Eric Gaskins Vol 20: Labor Pains
August for most people ends with a bang on Labor Day. For those of us who design clothes, the whole month is hard labor. This is that last window of opportunity to get Spring Collections ready for buyers and press. The quaint idea of a languid month that ends with a long weekend, filled with trips away or days at the beach or just down time before the back-to-school stampede, is anathema to the lives of fashion designers. For years now, that luxury has been lost to us.
Giving birth to a collection is like bringing into the world a complete family, on cue, that numbers 35-50 “looks”. Imagine a baby with 50 heads who has to not only land running, but also carry a tune…. with near perfect pitch. Conceiving an idea for a collection and then fleshing it out into a cohesive story that combines a portion that is daytime or cocktail dresses and resolves into a group of unique and covetable evening gowns is like composing a symphony. My collections were designed to answer the needs of women of many figure types and cross the boards of ages from the very young to the mature. That’s a lot of notes to hit. Fabrics and silhouettes were the different movements and all the elements needed to harmonize. In my head it was not an impossible melody. I’d sketch and sketch 150-200 ideas and then set to work editing the ideas down to a cohesive group. Fabrics would then be matched to the chosen designs.
That was just the beginning. Getting my team to create each and every chosen “melody” was the hard part. As a small company we had limited resources of manpower and money and an even more limited time to get the job done. The worst of it was that orders for fall merchandise had to be shipped to stores at the very same time that I was creating the new collection. The schizophrenia of trying to do two things at once with one set of hands made for a very emotionally charged environment. Too much of the time was spent coaxing, cajoling and coercing my team to do the impossible. Time waits for no man and collection week is a harsh reality of that statement.
Days would fly and weeks would disappear all with the specter of opening day breathing down our collective necks. It truly felt like my very existence was up to question a thousand times of every passing hour. Getting a group of four sewers and a patternmaker to stay an extra hour or two a day, heaven forbid I would ask them to come on Saturdays, was like asking the sea to part. Nevertheless, something magical would happen as the last 4 or 5 days approached. The babies would be delivered three and four at a time. Even more miraculously, 90% of them were healthy, breathing and beautiful. I always felt that someone greater than me was looking down on us all giving each of us the will and the strength to not only survive but to succeed.
The sweetest moment was to hang the new collection in the showroom and move the previous season out. I made a special effort to pull everyone away from their machines to take a seat in the showroom and watch a presentation of their hard work on our model. Everyone sighed as they saw each of “their” creations modeled on a beautiful woman showing the design to its best advantage. The sense of pride that we all felt at that moment was so palpable. It was then that we all forgot the agony of those days and nights and saw only the beauty of a new collection. I will always remember that sensation and miss it until the end of my days.
Eric Gaskins with Naji Batanian
Eric Gaskins ….. The Emperors Old Clothes
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