Swatch Watch

Somehow it is already Thursday, and therefore nearly the end of what has been a rare four-day working week for many (lucky devils). We're getting down to it today and taking a closer look at three new fabric options that are under consideration for the development of our first collection. A little variety never hurt anyone, right?

These fabrics are all from the same line as the one that currently features in each of our pieces - which you can see here - and are therefore all still made from Organic cotton. They are also all crossweaves, which is what makes them so interesting and unique. This simply means that the yarn used for the warp and the weft are two different colours, and when woven across one another, blend to create a multi-tonal fabric.

We placed the samples together as you can see above, including a swatch of our current fabric, in order to get a feel for what the colours would look like as a collection. To be honest we are pretty impressed with how well they work with one another. The next task, of course, is to test out some prints on each one to see how they look and also to ascertain whether the current ink colours will work or whether we need to add a few more to the assortment we currently have on the go. Check back soon to see how it goes!

Future Fabrics

Last Sunday saw the opening day of Fashion SVP Autumn 2014 at London Olympia, which we managed to get ourselves across to Kensington for and check out. The main pull for Holoholo was the Future Fabric Expo hosted by The Sustainable Angle - an amazing organisation put together to provide a resource for designers and brands to be able to search and source a large range of sustainable materials, as well as network and share information with one another.

The expo featured a vast variety of sustainable fabrics from a number of different suppliers and manufacturers, spanning from organic cottons through hemps, linens and tencels to a selection of progressive materials including a closed-loop processed nylon and a new fabric known as sea wool, made from recycled post-consumer-use oyster shells. Brilliant stuff.

We then attended a seminar on building sustainability into the supply chain, hosted by Sarah Ditty of Ethical Fashion Forum and featuring Christopher Stopes from GOTS, Mara Milanesi of Sedex Global, Richard Anstead from Fairtrade Foundation and Amanda Johnston of The Sustainable Angle.

It was great to hear from a successful group of professionals working in different areas of sustainable practice, and the seminar gave a real feeling of community with lots of other fashion start-ups also there to gain information on responsibly sourcing materials for their businesses. The talks highlighted the dangers of "green-wash", the importance of clear communication within all areas of the supply chain, and the sheer range of materials available now and in the future. The fact that a bio-polyester will be available in 2020 is pretty exciting!

Overall it was an extremely worthwhile event to attend, and has given us lots to research into and think about, as well as the encouragement to focus on a specific area of sustainability to begin with, and later branch out into other areas when that becomes more feasible.

Big thank you to Fashion SVP and The Sustainable Angle for putting on a fantastic expo!

Package Me Beautiful

As I mentioned on Monday, one of the big decisions we've got to make soon is how to package Holoholo goods. While originally planning to use a screen printed cardboard box with a coloured tissue inside, it has come to question as to whether there is another solution that is A) more original and B) more environmentally friendly. Is it really necessary to pack age soft items of clothing in cardboard boxes? Here are a few different packaging designs we've been looking at recently and feeling inspired by.

1. The amazingly beautiful One Fine Dae, an online paper shop from Seattle. Love the simplicity of the overall look, which is contradicted by all the tiny but thoughtful details. I've always loved the look of thread sewn onto paper - something I had been thinking of myself, recently.

2. From the lovely Etsy shop In Haus Press, a design and letterpress store based in San Francisco. The clean lines and muted palette of this design really let the contents do the talking, while the monochrome twine keeps it all held together nicely.

3. This kraft coloured delight is by Hickoree's Hard Goods, a clothing and accessories store in the US. The box-and-paper design is similar to what we originally had in mind, and would no doubt be the most protective way of transporting goods through the post.

4. This wonderfully retro design (which reads, "Each week at your newsagent") was found via the archiving website To Have And To Hold, a site showcasing a vast array of historical paper bags. Take a look, it's brilliant.

5. Packaging designed by Savvy Studio, with impeccably sharp lines and a slightly clinical feel. This looks incredibly professional, and though I do really like it, I wonder if some of the feeling of the brand would be lost by using a palette as stark this one.

