Designer clothing: a certain style, classy fabric, a name— and a high price tag. Most of the price is for the name on the label, right? Besides, you just can't find good quality in clothing anymore, right?
We wanted to test these truisms, so we asked a New York tailor to dissect an ex-pensive ready-to-wear outfit. Our tailor was David Dobsevage, a costumer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, who has worked in Paris fashion as well as in the quality ready-to-wear industry in this country. He selected a woman's three- piece outfit designed by Geoffrey Beene. We took photos and asked questions while Dobsevage cast his very sharp eye across every detail of the garments.
The outfit, which was made in the United States and which retails for $1,800, consists of a Spencer-style jacket, a loosely fitting fly-front blouse, and a box-pleated skirt. The jacket is made of a wool double cloth from the Italian firm of Agnona, the blouse is a wool-and-silk-blend challis, also from Italy, and the skirt is 100% cotton velvet.
Dobsevage began by explaining that this is a very elegant outfit, that Beene's design, the materials, and the craftsmanship all work together in an impeccable way. “These three elements go hand in hand. It's not the materials by themselves, the design by itself, or the workmanship by itself that determines quality, but the interplay of all three. The more valuable the one, so must be the other two."
Design includes everything, from the selection of materials to the choice of finishing methods, and it needn't be complex to be good. For example, Dobsevage pointed out that the jacket is made up of only four pattern pieces, and because the fabric is a double cloth, neither interfacing nor lining was needed. The skirt is two pieces—a front and a back—as is the blouse, which consists of a left and right side (front, back, and arm) seamed together at the center back, underarms, and sides. All components of the outfit use variations on the flat-felled seam finish. The seams thus become an important design element, helping to tie the outfit together.
Dobsevage said that a designer generally starts with the fabric and develops the shapes, the finishing methods, the accessories, everything, in short, around its characteristics. The fabric determines how much care and time should be put into a gamient. Working from the chosen material, the designer progresses from sketches, through paper and muslin patterns, to a handsewn sample. From the sample, which is usually made in size 6, the pattern is graded to be produced in the full range of sizes. The sample now becomes the manufacturing prototype.
According to Dobsevage, the most significant and costly element in producing a garment, beyond the design and the materials, is workmanship. The quality of workmanship can make or break a good design or a good piece of fabric. Because it is so expensive, and because there are always faster and cheaper ways of doing things, workmanship is also the element that most often gets shortchanged.
The jacket, skirt, and blouse that we examined were initially presented as production garments, articles that models had worn in the spring fashion shows for the fall collections. As Dobsevage turned them over in his hands, however, he became convinced that we had borrowed showroom samples; the people at Geoffrey Beene later confirmed this. The production garments differed from the samples in no serious way, so how could Dobsevage tell? He pointed to sewing minutiae: no matter how carefully done, a double row of topstitching made by a seamstress's singleneedle machine can never be quite so uniform as a seam run by a double-needle production machine, which sews both rows at the same time.
The cost of materials and labor is only a small part of what becomes a garment's selling price, but it's the base from which the final price develops. If materials were $50 and labor $75, for example, the wholesale price would be around $500, or four times materials plus labor. The retail price is generally twice the wholesale price.
Tile jacket—The most interesting fabric in the outfit is the double cloth of the jacket. A double cloth is woven in such a way that there are two distinct layers of fabric joined by some of the weaving yarns. It is usually reversible; in this case, the double cloth is plaid on one side and solid on the other side.
The plaid has been meticulously matched across all seams and edges of the jacket, as well as at the cuff and the tab at the back. Dobsevage explained that to create such a thorough and flawless match, the designer has to transfer to muslin not only the shapes of the pieces but also the pattern of the plaid in order to work out every detail before cutting into the expensive fabric itself.
Because a double cloth often eliminates the need for interfacing and lining in a garment, the exposed seams and edges require rather special handling. The inside of this jacket was so finely finished that it could almost be reversible.
To make a connecting seam, such as the center back seam or one of the side seams of this jacket, the sewer separates the two faces of the double cloth for about 1 in. by cutting the connecting threads, then ma-chine-stitches the outer faces together and hand-stitches the inner faces to enclose all the raw edges (see drawing, p. 41). The result is a variation on a flat-felled seam, with only a gentle ridge on the inside showing where the seam is.
A simpler, but less specialized method of dealing with a double-cloth seam is to make a standard flat-felled seam. The seam is machine-stitched through both layers of fabric, and one seam allowance is turned in over the other and then either hand-stitched or topstitched by machine. This method eliminates raw edges, but with a fabric as heavy as the wool used for this jacket, it would have produced a rather bulky seam.
The edges of the jacket were finished similarly: The two faces of the fabric were separated at the edge, turned in toward strip of bias silk chiffon was inserted inside the fold of the outer layer of fabric to give the edges additional strength and definition. Here, as elsewhere, the edges are straight and smooth and perfectly turned under so that the inside layer of fabric never shows from the outside and none of the stitching is visible.
Another method of finishing off the edges of a reversible fabric is to bind them in a fold-over braid. This is a quick and perfectly serviceable method but less subtle than the technique used here.
The skirt—Like the seams of the jacket, the seams of the skirt are flat-felled, but with yet another variation on the basic technique. Every raw edge on the skirt was first bound with bias tape. Then, instead of the velvet on the flat-felled seam being turned under, the bias tape was turned under. The reason for this time-consuming technique, Dobsevage explained, was to re-duce the bulk at the seams, because a normal flat-felled seam would have resulted in at least four layers of velvet. The seams were then finished with a double row of decorative topstitching. The hem of the skirt was finished in the same way, as were the concealed edges of the pockets.
The waistband, which is wide and must stand up, was finished on the inside with a grosgrain ribbon. The advantage of this over a self-finished waistband is that the grosgrain gives stiffness without bulk and still produces a neat finish on the inside. The grosgrain ribbon was first hand-basted into position and was then held in place with topstitching.
The skirt was made with a pair of hanging straps. This is a nice touch worth adopting for any velvet skirt so that hanger clips won't leave marks. Another small but important detail is the waist closing. In addition to a button on each side there is a hook-and-bar closure. Most of the stress is absorbed by the hook and bar, and not by the button and buttonhole.
The blouse—In keeping with its lighter weight and more delicate proportions, the blouse has narrower seams than the skirt. The flat-felled seams, common to all three pieces of the outfit, were thus specifically tailored for each garment and fabric.
Dobsevage also discovered some unusual variations in the detailing of the blouse. For example, so that the wrong side of the fabric wouldn't show at the sleeve vent, the flat-felled seam was cut just above the opening, and the fabric was reversed. The cut edges were then carefully finished off with whipstitching.
The fly front on the blouse was constructed from one piece of fabric, actually from the same piece used for the right front. The advantage of this unusual construction is that there are no bulky seam allowances beneath the fly. It requires skill to put together and more fabric than the conventional blouse closing, so it's found only in high-priced garments.
Though there are two decorative buttons at the neck, the buttons inside the fly are plain and flat to keep the surface smooth. The buttonholes are vertical keyholes, quite uncommon on a blouse, but, according to Dobsevage, helpful for keeping the shank of the button in place.
All this extensive finishing work is not merely cosmetic, Dobsevage noted. Good finishing strengthens the garment, prevents frayed edges and loose threads, and generally prolongs its life.
