Four principles for fashion designers to select fabrics
Time of issue:
2026-03-31
Designers are constrained by the design of fabrics, and can only design new collections within the existing and usable stages of fabrics. Some clothing brands regularly reference fabrics provided by several cooperative fabric manufacturers each season, without participating in fabric exhibitions, while some fabric wholesalers or agents personally bring fabric samples to clothing companies for designers to choose from.
Designers are constrained by the design of fabrics, and can only design new collections within the existing and usable stages of fabrics. Some clothing brands regularly reference fabrics provided by several cooperative fabric manufacturers each season, without participating in fabric exhibitions, while some fabric wholesalers or agents personally bring fabric samples to clothing companies for designers to choose from.
Currently, only a handful of design companies globally possess their own fabric design teams for in-house fabric production, and these are predominantly large sportswear design firms like Nike. While luxury brands may not be able to handle all the necessary fabric production in-house, they have begun to engage in self-research and development in specialized areas such as printing, color mixing, and dyeing. Below are some of the key fabric production steps in fashion apparel collections.
1. Look at the fabric series
Most fabric exhibitions are typically held concurrently with fashion week. Designers can take a break from the show schedule to attend these exhibitions and select fabrics for their upcoming collection. These exhibitions are co-organized by a group of major fabric suppliers, allowing designers to choose ideal fabric samples for their upcoming collection.
Some clothing brands regularly reference fabrics provided by several cooperative fabric manufacturers each season, without participating in fabric exhibitions. Meanwhile, some fabric wholesalers or agents personally bring fabric samples to clothing companies for designers to choose from.
2. Limited choices
Designers receive fabric samples from manufacturers, and from this limited selection, they choose the fabrics for the next season's collection. For fabric samples, each clothing design company needs to select 15 pieces of cut fabric from about twenty samples to complete the collection. The selected 15 pieces of fabric samples must undergo feasibility testing to further select the best fabric before ordering and starting mass production.
At the same time, we will first use the fabric to produce samples of previous season's ready-to-wear clothing for testing. The designer will then conduct the final test on these samples, selecting the final version of the fabric based on its shape, color, and texture.
3. Decide on the fabrics for the clothing collection
Once designers decide to use a certain fabric to create a new collection, they need to place an order with the fabric supplier. These new ready-to-wear collections are the clothing that the brand wants to showcase to buyers at the upcoming fashion week and display in various specialty stores. Usually, the entire collection of sample garments will be replicated in 10 to 20 copies. Small design houses, on the other hand, produce ready-to-wear garments without replicas as backups.
After placing an order for fabric, the production cost of ready-made clothing begins to soar. For instance, a design company decides to produce cotton tweed, but they want to include shades of black, gray, and pink as the main color palette for their collection. However, the fabric supplier only offers shades of black, navy blue, and red, which means the design company has to resort to special processing of a small quantity of fabric to achieve the desired shades of black, gray, and pink. For example, dyeing a small batch of fabric in 20 yards costs the same as dyeing 200 yards, resulting in a cost increase of approximately 2-5 times per unit area of fabric.
4. Place an order for ready-to-wear fabrics
When designers have completed the design and production of a collection, held a fashion show, and started selling the collection in various specialty stores, accepting orders from buyers, they need to start counting the orders and placing orders for fabric for mass production, often with quantities reaching thousands or even tens of thousands of rolls.
Platform Statement
Keyword:
Previous
Recommended News
2026-03-31
Mobile Phone
Shantou Xize Sweater Co.,Ltd
Email: admin@xize-sweater.cn
Add: Building 1,No.402 ChaoZhi ZhiZao Park No. 220 yingbin north road Longhu district Shantou Guangdong, China
Copyright © SHANTOU XIZE SWEATER CO.,LTD