LINK
I found it interesting, I just wish it was much more detailed. Fabrics are fascinating!
The globalization of fabric
Friday, February 29, 2008
PARIS:
Each time we encounter an amazing collection, it is well to remember
that it is the fabric that defines its uniqueness - but what is the
story of these textiles?
What is it that differentiates the high street from haute couture, the brand leader from the mass market: It is the cloth.
Try to track the source of these fabric miracles and you will meet
many barriers, because this is a world of secret suppliers - who
provides fabric for which labels is closely guarded intelligence.
Commercial etiquette prohibits the fabric manufacturers from
revealing their client brands for fear of losing them to rivals. Yet,
although they are as invisible as microfibers, these fabric companies
are the essential foundations upon which luxury fashion stands.
The economic shattering of traditional textile industries in the
past few decades has resulted in global specialists, with Italy for
fine silk and prints, England for worsted wools and tweeds, Japan for
high-tech fibers and finishes. A single collection is an international
textile exhibition, taking the best from each country.
In addition, "off-menu" textiles are created in lengthy
collaborations between fashion designers and fabric houses and a really
successful designer also has to be something of an expert in the
chemistry of cloth.
In Italy
Today, the historic makers of fine silk in Italy are under siege from the goliath producers of China and India.
Italy is the country of inspiration - one vast museum of print and
woven designs - and still with the skills to create hand-painted
designs for the most famous brands. A company like the century-old
Mantero on Lake Como, where I have been a research consultant, has an
archive of 12,000 books dating from 1800 to draw upon, some with
perhaps 1,000 fabric swatches or painted papers in each - millions of
little jewels to make the eyes tingle.
As a match to the fire of design imagination, a treasure bank like
this is priceless. An archive swatch, however, is only the beginning of
a long process. Designs are repeatedly reworked and recolored to fit a
specific designer's signature style.
To fully understand extravagance in a print design, just know that
as many as 54 colors can be layered precisely onto a piece of silk,
requiring the perfect registering, or matching, of 54 screens. If any
exquisite silk prints or weaves exist in your wardrobe, they are more
than sure to have been made by one of the legendary Italian companies
like Mantero, Lorma, Canepa or Ratti.
In England
Heritage is at the heart of all textile manufacturing and, just as
Italy is the natural home of silk, England is the historical homeland
of fine worsted manufacturers.
Think tweed and the double Cs of Chanel certainly come to mind. The
chilly borderlands between the north of England and Scotland have for
centuries created the world's best weaves and when Coco Chanel met
William Linton, the founder of Linton Tweeds, in the 1920s, a
collaboration was established that remains steadfast to this day.
One perfect example of a mill working hand-in-hand with a designer
is Bower Roebuck's collaboration with Paul Helbers, Louis Vuitton's
director of menswear and a man passionate about fiber and cloth. The
West Yorkshire mill has been producing material since 1899, and its
customers include some of the top tailoring designer brands, including
Hermès, Prada, Tom Ford, Dunhill and Brioni. (The British are less
squeamish about naming their clients.)
According to Wayne Fitton of Bower Roebuck, one of the mill's most
demanding challenges was to design for Helbers fabric with a dégradé,
or shaded, effect. Within an already complicated pattern, several
shades of color were arranged from dark to light to produce an
incandescent effect, like light moving over a surface.
In Japan
For total technical command in fabrics, however, no country can compete with Japan.
Perhaps most illustrative of just how minutely expert are the
Japanese is an ethereal composition in 100 percent polyester by Amaike
Textile, based on Honshu island. "Super-organza" is the thinnest and
lightest fabric in the world, an almost invisible floating film, as
insubstantial as a baby's breath.
Miniaturization was Japan's means of acquiring its near monopoly of
high-tech quality cloth. In the 1980s, its celebrated fashion designers
astonished the West with their fabric-based design, shifting the
emphasis from the cut and onto the cloth.
"Make me a fabric that looks like poison," Issey Miyake once asked
his textile engineer, Makiko Minagawa, and it is this poetic approach
to technology that characterizes the Japanese aesthetic. Artists in
textiles they may be, but their palette is the chemist's laboratory.
Many top designers admit that Japan provides them with the most
experimental and exciting materials. Nicolas Lepoutre, coordinator of
fabric research for Louis Vuitton's women's wear, says that 60 percent
of the company's fabrics are sourced there. One of the reasons, he
said, is that the Japanese will "try anything" and are willing and able
to produce very short runs of experimental pieces.
The Itochu Fashion System, based in Osaka, is a large trading
company and a first stop for European designers, who will find fabrics
created by numerous, all but anonymous manufacturers - like
color-morphing satins from Teijin Fibers, sculpture cloth from Toray
Industries and thermal color-change fibers from Kyokuyo Sangyo.
Susannah Handley is author of "Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
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