, the first things come to mind are advertising and promotion. But Promotion and advertising will not work if you do not have a quality product that people actually want.

In conclusion just let me say, the industry is hard, but it can definitely be fun and rewarding. Be realistic and enjoy the ride.

If you have a clear vision and aim to become a fashion designer, designerstuffs.com is inviting you. Let’s grow together. For more info and registration please visit www.designerstuffs.com .

A 13 YEAR OLD DESIGNER: TIME TO FOLLOW DREAMS

Today we are bringing an excerpt on a fashion prodigy and we believe you all will get inspired.

“kid” isn’t the best word to describe Taylor; By the time Isabella Rose Taylor was 10 years old, she had sewn an entire clothing collection. Now, at 13 (yes, she’s 13), Taylor is turning heads in the fashion world while most kids her age are working on their times tables.

Many 12-year-olds dream of becoming fashion designers, but very few actually see it happen…especially by the time they’re 13. Enter Isabella Rose Taylor, the Austin native whose clothing line will launch with Nordstrom this September. She’s an accomplished painter, a Mensa member, a college freshman (!), and now a fashion entrepreneur.

So how did it happen, Born in Austin, Texas, Taylor has always been drawn to art. Her parents enrolled her in a gifted school where they were told she qualified to be a member of Mensa, the high IQ society. Around the same time they sent her to her first sewing camp. Soon after, she started making her own clothes. Her designs drew compliments, and then her friends started asking her to sew clothes for them. She was asked to show a collection at Austin Fashion Week. Thanks to the help of a New York-based business coaching firm, Isabella’s team was able to build on the buzz (including key appearances on The Today Show and Steve Harvey), and by the time they decided to approach Nordstrom, the high-end retailer had already heard of the then-12-year-old prodigy…and her trend-setting duds. And now Her fashion line, which is described as “hippie-grunge, yet feminine,” launched for back-to-school this year.

And here is some pieces of interview taken by business Insider, teen vogue, CBSNEWS HOPE IT WILL BE A INSPIRATION FOR OUR ASPIRING DESIGNERS.

Business Insider: How did you first become interested in fashion?

Isabella Rose Taylor: I began to paint at a very early age, and it was through my passion for painting and fashion that my current fashion line has become a business. I have always been enamored with fashion and five years ago, while I was exploring mixed media in my artwork I decided I needed to learn how to sew. I had my Mom sign me up for a sewing camp. I fell in love with sewing and designing. I immediately began sewing clothes for myself. As some of my friends began liking what I was wearing, I got the idea to sell them and to start a business.

BI: What are some of your goals for the future?

IRT: My first goal is to make Isabella Rose Taylor a global brand. My second goal is to expand into accessories, handbags and shoes to complete my looks. Finally, I’d really love to inspire other girls and be a mentor to those who may not have the kind of support system that I have to help me achieve my dreams.

Jackson Brown said that: they were not only impressed with her ‘keen sense of creating,’ but also with her ability to explain how each piece works with the others and how the collection came together. ‘She’s actually quite a visionary at the age of 13,’

Sherri Taylor (Mother of Isabella Rose Taylor) said that: it was apparent early on that her daughter had an aptitude for art. ‘When she was really young we really noticed how she played with colors and it was just very unusual,’ she said. ‘We knew that something was happening so we just kept buying her more colors.’

‘She’s tried a lot of different things and some things stuck and something things didn’t, but art and fashion have been consistent,’

Aside from designing, Isabella is currently working on getting her associate’s degree in Fine Art before heading to a four-year college like FIT when she’s 18. Until then, she’s just concerned with regular teen stuff: school, friends, catching The Fault in Our Stars, and, you know, managing a skyrocketing career. Sounds like a full plate to us, but we’ll say this: We’re going to keep an eye on this girl.

OPTIONS OR NO OPTIONS

When we feel privileged? When we feel satisfying? When we feel that we can do anything? I believe it`s all about options. When we go to a mall to buy a shirt or denim, we look at the designs, quality and price and whenever anything is not up to the mark, we don’t buy them and when we are happy with every aspect, we buy them. It is very simple, isn`t it? So the whole decision making process depends upon the options the option to choose, the option to trial, the option to bargain, the option to alter. It was there and it is there in offline mode in brick and mortar stores. Big brands actually capitalize on these factors and we term it options. The sooner they bring one more option the chances of a product to get sold out is more. And also in online platforms, we enjoy options. the option to see and choose at fingertips without going anywhere, the option to select and keep it for a future buy out, the option to browse through range of products in clicks and most important the option of discounts (all most every online retailer is providing discounts these days). When we compare both the platforms then we can see options are everywhere, though different ones but these are there. So life is simple with options.

 

Considering a situation where these options are not there. Say in an online platform when

• We don’t have the option to trial (real time)
• We don’t have the option to bargain (the cost part)
• We don’t have the option for quality checking (no body explains or guide us in real time)
• We don’t have the option for exchanges (though some are providing)
• We don’t have the option for fringe benefits being a loyal customer

And say in an offline platform situations like

• We don’t have the option of checking the design or stock availability at finger tips without going to the store/mall/shop/outlet
• We don’t have the option of seating at home and checking through the stocks of various retailers
• We don’t have the option of future buy of a particular design (shopping kart facility)

Life is so beautiful without options, is it? If yes then we don’t need any change. If no then definitely we need change for something much better, much superior, much customer centric and much customer friendly.

So what`s your take – Options or no options, please let us know, we believe we can bring it for you.