How is a garment made? — Points of Measure (2024)

Ask and you shall receive! You voted for a full tutorial of this Design Process infographic on my Instagram, so here’s a breakdown for you!

Responsibility of the Designer

Your Designer (or you, if you’re DIY’ing) will compile a collection of inspiration into a mood board that represents the aesthetic behind the design. In order to create a cohesive design, you must first organize your ideas and inspiration into a mood board. Taking the time to organize your ideas will result in a cohesive and successful final garment.

STEP 1: Collect Inspiration - Pinterest is a great way to compile your inspiration images. You can also look at magazines, books, photos, nature, and trend platforms for inspiration. The sky is the limit! Wherever you choose to find your inspiration, you should house it in one location - whether that’s a board on Pinterest, a notebook, or an album on your phone.

STEP 2: Compile Ideas - Let your inspiration guide you. Jot down or quickly sketch ideas for the design, silhouette, construction, material, and color of your garment or accessory. This is where croquis come in really handy to quickly illustrate your ideas! You can learn more about croquis and how they compliment the Design Process in this full tutorial.

Or check out the pre-made templates later on in this article.

STEP 3: Create a Mood Board - Once you have your ideas and inspiration organized, you can begin to link themes. Are there certain textures, colors, patterns etc. that seem to go together? Organize your ideas by theme, and compile them into a mood board. You can create several mood boards if necessary. Throw out (or save for later) anything that doesn’t fit.

Not sure what a mood board is or how to create one? Check out this process video of a mood board I created. A mood board is a visual guide for your design. It includes a layout that represents the aesthetic behind your garment, and inspiring pictures, colors, and textures that represent the design of your garment.

Some guidelines for mood boards:

• Your layout should reflect the aesthetic of what you’re designing.

• Your inspiration should not all be fashion images! Use interior design, nature (feathers, leaves), and other elements that represent the feeling behind your design.

• Any size is fine, but give yourself room to create!

• I prefer creating physical mood boards so that I can add texture and volume, but digital works great too!

Responsibility of the Designer

Your Designer will use a croqui to begin sketching out the ideas for your garment based on the finished mood board from step 1. If you’re DIY’ing this part, don’t worry about getting it perfect just yet, this step is all about getting your ideas from your head onto paper. Try some unique combinations, you never know what’s going to spark those transformative design ideas! Continue this until you’ve created a design that you love. Now that you’ve narrowed down your final design, you (or your Designer) can draw this “final” design as a formal fashion illustration with color and movement. If you have a specific fabric or material in mind, be sure to attach a swatch or example of it.

Responsibility of the Technical Designer (or sometimes the Designer)

Next, the Technical Designer (or you, if you’re DIY’ing) will create a CAD of your design. CAD, Flat Sketch, Technical Sketch, Technical Flat - are all names for the flat, technically accurate drawings of your garment. Your Technical Sketch is the blueprint for your design, so it’s important that the sketch reflects the correct construction of the garment.

Introduction to Technical Flats

Responsibility of the Technical Designer and Sourcing (Development Team)

Your Technical Sketch will then be used to create a Tech Pack for the garment. The Technical Designer will use the silhouette and design to determine the construction details and specs. They will work with the sourcing agent or developer to come up with fabric and trim options. Once the details have been finalized, the Tech Pack is sent out for factory and fabric sourcing.

Check out what a Tech Pack is and how to create your own.

Or check out this pre-made DIY Kit:

Responsibility of Sourcing/Developer

Once your style Tech Pack has been created, you can send it out to source the different elements of the design. Unless you already have a factory in mind, you can look at this like the “shopping around” phase for your design. Things that you’ll want to source are:

• Manufacturing (where it’s assembled)

• Trims (supplier)

• Fabrics (supplier)

• Labels and Packaging

In some cases, you may find a full service factory/supplier who can do all of these for you! Or your factory may work with an agent to help you source.

Do you need help finding a factory? You can read more about sourcing here and access a full list of resources in the Fashion Resource Directory.

Responsibility of the Factory/Manufacturing Facility

Now that you’ve sourced your factory and materials, you can update your Tech Pack to reflect it and send the Tech Pack to your factory for sampling. Your samples are made in a separate room at the factory off of the production line until your garment is ready production. Your factory will work from your Tech Pack specs to develop an initial pattern. Depending on the fabric and trims you’ve chosen, your factory may substitute with a close match. This is true especially if you are developing unique trims/fabrics. The factory will go ahead with substitutes for sampling to nail down the fit while your fabric/trims are being developed. This cuts down on development time and may save you some cost on sampling. Note that your samples may come in with wacky colors too! This again, is just because the factory is using what is available. Your final sample should be 100% to spec.

The sampling process has several steps involved, but here’s a good visual representation of how the process works:

Responsibility of the Technical Designer and Development Team

When your samples come in, the Technical Designer (or you, if you’re DIY’ing) will need to review the sample and adjust the Tech Pack as necessary. There’s quite a few steps involved in reviewing your sample, but I’ve broken it all down for you in this post.

You will continue this cycle of [Tech Pack -> Sample -> Review -> Update Tech Pack -> Send ] until you are happy with the final prototype. You can read more about the full sampling process in this post.

Want to learn more about fitting and creating consistent fit for your brand? I now have a full series, Fitting for Apparel Design, that breaks it all down for you! And if you need some tools to help you on the way, I’ve developed the Fitting DIY Kit and Foundation Patterns Kit:

Responsibility of the Development Team

Now that you’ve finished up the sampling process and love your design, it’s time to approve it! You’ll want to double check all the details and make sure your Tech Pack is 100% accurate and updated.

Approve the design and request a TOP (Top of Production Sample) and/or PP (Pre-Production Sample). If there are no further changes you’re ready for production!

Responsibility of the Factory (Manufacturer)

Your garments will be produced on the factories production line. Once the design has been approved, you and your factory will agree on a target ship date (if you haven’t already). If you’ve specified it in your Tech Pack, your garments will be tagged/packaged and sent to your distributor.

Once the garments have been received, inspected (QC), repackaged/tagged (if necessary) they are ready to be distributed to your retailers. Need help finding factories, suppliers, packaging or other Fashion Resources? Check out the Fashion Resource Directory:

Fashion Resource Directory

Save it toPinterest!