DEFINING FASHION: Patterns

For anyone new to fashion design & construction the word pattern can be a red herring.

Yes, in layman’s terms a pattern is the design on your clothes, your pinstripes, your polka dots - you name it. You could also call it the print.

However, when you’re in the atelier hearing people shout about finding the right pattern, don’t suggest florals are the pick of the season. (Groundbreaking).

For a dressmaker their pattern refers to the flat shapes that are cut out of the fabric, then bent and sewn together to make a 3d garment. If you look down at what you’re wearing right now it isn’t just a magical tube of clothing, its individual shapes cut out and sewn together.

Those sections are the pattern.

In the studio a highly skilled pattern maker will draw up the patterns based on the garment designs, not (you guessed it) pattern paper, and the dress makers will use the paper shapes to stencil out their own fabric shapes in turn from these. It’s a difficult job not only because you have to conceptualise a 3d garment out of flat shapes, but you also have to thing about the fit, consider how the pattern will change as you size up and size down and make every fiddly shape from collars to cuffs.

So there you go, there are patterns, then there are patterns.