Baroque and roll

i can't believe how long it has been since i have been on this site other than to follow others' new posts.. not once this year. i am now on semi-holidays for a few more weeks and can breathe a little. i had no plans to abandon this project but quite literally since day one of week one of the semester that has just flown by, i have been well and truly swamped by course work. it was the hardest academic period yet for me, and my one design subject alone consumed hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars.. for a project that i'm mostly embarrassed and disheartened by. i will probably end up sharing it on here because i suppose i have already done a little bit via instagram already. we focussed on tailoring, but structure is the one thing i'm completely allergic to. i couldn't design even if i wanted to. my creative soul was choked and in creating things that i hate, i thought that i was at least ticking the boxes and creating what the teaching staff expected and desired..but i didn't even manage to achieve that. so i guess i learned that it is not worth producing something you don't believe in for someone else - because it most certainly didn't pay off for me in this case. it was an interesting learning experience though, and i'm thankful for being thrown in the deep end.

i hope to be on here more frequently again now, however, and today i am super enthusiastic to share some tidbits from a not-so-recent fashion talk by David Bush (up until this year, he was the head womenswear buyer for David Jones and is a significant and renowned figure in the local industry). up until this year, he has also personally critiqued the tailoring assessment at QUT that i just finished up. i was so devastated to learn that he wouldn't be joining us for that, as QUT's relationship was more with him through David Jones, than with him as a personal mentor. but he was generous enough to still speak with us and i loved every minute of it. i didn't necessarily learn anything new, but it was terribly reassuring to hear what he did have to say.

i believe you can listen back to the talk here.

my most noted parts:
- the quicker you know the customer, the quicker you earn money.
- without product, there is no brand. You need supply.
- a brand is based on a gut feeling. It is owned by the customer - whether or not they like or are stimulated by a product, or from the feeling they get from buying or looking at your product.
= how does the customer know to walk straight to your brand or product?
= trust - built over a period of time.
- you have a brand when someone returns to purchase over and over. If they only buy once, you have a business; not a brand.
= it is about meeting or exceeding their expectations - every time they purchase.
- some great brands have adapted or changed with the times but ultimately remained the same
= eg. Vogue - globally. You know exactly what you are going to get, yet it continues to change. The brand extensions that are employed make sense.
= eg. Ermenegildo Zegna. There is a town called Trivero in Italy that is the heart and soul of this brand. (The brand was originally built on wool-making, and today, David mentioned that you can cheekily see Zegna tags - for the fabrics - on suits made by opposing designers. What a curious situation). Paolo Zegna was a wool maker - he is ‘it and a bit’.
- stick to what it is you do - be focussed. There is nothing wrong with building a brand, but make it focussed, relevant and not just revenue-driving.
- don’t ever think about price. Inputs to value are more than price. You will go bankrupt when you stop listening to the customer. It is good to sell stuff yourself, so you can get the feedback.
- customer are fashion savvy. They know quality, they know the sewing, and so on.
- don’t worry about what everyone else is doing (other than to differentiate). Don’t make short-term decisions - you will fail. You have to know and care about finances, accountability and be inside the details. You’re the only one that really cares.
- where is your customer going to wear the garments?? ‘Commerciality’ and making money means, for example, that they can wear it to work, or that a bra can be worn with it. If you can’t answer that question, stop. You can still be innovative, but you need to be able to wear it somewhere or more than once. It has got to be adaptable - for example, worn from lunch to cocktails.
- does a potential stockist have the right customer for you? How is the brand marketed? Who are you sitting alongside in the store? What is the retailer’s long-term strategy.. is it consistent? What are you getting out of it? You have to cost all of this into the garment.
- take your time. No deal is better than a bad deal - for example, if Myer or Target come knocking.
- if you’re not failing sometimes, you’re probably not trying hard enough, or being innovative enough.
- there is no prize for coming first. The prize is longevity. The prize is the holiday, the car, the revenue..

even though i have had such a massive absence from here, i hope you will join me again for chapter 2.