CLO 3D is bringing the technical aspects of fashion design under one program.
The first thing we need to understand about the program is how it handles measurements. Measurements aren’t universal, so the first step is always working out, for example, what a size six means for your company. What are those measurements?
Those measurements are built into the CLO system, but what does this mean? Well, when you’re designing on your avatar, you have that size six. You have the sleeve length and all the measurements you need to design a pattern around that size. Not only do you have the measurements, but you also have the grading – all that information can be put into the program.
The technology allows you to print out the pattern based on the information you input. This includes the styling, the measurements, and all the details. It’s a fantastic way to build a garment from the ground up, ensuring internal consistency between all your designers and the products they create.
As with any modeling technology, there is an initial learning curve, especially for designers who tend to work with traditional mediums. Still, design students tend to pick it up quickly within the semester, with many of them building their own garments using the technology.
It may take a while to understand, but it’s not needlessly complicated. Everything has a function. For example, you don’t need to understand flat pattern making. Of course, having a background in traditional design is beneficial. You’ll need to have some background in sewing and how pieces come together to make the most of the technology.
As with any aspect of design, it takes time to master. Still, it’s a great tool, especially for students who are working online from home right now. Online you can learn the computer technology aspect well and start playing with the system. You can create your avatar and start designing as someone interested in the program.

When fashion designers need to instruct manufacturers how to create their products, they communicate the specifics by creating a tech pack. These documents explain all the information required to transform an idea, drawing, flat pattern, swatch selection, or combination of such concept elements into a finished garment.

After creating a tech pack, a designer typically forwards it to their product development, or PD, team. The PD team then sends the information to a factory – or multiple factories. This strategy reveals which factories can meet the desired standards and which are the most cost-effective. According to experts, cost differences are common, so it’s vital to aim for the highest quality at the lowest price.

Eventually, the factory returns samples based on the tech pack specifications. At this point, the designer evaluates the results based on various criteria. One common consideration is whether the factory produced an item to the stated specifications. In many cases, the quick turnaround times involved at this stage will result in some variability. For instance, early samples may incorporate substitute materials since a factory won’t have had time to prepare for the new specification in advance. Nonetheless, designers and their merchandising teams can benefit from considering whether the garments are aesthetically pleasing or correctly fitted.

Designers commonly have seemingly great ideas that don’t quite translate into appealing real-life apparel. In most cases, however, they prefer not to deviate too far from their initial tech pack specifications. Sticking to the plan helps brands satisfy tight timeline constraints.

Many production teams operate around something called a “Time and Action Calendar.” This well-known industry schedule involves a heavy, continuous workload. For instance, companies may work on three seasons’ worth of collections simultaneously, each with its own tech packs. Further complicating the timetable, a typical tech pack can progress through a cycle of multiple sample runs before being ready to go to market. In other words, it’s best to keep the initial tech pack as close to the desired target as possible.

“What inspired these young designers started almost a year ago with sketches, inspiration, and research,” Explains Explains Francesca Sammaritano. “The end product is what you see over here. You’re only seeing one look per designer. But, I wanted to share that with you.”

“It gives you a wide range of specializations that you can go into within the fashion industry, whether it be men’s wear, outerwear, women’s wear, or a more designer-level collection or aesthetic that you want to pursue.”

One designer did a collection of women’s wear outerwear with a lot of in-depth research on how outerwear works, what kind of technical fabrics you need, what colors work best, water repellency, all kinds of removable liners for when it’s cold or when it’s raining while also giving the option to wear the garment in different ways.

If you zip out the liner, you can wear the liner as a vest. She went a step further. She had a collection of shoes and boots made to go with her collection. The design process is inclusive of accessories as well as garments. She will pursue an opportunity in outerwear.

Another example of the variety of jobs or opportunities that you can pursue once you become a designer could be women’s wear designer on a higher level. This designer really values the art of craft. He invested in a weaving machine. He made this fabric. He bought the yarns.

He designed the fabric, made yardage, and then he sewed the garment. He is now pursuing an opportunity in designer women’s wear with a focus on craft. Another example that I thought would be wonderful to show is our menswear designer who coincidentally won the Menswear Designer of the Year.

This is just one example of his extensive collection. In this, he incorporated a few different aspects. He used natural fibers. He printed his own fabric and his own print from curtains that inspired him from growing up in his house in childhood. He is a menswear designer.

But, we found that in the conversations that we had with him and in the presentations that he’s had of his collection, a lot of people would ask him, would you consider designing for women’s wear too? Because as a woman, I would wear your garments. Or you could do both. Or there could be a customer for either/or. This is a very interesting, trendy category that we find a lot of students are going for.

Get an inside look on how creators in the fashion business tailors digital content and come up with fresh ideas for online fashion education across.

