Adventures in CAD

My dad is... well, technically I guess he's an inventor, but most recently he's an industrial designer. He does a lot of work with CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs, and is pretty active on the internet in CAD circles. As such, he's recently gotten involved with a company called AutoDesk, which has a new program, Fusion360, in beta. They wanted his input and wined and dined him in Portland and San Francisco, and as it turns out they're really looking for new ideas regarding CAD work and what their program could be used for. I've been curious for a long time about designing patterns on the computer- pattern drafting by hand is a wonderful skill, but it takes a long time and I can't help thinking that there has to be a better way to do things. I've signed up for the Fusion360 beta, and I'm currently going through the tutorials and stuff. What I'm proposing to do- that is, using a 3D-modeling program to create 2D patterns- is pushing the boundaries of what this software is intended to do, but I think it could be really great.
One of the wonderful things about sewing for me is that it's been much the same for decades. Various advances in sewing machine technology have brought about some changes, and certainly the invention of the serger was pretty radical, but even so, the process of drafting the pattern, cutting the fabric, and putting it together isn't that much different. It's an ancient technology. At the same time, I firmly believe that we as a society need to move with the times. New tech isn't going to go anywhere just because we like old tech better, so we might as well get used to it and make it work like we want. Just like cars supplanted horse-drawn carriages, and like cell phones are gradually replacing landlines, I think the art of drafting patterns by hand is going to die out. The eternal problem with clothing design is making clothes fit. Before ready-to-wear clothing, pretty much everyone made their own clothes, or had someone make them. Clothing was, by and large, custom (at least if you were wealthy enough- I am making generalizations here, I know, but it's in service of making a point). With the advent of ready-to-wear clothing, suddenly there came a problem: people come in lots and lots of different shapes and sizes, and it's practically impossible to generalize what a person looks like. The various sizing systems that have developed to cope with this do not work. I started making my own clothes because I was so frustrated with never being able to find anything to fit me. The future of the garment industry is in a return to custom-fitted clothing, but using the new tech that we have available. When my dad was at AutoDesk's San Francisco offices, they had a machine that could create a 3D scan of your body. From a scan like that, a pattern could be produced for clothing that would be fitted exactly to you. Part of the expense of custom-made clothing, or of haute couture for that matter, is in creating a custom pattern. If that process could be automated, I believe that custom clothing could be made much more cheaply.
Having clothes that fit is really great for your self-esteem. I used to hate my body because I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong because nothing ever fit me. I'm very short and relatively thin, but I'm also quite curvy and a definite pear shape. In most things I wear a 0-2, but the body shape for which size 0-2 clothes are designed is the slim, androgynous body of a runway model. My hips were always too big, my waist and chest too small. Nothing ever fit right, and I put the blame on myself, when instead I should have put it on the clothes I was wearing. Making clothes for myself was a way to own my body shape and become comfortable with it. I'm lucky, though. I can at least find clothes in roughly my size. The whole area of plus-size fashion is something I can't really talk too much about, as I've never been plus-size, but I can imagine that easier and cheaper access to custom clothing could only be a good thing.
So. That turned into a bit of a rant. Anyway, I'll post about how Fusion360 works out.

Hello and Welcome! A Manifesto?

I just graduated from Reed College, with a degree in theatre. I specialized in costume design. Now that I've got a fancy degree, though, I'm faced with the terrible problem of What To Do Next. I want to be a fashion designer. I've been sewing pretty much my whole life and making my own clothes since high school. I eat, sleep, and breathe clothes, and always have. I've tried to hide it at various points in my life, under the misapprehension that I should strive to be a teacher, or an academic, or a diplomat- something "more important" than a mere fashion designer. Once I started college, though, and started having to think about clothing in an academic way, I realized that being a fashion designer is, in its own way, every bit as important as any of those other things. Clothing helps shape the way we think and feel about ourselves. Clothing is vitally important. The world right now needs designers who are willing to think about clothing in new ways, designers who are willing to think about the role technology is going to play in fashion, about gender and sexuality as they relate to fashion, and the world needs designers who are willing to stop designing for supermodels and instead take into account the myriad of different body types there are in the world. I would like to be one of those designers.

So here I am. I graduated from college exactly six days ago. I'll be living in Portland, looking for a job, and trying to make it big (or at least make it) in the world of independent fashion design. I'll be writing about my experiences here. You can also expect to see outfit posts and the occasional craft or sewing tutorial. I keep a tumblr of inspirational images here.

The title, for the curious, comes from a P.G. Woodehouse story.