Student

Merchandising & Marketing Students Attend LA Textile Show

Merchandise Product Development Director Miguel Barragan and FIDM Instructor Victoria Jefferson led students on a field trip to the LA Textile Show at the California Mart, the fashion industry’s top destination for textile, design, and production resources on the West Coast. Presented bi-annually, LA Textile showcases a curated selection of premier textile mills, trim suppliers, design studios, manufacturing companies, and supply chain services from around the world, as well as a program of seminars designed to inform, inspire, and help activate design and manufacturing goals.

FIDM Grad and Managing Director of Peclers Paris, Jennifer Karuletwa gave a presentation, Design With Tomorrow In Mind: SS24 Inspiring Stories, sharing the key socio-cultural influences for the season and the creative transformation into colors, materials, silhouettes, prints and patterns.

The students were introduced to Jennifer Evans, Owner of The Evans Group (TEG), a full-service fashion development and production house headquartered in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles. Emerging and high-end designers come to TEG for their quality domestic craftsmanship. Jennifer Evans told the students she is looking for interns and they exchanged contact information.

Before heading into the show, Miguel walked his Portfolio Capstone students through the Fashion District in order to introduce them to top fabric and trim suppliers including Ace Sewing, Trim 2000 Plus, Fabrics & Fabrics, Mikey's Fabric, Angel Textiles, and Fashion Deco Fabrics (formerly Michael Levine). He pointed out which shops specialize in which fabrics and he introduced the students to the owners where they secured business contact information.

Instructor Victoria Jefferson led the Premier students through the LA Textile Show, introducing them to vendors. Currently a Technical Designer for Perris Ellis International, Victoria is an apparel industry professional with skilled experience in technical design, product engineering, and garment construction. For the past 18 years, Victoria has been teaching Pre-production for Apparel, Advanced Pre-production, Trend and Design Application, and Trim Development and Application at FIDM.

Victoria Jefferson's recap of the student experience at the textile show:

California Apparel News: The publication gave complimentary copies of their current weekly trade paper and advised the students to sign up for the newsletter to keep abreast of local, domestic, and industry happenings.

V. Mora: The representative discussed how they work on brand management with emerging designers to develop their lines from a sketch, and the importance of a tech pack for the development an production process. 

TEG: Jack spoke to the crowd and explained that The Evans Group is full-service fashion development and production house, working with emerging and high-end designers through quality domestic craftsmanship in Los Angeles (USA). 

Cotton Inc: Jennifer Lukowiak, the director of Supply Chain Marketing a great introduction on Cotton, In. She implored the students to sign up on the website, and discussed that Cotton Inc has a 3D fabric library available at no charge. They also gave each student a 100% cotton bandana. 

Perclers: FIDM Alumna Jennifer Karuletwa discussed how Perclers is a trend forecast service that provides daily trend analysis, style forecasting, inspirational mood boards, and other tools for design teams. She discussed their unique position in establishing forecast as opposed to chancing trends. and, how they use psychology as an important marker to understand the factors that make it likely a product will be adopted by a group of consumers, and how to predict how long that product, colors or certain trends will continue to stay in fashion. 

Kalimo: The rep discussed how to create your own print, artwork and the type of files (illustrator, photoshop) needed to translate the designers artwork onto a variety of fabric qualities and textures. Kalimo is based in Brazil and specializes in fabrics for swim, active and lingerie. 

Beyond the Loom: Joanne Satin at Beyond the Loom is an agent for Turkish mills. She gave the group the most inspiring talk about how she started in the industry 35+ years ago. She talked about the Raschel knits that she represents from a couple of Turkish mills. Janet explained how educated herself with the new technologies to remain relevant in the industry. She taught herself how to knit by purchasing an expensive knitting loom to learn the technique. Early in her career, she designed knit fabrics. She told the students that they are in a unique position in the industry where there are new technologies in the apparel and textile arena, and to take the imitative to embrace the technologies, always learn and seek new opportunities. 

1011 Concept Studio: After years working in the garment industry FIDM Grad Leah VandenAkker started a business with a partner. She showed the students a couple of mood boards that she developed and talked about the importance of these boards as inspiration for coming up with a variety of print stories, the process of developing trend boards based on customer feedback and designing the prints from research, and sourcing. She also sold vintage printed garments to clients. Her service will also develop a new print from the vintage garment, making a 30% change in the artwork and re-coloring the new design to create a new textile print.

ABM Trim: Talked about the broad range of buttons, trims, and accessories that they provide to the industry. They featured trim that was made from natural and synthetic materials. He pulled out a couple of binders filled with buttons and hardware to show the students.

Billon and Elliot Berman: Patricia Boucquemont is a fabric representative for Billon and Elliot Berman. At her booth she talked about the jacquard fabric she represents from a mill in Lyon. She also represents high-end fabric from Elliot Berman Textiles. She invited the students to browse the racks of headers of a variety of beautiful fabrics.

Categories:  Merchandising & Marketing Student