I have been working in the fashion industry for a few years now as a sample cutter, creative pattern cutter and technical pattern cutter, so I wanted to share some of my experiences with you.
Fresh out of the University of Derby, I started work as a sample cutter in Nottingham. I was cutting out garments in fabric from the pattern pieces that a senior pattern cutter had already made. This would go to a machinist who would make the pieces into a finished product. Once made, this would be sent to the buying team at Topshop etc, who would hopefully make an order on this sample. A part of a sample cutters job is to also proof read the pattern information so that some or all mistakes are ironed out before it gets to the machinist. This is to save time and increase accuracy, otherwise if mistakes are found by the machinist, they would needs to stop, a garment may need to be recut and the whole process may possibly need to be started again.
I also did the job of a pattern room assistant in which, I would do the general admin duties, like uploading pictures onto the database, costing and emailing designers in the London office with general queries regarding their designs and development.
As a newbie in fashion, sample cutting, design room assistant and pattern room assistant is a great stepping stone into the industry. It is where you develop the chops to be able to do things competently and to understand the market you are entering.
My chosen area was commercial / high-street where the main focus and challenge is creating a beautiful product that is within a certain budget. This position helped me to understand the costing process, how to create patterns that were cost effective and be able to accurately check my work and to be efficient as possible.
I was also given the opportunity to create first patterns with the help and tuition of a profession pattern cutter with many years of experience. Learning from a professional in the industry is way more valuable in my opinion compared to the approach in university. University gives you free range to make things, but in a commercial context, you are confined by target price.
A creative pattern cutter is someone who usually only creates first patterns from designs, sketches and occasionally copies a store brought garment. A creative pattern cutter would normally not do amendments to a sample after it as sold and goes into the fit stages.
As a technical pattern cutter, it is your responsibility to get garments perfect and ready for production quickly and efficiently. You are usually working to a tight schedule of around 3 to 6 weeks, in which time the production needs to be delivered to the customers warehouse.
This is quite a complex job, but I will keep it short. A technical person does have a tight deadline and in this time you need to go through a fit process of around 0 to 4 fits (0-1 being the ideal situation) and you have to complete all the amendments, which need to all measure within a 0.5mm to 1cm tolerance and resubmitted to the customer. After the fit is approved the garment would need to go through some final stages depending on the customer. Some customers may request the final garment in correct bulk production fabric, which is called a pre-production approval sample.
After all is complete you can grade the garment using many different software packages. These software packages are, but not limited to:
- Vetigraph
- Lectra
- Gerber
- Assyst Bulmer
- Optitex
- Pad
- Investronica
Vetigraph is the package I am familiar with and is a great software package that simplifies the pain of grading.
Grading is done using a technical spec that is either completed by the customer or by yourself. You would be expected to be able to create a graded spec as a technical pattern cutter. I will try to show you how to do this in a later post.
I really hope this brief overview of pattern cutting as been helpful and informative to you and I hope to elaborate on things further in future posts.
Thanks for reading and hope to catch you again soon.
Dwaine.
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