“All our digital platforms are unique. Each one is its own creature,” explains Amy Astley. “So what the Pinterest audience is looking for is different from the Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook audiences, which are huge audiences, by the way.”

In some places, people are looking for services, information, or news you can use. In other places, it’s a visual bit of inspiration, just a quick delight to the eye for the day.

We think about every single platform and teamvogue.com differently. Asking, what is this audience looking for? “But then in addition to serving the audience, we try to surprise and delight them too, with something that they didn’t think of.”

Ashley explains that when you’re making digital content, you want to keep it short, keep it shareable, make it something that grabs you. “Because it’s so beautiful, it’s so clever, it’s so funny, it’s something that their friends have to see that there’s something about it that’s grabbing them quickly.”

“And it has to be a real idea,” Marie Suter adds. “I feel like what we’ve discovered is that if it’s just behind-the-scenes or something similar, nobody’s interested.”

“Been there, done that. Seen that. You have to keep challenging yourself.” says Amy.

“For the last six months, I’ve been meeting a videographer, showing Amy, and we’ve been entering this world,” explains Marie. “But now, not only do we have the print team that does the shoot where we would get extra shots, but we often have a videographer with a completely different idea.”

In the last three months, it has changed. At first, the photographer from the shoot was doing the video and was on the side at the end of the shoot, when there’s no more light. Where now, there are specific times carved out.

We shoot a lot of musicians and with this content you want to do something on the website that’s linked to their music, where you can listen to it. When we do beauty shoots for the magazine, we work with those big makeup artists or hairstylists. Marie explains, we’re going to go a little more editorial. Then we will simplify it slightly, more on a how-to for the web.

“Ideas just have to be better from the get-go, so we can spread it out over all those platforms,” says Marie.

Costing a product is a full-time job and usually takes many people. You can look at costing in a couple of different ways. As a merchandiser, let’s say you had 10 styles, and we wanted to have a certain markup. If you’re selling within your own stores, you usually want at least a 75% to 85% internal markup. If you want to retail a jacket for $695, and you already know that your landed cost needs to be 20% of that to get your 80% markup.
A designer wants this beautiful satin made in Italy. When you’re looking at the cost of goods, around 70% is the raw materials, like the thread, the trim, and the zipper or button. A designer goes to Premiere Vision and finds the most beautiful Italian satin they want to use. If you are going to get the 75% or 80% margin you want, the jacket is going to be $1500 compared to the $695 or the $595 you wanted.
You go back to the design team and tell them that if the market can’t retail nor our brand can retail a jacket this high, there’s no the cost value is not there. Start taking things out of it. Can we counter source material in another country that looks and feels the same but not the higher quality? Can we take a few pockets off of it to lower the cost?
Let’s say a loss leader is the one item that is the showstopper—the most fashionable piece. You need it to draw everyone in to look at the collection, but you already know you’re going to get a lower margin on it. It might be 40% or 50%. You’re going to do a few units, but the other nine styles are going to have higher margins. That’s a trick that all fashion brands use. It’s called blended costing. They look at key items, but they also look at it as blended because ultimately, it’s the blended total that really makes a difference.

Branding is a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs.

In today’s world, there are so many ways an entrepreneur can use branding to strengthen their business. For little to no cost, entrepreneurs can post branded content across social media platforms to sell product and grow their business.

The Branding Challenge

The challenge with branding, however, is that it can be difficult for entrepreneurs to be creative and come out with unique and differentiated content. As a low-cost strategy, many entrepreneurs are using branded content, and this is saturating the market and creating more competition. Entrepreneurs will publish great content on social only to find that they are only gaining a few likes and not generating the attention and engagement they need to sell product and successfully run their business. To be successful, entrepreneurs need a couple hundred thousand, or millions, of likes to achieve significant business growth.

TikTok is the Latest Dream Machine for Marketers

With global popularity, TikTok is gaining traction as one of the most popular platforms for advertisers. With 15 seconds to capture consumers’ attention, advertisers are leveraging music and parading to something fashionable to develop memorable branded content.

It’s a common human trait that we can receive information faster that we can send it, so in 15 seconds brands have enough time to tell their whole story, brand it, and repeat it umpteen million times. And the best part? It cost literally nothing.

The catch, however, is that to be successful on TikTok, you need to be more creative than the next guy. With so many brands fighting for consumer attention, your content must be differentiated and unique to be successful. So, for all the entrepreneurs looking at low-cost solutions to share their brand message, TikTok is a great option. But you must be that much more creative to succeed.

Fashion is changing rapidly and speed to market is a huge part of this transformation. In the past few years in fast fashion we’ve seen a lot of disruption, decentralization, and Instagram monetization.

Think about the original fashion business supply chain and how it’s been set up with department stores and a push model of the industry deciding what’s available and what we’re going to wear. Everyone was shopping in malls to engage with products.