There are so many options to be explored, but doing a bit of research is a great way to get some ideas together. Time to start thinking about how these ideas could work for Holoholo...!

Eco Warriors

One of the very first parts of any business plan is to define the market in which the product or service will operate, in order to understand where the business itself will stand in relation to others and what its main concerns are.

At first I found this a little difficult since I couldn't quite put my finger on the precise area of fashion commerce that Holoholo will become a part of. We are not interested in 'fast fashion', we don't support fads of trends, and we aim to offer great quality, lasting garments. Then it hit me - Holoholo has many links with other businesses that promote Eco Fashion.

Turning to the biggest showcase of contemporary British fashion, London Fashion Week, I began researching its Eco area: Estethica. LFW's platform for sustainability, Estethica was founded in 2007 and has showcased the collections of over 100 designers who adhere to at least one of three principles: fair trade & ethical practices, use of organic materials and the practice of recycling.

Narrowing down AW13's 14 designers to those most relevant to my practice, I researched a handful of the sustainable ready-to-wear labels that showed at Somerset House in February.



It's been really interesting to see how designers work with certain materials and methods in order to have a positive impact on our world. This is something that is really important to me, as one of the reasons I embarked upon the creation of Holoholo was my frustration at the disposable and in many cases environmentally and societally damaging nature of contemporary fashion.

The challenge I now have is to build my business in a way that is sustainable and environmentally conscious, whilst also being profitable but without being high-end. I want to provide what I as a customer want to purchase - here's hoping I'm not the only one out there!

Research

Alongside my practical duties I've been working on some market research in order to inform the choices I am making as I put my line together. Since I'm currently working on fabric options, I have been researching the kind of materials featured in the garments of different clothing collections, and how this affects their price and place in the market.



This has been really helpful and has been a great step toward working out where my pieces will stand in the market and is a great reference point when making financial decisions. It's weird to think my products will actually be a part of 'the market', but hopefully one day soon they will be! Until then, best keep beavering away.

Searching

I find myself having somewhat of an unproductive day and have finally started to make sense of what I need to do next. The problem of working for yourself is that there is no one to tell you what to do, which means a) you can just not do anything and have no one except yourself to answer to, and b) if you're not sure what you should do next, you're going to have to work it out.

Having learnt a fair bit about self-motivation whilst at university, I am struggling more with the latter of the two options, since there are so many things I could be spending my time doing that I often find it hard to decide where to start. I'm sure I'm not the only person that has experienced this, and although there are a plethora of helpful books at hand, I'm then faced with the decision of which book to turn to. Unbelievable really! There is my business book, the one about starting one's own fashion label, the one on designing and printing fabric, let alone the boundless amount of information readily available on the internet. I don't mean to sound like I am complaining, as without these resources I would be, well, nowhere, but I'm just having one of those moments from which I feel like I need a bit of a push in the right direction.

I have spent the past few days wondering which fabric I should use for the blouses I am currently working on, and by wondering I really mean worrying intensely. I'm fully aware that this worry is rather unfounded, since the worst that can happen is I lose a bit of money along the way by means of trial and error, but still, it's there! It suddenly struck me this evening, however, that sometimes looking so hard for the answer can be a little detrimental (they say such things about love in films all the time) - so I decided to take myself over to the blogosphere and just get acquainted with fabrics that take my eye.

The Sartorialist and Jak and Jil have saved the day once again!

Images 1, 3, 5 & 6 Sartorialist, 2 & 4 Jak and Jil

I feel much better and more inspired from just screen-grabbing those images and putting this post together. Sometimes all you need is a little creative kick! I shall have to take myself over to the sewing shop in town to get an idea of the fabrics I can get hold of within a 10 minute drive, but I have a feeling it would be better to go a little further afield in order to find a great fabric store. I'm thinking Bristol should have at least one... Hopefully that will pull me out of this funk and give me something to focus on in order to move forward.

Hope everyone else's day has been a little less stuck-in-a-rut-y than mine. Happy Tuesday!