'Fashion Unraveled' Provides an Indie How-To Guide
Jennifer Lynne Matthews learned how to get her lingerie brand, Porcelynne Lingerie, off the ground the hard way: through trial and error. Seven years later, she is now a successful business owner, consultant and educator at the Fashion Institute of Design Merchandising in San Francisco. Matthews applied her experience to write the guidebook “Fashion Unraveled: How to Start, Run and Manage an Independent Fashion Label” for aspiring entrepreneurs.
The how-to book offers a crash course in the step-by-step process of running a clothing line so that young designers don’t make the same mistakes Matthews did. The designer started funding her venture with credit cards and miscalculated the price of her goods so badly that she was charging below cost.
Written with an instructor’s guiding hand, the book outlines the building blocks of creating a fashion label, encompassing the creative development of a collection; production, marketing, sales and promotion; financial basics; and legal concerns. Anecdotal “Real World Examples” provided by designers such as Michael Herrera of M ... the Movement and Jenny Hwa of Loyale Clothing supplement the author’s advice.
The meat of the book is the production and business-oriented chapters, where Matthews offers handy worksheets for the reader to complete; design development and production calendars; and plenty of technical sample sheets—spec sheets for size grading, cut sheets, production pattern cards, line sheets, cost sheets, and pricing and financial projection sheets—that can be used as starter templates.
Matthews designed a PC-based computer software program that offers a version of the book’s financial-planning chapters. In the program, sold separately from the book, are fill-in-the-blanks charts that organize cost of goods, production cost, design cycle, pricing, profit and loss statements, and production timelines. For more information, visit www.eastbayfashionresource.com.
Jennifer Lynne Matthews
