The Future of Fashion Clothing Manufacturing? “Education Factory”
It is too late for my beloved garment industry and making affordable high fashion
Anna Louise Sussman wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “If anyone has a front seat to the future of manufacturing, it is Brian Anthony”, MIT, who wants to build the “Education Factory”. I believe it is a brilliant idea. Although I tried to build the concept of an affordable fashion garment factory and connect it to the education of fashion designers, I was powerless against the fashion industry and fashion education.
The lack of factory education and experience in fashion garment design education is why I believed the American garment industry failed. It was less because of searching for cheaper labor overseas. They went overseas because they could not get any more expertly trained stitchers and workers here. So, cheap imported clothes lost all fashion connections, and fashions for the Middle Class became extinct. That was also why I sold my high fashion design and manufacturing business in the 1980s, in which I produced those affordable better fashions. Although I hired some students and taught them, there was such a media attack on those dirty old sweatshops — which my older employees never thought — these ex-students went on to seek more glamorous jobs than their clueless education had told them about.
As a teenager in the late 1940s, I enjoyed stitching in moderate-priced garment factories as soon as I was old enough to get a job, and I became an expert at it. I averaged $100 per week, which in today’s terms would be $1000 per week. Not only did it support me in college and an apartment, but it also was the greatest learning experience for later success in my own design and manufacturing corporation, Shirley Willett, Inc., and for achieving a series of engineering design grants from the National Science Foundation.
Photos of “Stitching Expertise at the Industrial Machine” were presented in my NSF grant award, Apparel/Textile Codification & Image Communication Technology”. I explained that in expert garment stitching the hands, the body, the knee, the foot, and the eyes are in complete harmony. That is why, in my stitching days as a teen, I could make a moderate-priced skirt with complex details in 6 ½ minutes!
There were two more grant awards from NSF in the 1990s in which I talked of the foundations of engineering and stitching production for excellence in fashion designing. Unfortunately again I was too ahead of time. Academia loved me but the industry did not. They are:
“A Computational 3-D/2-D Model for Apparel Pattern Design and Expert System”, NSF-SBIR #ISI 9060864. Stylometrics “A 3-D/4-D Computerized Model for Human-Machine Integration in Apparel Manufacturing Engineering”, NSF-SBIR #9161096, Stylometrics
In the 1980s, after successfully selling my business, I became involved with teaching young designers and promoting engineering and production as more important than creative design — as I had sold my high fashions very well for their creativity, excellent fitting, and affordable production. It was my background in factory stitching that made me a master in pattern and production engineering, and I created innovative pattern systems that I called Stylometrics. Later I formed my second corporation, Stylometrics, Inc., for working with my grant awards.
My first try at teaching fashion design engineering was in 1984 when asked to be a member of the fashion design committee at a vocational high school in Roxbury, Mass. I was thrilled to see a couple of dozen beautiful industrial machines. Those were the great days when fashion design was truly associated with the garment industry. So I designed an evening course through Roxbury Community College to teach fashion pattern engineering and production, and wrote a textbook, “Let’s Design A Dress”.
The next try in the 80s was in teaching “Fashion As A Business” at the Boston Center for Adult Education. After the course, I took some students and many of our machines and equipment and set up a Factory for Rent. Next, we set up the “Designers’ Business-Cooperative”, in which we each offered different skills to make a complete business. It worked for a short time but power struggles among these young Baby Boomers, fighting for individual power, got bitter. I left it, and it soon failed.
After giving a lecture that motivated students at Newbury Junior College, I was invited to design and set up a curriculum for fashion design. It was an exciting idea that enabled the students to produce as well as design styles that would be sold by the retailing students. We bought all the industrial machines and tools for designing and making. Unfortunately in the middle of planning my father died and I had a breakdown — and had to give up this great innovative idea. It was indeed the first attempt at an education factory.
I am writing this article in hopes of inspiring others to consider an education factory connected to the education of fashion design and engineering. As Brian Anthony said, “Manufacturing is the mechanism by which innovations and jobs are rooted in our economy.”
There is a deeper explanation of all my attempts in my book: Past, Present, Future: A Fashion Memoir of 70 Years of Design, Education, Engineering, Manufacturing & Technology. Or email me at Shirley@pastpresentfuturebook.com
Originally published at https://shirleywillett-58062.medium.com on October 12, 2021.
