Fashion English Online - Class 1

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Welcome to class one of Introduction to Fashion English.

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I’m Rosanna Ryan and I'm the author of The Fashion English Bible.

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I'm going to tell you a little bit about my history.

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Just so you can get to know me and understand how I came to teaching
Fashion English.

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I've been a fashion lover my whole life ever since I was little, my mother
who was a seamstress and I

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would get together and look at magazines and think of cool dresses
together. We would draw them and then

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we would go to the fabric store and pick out patterns.

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My mom would sew my dream dresses together.

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Needless to say, I was obsessed.

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Instead of looking at TV I was reading Vogue magazine, which is why I went
to Savannah College of Art

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and Design and studied fashion.

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I worked in New York, London and Madrid in the fashion industry, both on
the design side and the retail

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side.
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Even though my dream was to design I decided to start teaching English
which was something I was also

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really interested in.

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I ended up teaching fashion professionals and realized that there's a lot
more English in the fashion

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world than there is Spanish, which is not usually the case.

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Usually there's a lot more Spanish vocabulary than English vocabulary for
industries.

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But in this case it's all about the English and some French of course.

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So now I'm bringing you Introduction to fashion English an online course
which is much more interactive

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reading books are wonderful and I definitely recommend you get it if you
don't have it already.

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But it is super important to sit down and watch videos and listen and look
at my mouth so you understand

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how to pronounce everything.

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I also just think it's a lot more fun to listen to somebody tell a story
about the industry and learn

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vocabulary that way! Which is why in Introduction to Fashion English, the
way that I'm going to teach
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you vocabulary is by telling you a story about how the industry works.

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We're going to talk about the design process.

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We're going to talk about fashion shows.

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We're going to talk about pattern making, we're going to talk about a lot
of different aspects and how

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they work.

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Maybe you're a student, maybe you're a fashion design student, maybe or a
fashion professional, maybe you

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already have a lot of experience in industry or maybe you haven't even
started your journey.

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But you know you love it! Whatever the case is….

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I'm going to tell you the story as if you didn't know anything about
fashion just so we can get a strong

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base with all of the base vocabulary in the fashion industry and from
there we'll continue building

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up and growing your vocabulary.

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With that said let's begin with the first class: The Design Process

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In my eyes

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The fashion industry begins with the fashion designer, not just because I
studied fashion design but

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because really, that's the reality.

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It all starts with the garments, right?

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And behind those garments... what are garments?...garments are ‘prendas’.
Behind those garments are fashion

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designers. A fashion designer’s process begins with their inspiration or
concept as we say in the fashion

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industry.

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And this concept can come from anywhere.

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It could be from an exhibition at a museum.

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It could be from a movie.

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It could be a feeling maybe you want to talk about love... Whatever the
concept is,

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They take that concept and then, like in everything else, they want to
tell a story with that concept

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through their collection.

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Once they have the concept or idea behind the collection, what they do is
they start creating a mood

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board. A mood board is like a collage of images.

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And basically it's a collection of anything that represents their
inspiration.

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They might go to the library and look at history books about fashion. They
might take Vogue magazines

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from the 60s or they might look online on at Google as we all do.

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They take all of those images and put them on a wall, or a board.

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And that's what we call the ‘mood board’.

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Mood is a word that we say for ‘emoción’, the way that you feel... for
example “I'm in a great mood

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right now.”

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“Yesterday I was in a bad mood because I got bad news, but today I'm in a
good mood.”

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You get the idea.

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Right.

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So you have the mood board and then consequently you also start developing
the color story. The color

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story as you can imagine is the palette of colors that the designer uses
throughout their collection.

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If the concept behind the collection is a really happy one, then you're
probably going to see bright

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colors.

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But if it's a little bit more serious or maybe we're talking about a
winter collection, the color palette

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or color story will be a little bit darker. Within a collection,

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we have several different sections or capsules.

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You probably already know the word capsule.

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You've heard it, for example, from H&M. Every time H&M launches a
collaboration with a designer

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for example, that collaboration they did with Karl Lagerfeld... a big
collectionm a normal one is usually

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from about 40 to 60 total looks. A capsule collection can be anything from
3 looks to 10.

