Experienced Freelance Fashion Designer | Sportswear, Activewear, Streetwear and Outdoor Specialist | Helping startups and established brands build bespoke fashion collections
Your Fashion Designer Has Handed You Tech Packs for Your Designs. What Do You Do? Receiving tech packs from your fashion designer is a crucial step in bringing your designs to life. These detailed documents are the blueprint for sampling, so taking the time to thoroughly review them is essential. Tech packs contain a wealth of information, and it can be overwhelming at first glance. However, if you have strong opinions about your design, it's vital to go through them carefully. During the design stage, the focus is on the general aesthetic and overall look of the garment. Once the style and design direction are locked down, the designer can then delve into the construction details. These finer details, such as stitching types and the size of graphics and logos, are often finalised at the tech pack stage. When you receive the tech packs, make sure to review these details thoroughly. For logos and artwork sizing, a great tip is to print them out in actual size. If you can't do this yourself, ask the designer to send them to you in the correct size. You can then cut them out and hold them up to a garment to check the scale. Pay attention to the stitching as well. Is it a single row of stitching, a double stitch, or something more intricate? If you don't understand something, ask questions. What you see on the tech pack is what you'll get in the final product. If you love the stitching on a hoodie but it looks different on the tech pack, raise your concerns. Remember, these fine details are important but subjective. Your preferences might differ from your designer's. If you're flexible, you can wait for the first samples and then make comments and changes. This is a normal part of the process. Just don't be surprised if the samples reflect the tech packs exactly and differ from your vision. www.jmitchelldesign.co.uk #fashiondesigner #fashiondevelopment #managingexpectations
Great advice Jonathan Mitchell Are tech pack reviews something you advise with every client?
These details also have an impact on costing… the wrong stitch type could affect cost and overall construction too depending on the design and fabrication
All such great information and the visual is the best when you consider off-shore sourcing and who will actually be reading your tech packs. If I may, find out what YOUR factory calls a stitch. There are many ways to describe these fine details and have learned to assume anything that can be misinterpreted probably will be. I’ve heard the same stitch called a few variations. #details!
Tech packs are such an important part of the process. It’s that simple. You don’t build (insert anything here) without a blueprint.
I always attach a photo of ISO stitch 605. It has too many names and causes too much confusion. It also gets confused by some people as floatlock which it is very much not.
Yes, different sewing methods and lace materials, types have a great impact in cloth producing. So we need to constantly confirm the details with factory, designerin order to achieve satisfactory results
Found this very insightful, coming from someone like me who is still learning and trying to improve my knowledge in creating tech packs! I will take these into consideration when I'm creating tech packs!
Jonathan Mitchell so well said! Fully agree.
Costume Cutter & Tailor
6moAs someone who comes from a more bedpoke background I’m curious how these things aren’t hamnered out at the sanpling stage. Also why they are two designers in this process, the sender and the recipient? Am I right in assuming that the recipient is the client? If so it will be hard fir them to envisage types of stitching and size of logo without an actual sample garment to examine.