Three essential reads for understanding fashion beyond the runway
Fashion is often presented from the outside in.
We see the designer.
The collection.
The campaign.
The runway.
The finished garment.
But what happens when we look in the other direction?
Who translates a sketch into a pattern? Where does the garment actually get made? And what happens when creative ambition collides with the economics of running a fashion company?
For this edition of Editor’s Picks, Fashion 4Eleven is looking at three works that approach those questions from very different positions:
a fashion professional’s memoir, New York Times reporting on garment manufacturing, and a Business of Fashion analysis of the economics facing independent brands.
They are not interchangeable sources, and they do not tell one single story. What they do provide is something more useful: three lenses through which to examine the infrastructure behind fashion.
Because fashion doesn’t begin on the runway.
It begins with the people, places and business systems that make the runway possible.
01 — THE PATTERN MAKER’S MEMOIR
Just Being Jon: A Memoir — Jon Haggins
Read about Jon Haggins and his memoir through The HistoryMakers
The first selection is Just Being Jon: A Memoir by Jon Haggins, the late fashion designer, author and television personality.
Haggins’ career provides an unusual window into the working world behind fashion. He studied at New York’s High School of Fashion Industries and the Fashion Institute of Technology, began his professional career as a pattern maker, worked for a blouse manufacturer and eventually established his own fashion business.
That trajectory makes the memoir particularly relevant to anyone interested in the relationship between technical skill and creative authorship.
Haggins recalled that Black professionals working behind the scenes in fashion houses during the 1960s were often largely invisible.
That observation is important because it changes the question we ask about fashion history.
Instead of asking only Who was the designer?, we can also ask:
Who was in the room making the designer’s work possible?
Patternmaking sits directly in that space.
A designer may establish the concept, silhouette or visual language. A pattern maker helps translate that concept into the geometry of an actual garment.
A sketch becomes measurements.
Measurements become shapes.
Shapes become pattern pieces.
Pattern pieces become a three-dimensional object.
And the process requires considerably more than artistic instinct.
It involves fit, proportion, construction, fabric behavior, grading, technical judgment and repeated problem-solving.
WHAT THIS MEMOIR HELPS US SEE
Haggins’ story is not a technical textbook on patternmaking. Its value for Fashion 4Eleven is broader.
It places technical fashion work inside an individual’s career and demonstrates that the industry’s creative history is also a history of jobs, skills, relationships and access.
That distinction matters.
Fashion education can sometimes encourage students to think primarily in terms of becoming a “designer.”
The industry itself requires a much larger workforce.
Pattern makers.
Technical designers.
Sample makers.
Cutters.
Sewists.
Fit technicians.
Production managers.
Sourcing specialists.
And many others.
Editor’s takeaway: If you want to understand fashion, don’t study only the person who imagined the garment. Study the people who knew how to make the garment real.
02 — THE NEW YORK TIMES ON MANUFACTURING
“New York Tries to Revive Garment Industry, Outside the Garment District” — Winnie Hu
Read the original New York Times reporting
The second selection moves from an individual’s career to the physical infrastructure of the industry.
In “New York Tries to Revive Garment Industry, Outside the Garment District,” New York Times reporter Winnie Hu examined New York City’s effort to maintain and rebuild apparel manufacturing at a time when the historic Manhattan Garment District was losing factories and showrooms.
The February 7, 2017 article opens with the story of Max Hernandez, a young worker who came to New York looking for sewing work and eventually found a position at UZI in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
The article’s central tension can be captured in one short line from Hernandez:
“New York City is the center of the fashion world, but hardly any of it is made here.”
That sentence is useful because it exposes a contradiction that remains relevant to fashion-business discussions.
New York can remain a global center for fashion design, media, marketing and culture while simultaneously losing some of the physical infrastructure required to manufacture clothing.
Hu’s reporting describes factories disappearing from the traditional Garment District amid rising rents and labor costs, outdated workspaces and competition from overseas production. It also documents the emergence of manufacturing activity in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
WHY THE LOCATION OF MANUFACTURING MATTERS
A factory is more than a physical production site.
It represents accumulated capabilities.
A manufacturer knows how to work with particular fabrics.
A sample maker knows how to solve construction problems.
A production manager understands scheduling.
A cutter understands material utilization.
A sewing operator develops specialized expertise.
A quality-control professional understands what a production defect looks like before thousands of units leave the facility.
When those capabilities disappear from a region, replacing them isn’t necessarily as simple as opening another building and installing machines.
That is why manufacturing geography matters.
For emerging designers, the issue is also practical.
Domestic production can potentially provide shorter communication loops, closer oversight, smaller production opportunities and easier access to sampling.
But those advantages have costs.
Labor costs.
Rent.
Equipment.
Materials.
Compliance.
Minimum orders.
Quality control.
Shipping.
And the manufacturer’s own need to remain financially viable.
The lesson isn’t that every designer should manufacture domestically.
It is that designers should understand the economics and capabilities of the production system they depend upon.
Editor’s takeaway: Don’t ask only where a garment was designed. Ask where it was made, who made it and whether the production ecosystem can survive economically.
03 — THE BUSINESS OF FASHION ANALYSIS
“Where Do Independent Fashion Brands Go From Here?” — Business of Fashion
Read the original Business of Fashion analysis
The third selection takes us from the production floor to the financial model.
In “Where Do Independent Fashion Brands Go From Here?”, The Business of Fashion examined the structural challenges facing independent fashion businesses and asked a deceptively simple question:
What does a healthy fashion business actually look like?