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So within a collection, there are different parts to the story: the
beginning, the middle, and the end... and those

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are usually capsules within the collection! Maybe, for example, you begin
with daywear: clothes that you

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wear during the day. Maybe, then you continue with cocktail wear, clothes
that you wear to an evening event.

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And then maybe finally you end with formal wear: gowns (gowns are long
dresses).

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It all really depends on the company or designer that we're talking about.
The design process is different

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for every designer.

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You can probably imagine that a designer in INDITEX doesn't have the same
process as a designer like

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Ana locking or Juan Vidal, for example.

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So, what do designers do? They call fabric studios or fabric companies in
Italy, France, wherever... China... and

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they ask for fabric swatches. Fabric swatches are little small squares of
fabric that you receive. They’re

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samples basically, and from that, they select which fabrics they're going
to use in their collection.

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So fabrics are selected, colors story is defined.

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You have your mood board.

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The designer begins the illustrations of all of the looks in the
collection and then in order to make

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those illustrations you have to know technically how those will be made
and you have to communicate

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that to the seamstress or the tailor and the pattern maker. The seamstress
is the woman who sews clothes

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and the tailor is usually a ‘sastre’...

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The man that does it.

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Now I say “women” and then I say “men”... seamstress... tailor... because
in reality that's how it's always been

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looked at! Obviously times have changed, a tailor can be a woman as well.

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But if you're talking about a male who sews you can say seamster, even
though it's not that common of a word.

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So, in order to communicate your designs to the pattern maker, you need to
create what we call “flats”.

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And those are technical drawings.

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Once those technical flats are finished and you give them to the pattern
maker, the pattern maker begins

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making the prototypes. The prototypes... not that common of a word... or
muslin (very common)... or ‘toile’ — which is

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actually a French word — is made of a very basic fabric.

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It's called muslin in the States because the fabric that they use for
those prototypes is muslin.

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It's a really light or medium or heavyweight fabric.
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Normally a beige color. Anyway the pattern maker takes the flat, makes the
pattern, and then it goes to

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the pattern cutter. The pattern cutter is the one that cuts the pattern on
the fabric and once that's

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done they take it to the seamstress or the tailor and they create the
prototype.

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So then, begins the fitting! And the fit model comes in! A fit model is
not the same thing as a runway

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model. A fit model might not be the most gorgeous person that you've ever
seen, but she has the perfect

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measurements for those prototypes.

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So the fit model comes in and then they try the toiles or the muslins on
the model's body and these are

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fittings. When they do the fittings and they make the changes to those
prototypes it goes back to the

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pattern maker. The pattern maker makes the adjustments on the pattern,
goes back to the seamstress, they

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make the changes and then the process begins again! There can be several
muslins, several versions of

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a prototype, before they actually finally get that garment that they want.
By the way, speaking of garment,

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we have different words to talk about clothes.
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So like I just said, we have “clothes”, we have “clothing”, we have
“apparel” and we have “garment”. Now, garment

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is a countable noun. You can say “one garment”, “two garments”, “three
garments”... but “apparel” or “clothing” or “clothes”

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are uncountable nouns. To make them countable you have to use the word
“piece”, so you could say “a piece

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of apparel”, “a piece of clothing”, “a piece of clothes”... you cannot say
“one apparel” “two apparel” “one clothes”

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“two clothes”... it doesn't really make sense because it's uncountable. So
we come to the end of the fitting

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and now we finally have our final sample. The sample is the garment that
you see on the runway! That's

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what we're going to talk about in our next class! Fashion shows! All of
the vocabulary around them and why

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they even happen.

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But before we do that I want to do a translation list with you.

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I'm going to give you a translation list in every class.

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And what I want you to do is to print this translation list, put it on
your desk, take a piece of paper,

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cover the English, and test yourself!
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So, for example, if the first sentence in the translation list is “hay una
manzana encima de la mesa”,

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I want you to look at that sentence, say it out loud and then say the
English one out loud.

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Look at the paper.

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See if you made any mistakes.

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Write down those mistakes so that you remember them and then go to the
next sentence.

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Do the whole list, do it again and then pick it up the next day and repeat
the same exercise.

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This is how you're going to understand different structures, vocabulary
and expressions that we use in

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Fashion English.

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So let's begin with translation list one from the design process

[para ver la lista de traducción, descarga el “PDF Study Guide” de esta

unidad]

Fashion English ©