Today, we’re operating more on a pull model where customers can tell us more about what they want. We’ve seen retailers like Zara, Forever 21, and H&M operate in this model of what we consider fast fashion. The real difference is the speed to market and the time it takes for the production process for that product to make its way to a floor.

Zara has been able to innovate and engage with feedback loops and speed up the process to market. Engaging in smaller batch manufacturing is helpful when you’re competing for space on a manufacturing line. It takes more effort and resources to produce 30,000 garments in one place versus spreading out demand in several factories since you’re competing with other retailers and brands to get manufacturing facility space and capacity.

Using fashion education, you can pivot more quickly when you’re dealing with fewer units. There’s opportunities to use customer feedback to shorten production lead time.There are so many points in the supply chain where, when you’re dealing with less units, it becomes easier for stores to more quickly funnel their product.

In historical department store retail, it could take six to nine months to go through this process. Fast fashion really disrupted that process and we no longer have to wait for the season to end to continue iterating, innovating, and ultimately bring newness on our time.

Today, every brand has a website. They have a web presence of some sort. I believe your website should provide precisely what your customers, or tribe, are looking for.

Many businesses use e-commerce. However, the internet is a bit more educational. You can buy clothes on the web, but first, let us tell you about ourselves. We’ll show you how we sustainably make our products.

It becomes a component of marketing and romancing the customer with who you are and how you conduct business. Nobody wants to be more than a few mouse clicks away from making a purchase. You must make it simple and easy to use.

I believe that user-friendliness is the key. A lot of really high-end corporations, in my opinion, are really good at making attractive visuals. You go to the site, and it’s absolutely stunning, and it perfectly captures the look they’re after. However, if you can’t easily navigate from item to item or see the product’s information, you’ll discover abandoned carts more often than not. Alternatively, they could have simply given up and departed.

We’ve witnessed significant growth in online shopping. Even those I would never expect to embrace e-commerce, such as my parents and people in their eighties, have acclimated to it, and everyone is doing it this way. You’ll want to make sure that your website is simple to use however you put yourself out there.

Social media is a world itself. But it also infiltrates the world we live in. I remember 2011 when Instagram first hit the social media scene—it was just a platform you could upload photos to. Who was looking at them? No one really knew. You were following people, but not really following them. Not many brands were on Instagram then, but now, the platform transformed into a marketplace from which you can now gain revenue.
It’s gone from uploading stagnant photographs, to now. Transactions can occur from uploading a single post. It’s phenomenal what Instagram has turned into. It’s changed the way people consume. People don’t just want to see your runway anymore, and say, “Oh, well, I guess I have to wait six months to buy that product, right?” Now, people are like, “I see it, I need to click it and purchase it right then and there, otherwise I’m gonna forget about it.”
Retail channels have become more open in terms of apps. For example, on Instagram, people can click the View Shop option and view the products you are selling, which leads them directly to the website where they can purchase the items. It’s a very easy process. In terms of conversion, I think that you know that our clients either go directly to the website, or we have private clients that buy from us through Far Fetch.
However, I think one of the most important things is to have accessibility. Therefore, the View Shop on Instagram is ideal for me. If someone wants to buy through there, great! It’s about that extra level of accessibility to maximize sales in the e-commerce industry.

Retail experienced a seismic during the onset of e-commerce. Many people claimed that wholesale was dead, that people were going to open their own stores. Why would you sell? The benefit of selling to a wholesaler is that you can take your product, sell it to them, and don’t have to worry about the product again, right? If it doesn’t sell, you don’t have to worry about what to do with it. You don’t have to worry about marking it down. You don’t have to worry about where you’re going to put it. You don’t have to worry about stock space. You sell it to them, and then it’s their problem—Nordstrom’s problem.
When you operate a store and sell directly to consumers, you must worry where you’re putting the product, where you’re housing the product, paying your employees, keeping lights on, rotating floor sets, all of those things. But generally, you have a bit higher margin when selling directly to the consumer than you would be selling to wholesale manufacturers.
The onset of the internet may have led people to believe, “Okay, I don’t have to have employees. I don’t have to keep lights on. I don’t have to do any of those things, and I can still sell direct to consumers, so it’s a win-win.”
It’s interesting that over the last decade and a half the shift has led to a direct-to-consumer sales model. That has placed some brands in a great position regarding the margin they can charge because if you’re selling directly to consumers, you’re not selling to a retailer that buys at price. A wholesale price, which is usually a markup price. For example, the product is marked at $50, and you sell it to them at $100, they then sell it to the consumer for $200.
So, if you’re selling directly to the consumer at $200, you’d see a 3X margin from what you were making with your wholesale account. And that’s very attractive. Wholesale accounts had been the norm for almost a hundred years. Older brands have wholesale accounts, and it’s been difficult for them to shift to a direct-to-consumer model because of that.