The analysis is particularly useful because it challenges the assumption that creative visibility and commercial health are the same thing.
They aren’t.
A fashion company can have:
A strong aesthetic.
A talented designer.
Excellent photography.
Social-media attention.
Celebrity exposure.
A respected showroom.
And still have a fundamentally unhealthy business.
The BoF analysis points toward the less glamorous side of fashion entrepreneurship: costs, cash flow, wholesale terms, inventory and profitability. It notes, for example, that independent brands can face significant pressure even when they appear successful from the outside.
One particularly useful observation comes from Gary Wassner of Hilldun, who emphasizes the importance of understanding production and sampling costs and closely examining the company’s profit-and-loss statement.
That is the point where fashion education and fashion entrepreneurship need to intersect.
A designer needs to know:
What does this garment cost?
What does it cost to develop the sample?
What is the wholesale price?
What is the retail price?
What happens to the margin after production, shipping, commissions, returns and overhead?
How long does the company have to wait to get paid?
How much working capital is required to produce the next collection?
The retail price is not the profit.
Revenue is not profit.
And sales volume does not automatically produce a healthy company.
THE BUSINESS QUESTION
The BoF analysis is especially valuable for emerging brands because it moves the conversation away from the idea that growth is inherently good.
Growth can create new problems.
More inventory.
More working capital requirements.
More employees.
More production commitments.
More fulfillment.
More returns.
More exposure to wholesale payment cycles.
More overhead.
The question isn’t simply:
How big can the brand become?
It is:
Can the business grow without becoming financially weaker?
Editor’s takeaway: Creativity can start a fashion company. Financial discipline determines whether the company can continue.
WHY THESE THREE WORKS BELONG TOGETHER
These three selections do not cover every part of fashion.
They do something more specific.
They allow us to examine three connected layers of the industry.
THE CRAFT
Just Being Jon
Who possesses the technical and creative skills required to turn an idea into a garment?
↓
THE INFRASTRUCTURE
The New York Times
Where does production happen, and what happens when the infrastructure supporting that production begins to disappear?
↓
THE BUSINESS
Business of Fashion
Can the company that coordinates all of those activities generate enough economic value to survive?
That produces three questions every emerging fashion professional should understand:
Can we make it?
Can we produce it?
Can we build a sustainable business around it?
THE BIGGER PATTERN
Taken together, these works suggest that fashion should be understood as an ecosystem rather than simply a collection of finished images.
The pattern maker represents technical knowledge.
The manufacturer represents production infrastructure.
The entrepreneur represents economic sustainability.
And none of those systems exists independently.
A designer cannot manufacture without people.
A manufacturer cannot operate without economically viable orders.
A brand cannot sell a product profitably if its production economics are fundamentally broken.
This is why conversations about fashion increasingly need to move beyond aesthetics.
Technology is changing design workflows.
AI is changing creative and operational processes.
Globalization has redistributed manufacturing.
E-commerce has changed distribution.
Social media has changed customer acquisition.
And economic pressure is forcing brands to reconsider inventory, sourcing, pricing and growth.
The boundaries between creative professional, technical professional and businessperson are becoming less rigid.
THE FASHION 4ELEVEN PERSPECTIVE
These three selections also illustrate how Fashion 4Eleven approaches industry coverage.
We should pay attention to the people who aren’t always standing in front of the camera.
The pattern maker.
The sample maker.
The factory owner.
The sewing operator.
The production manager.
The textile developer.
The sourcing professional.
The technical designer.
The accountant.
The attorney.
The buyer.
The merchandiser.
The logistics professional.
The entrepreneur.
They are not peripheral to fashion.
They are the fashion industry.
The runway is the visible result.
The system behind it is the story.
And understanding that system gives emerging professionals something more valuable than inspiration.
It gives them context.
THREE QUESTIONS TO TAKE AWAY
After reading these works, every emerging fashion professional should be asking:
1. CAN I MAKE IT?
Do I understand construction, materials, fit, patternmaking and technical development well enough to turn an idea into a real product?
2. CAN I PRODUCE IT?
Do I know who can manufacture it, what the production requirements are, what it will cost and how quality will be controlled?
3. CAN I BUILD A BUSINESS AROUND IT?
Do I understand my customer, pricing, margins, distribution, inventory and cash-flow requirements?
If the answer to one of those questions is no, the idea doesn’t necessarily need to be abandoned.
It means there is more to learn.
And learning those systems may be one of the most valuable forms of fashion education available.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The purpose of this edition of Editor’s Picks isn’t to tell readers what to believe about fashion.
It is to give them better material with which to think.
Jon Haggins’ memoir provides a personal window into a fashion career that included technical work, design and entrepreneurship.
The New York Times’ reporting documents the economic and geographic realities surrounding New York garment manufacturing.
Business of Fashion’s analysis examines the financial pressures confronting independent fashion businesses.
Read separately, each work answers a different question.
Read together, they encourage a larger one:
What does it actually take to make fashion happen?
The answer extends far beyond the runway.
It involves skill.
Infrastructure.
Capital.
Labor.
Production.
Management.
Markets.
And the people who connect all of them.
Read beyond the runway.
Study the craft.
Understand manufacturing.
Learn the business.
Then decide where you want to build your place in the industry.
Editor’s Picks is a recurring Fashion 4Eleven feature highlighting books, reporting, research, interviews, essays, documentaries and other works that deepen our understanding of the fashion industry.
