WAHMs in Fashion: an Age-Old Tradition

If you are one, you know what it stands for: Work-At-Home Mom. (As if moms who stay home with their children without pursuing a career are not working??) At any rate, as Pixyworld's designer, I am one.

Now, it's interesting to me that we have a term for this now, as if being a mom pursuing a career from home were a brand new phenomenon. As far as I can see, most moms throughout the centuries have been WAHMs.

Take the biblical ideal woman, described in Proverbs 31: "She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night..... She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes." (Prov. 31:18, 24, NIV) Which brings me to fashion.

Fashion is a great career for a WAHM. My grandmother was a dressmaker out of her home; Almonzo's mother in Laura Ingalls Wilder's famous Farmer Boy actually spins, dies, and weaves her own wool before making it into warm and attractive clothing for her sons!

Besides being a fun and satisfying artistic outlet, fashion fits in well with family life. Unlike the "helping professions" early 20th century women were encouraged to pursue (ie. nursing & teaching,) fashion is not about serving people whose needs often vie for attention with the needs of a mom's own children. Rather, it is an income-earner that stays in its place and can be done in flexible hours at home.

There are, of course, down sides too. But those can wait for another blog, another day....

Spec Sheets, Schmeck Sheets.

As much as I love Mary Gelhar's The Fashion Designer Survival Guide, there is one area in which it hasn't tallied with my experience.

Tech sheets. Spec sheets. Whatever you want to call them. The fact of the matter is, I have rarely ever been able to get a manufacturing quote for my little girls' clothing line with one.

When I first started looking for a factory, I made beautiful tech sheets. By the book. One production manager even went out of her way to compliment my flats. But the response I invariably got was, "Send a sample."

Fortuntely, I happen to sew. Otherwise, the amount of capital needed to start this line would have been prohibitive. Can you imagine?? Hiring a sample maker every time you have an idea?? And then most of my ideas don't even make the first cut, (no pun intended) once I see them in real fabric on a real toddler.

We would like to think we can visualize the whole manufacturing process in the abstract, from a spec sheet. But we are in the garment industry. Production managers need to touch and hold an actual garment to think about making it on a large scale. And I can't say I blame them.

Also posted at Pixyworld Blog

Little Kid/Big Kid -- and in beTween

If I've heard it once, I've heard it 100 times -- Pixyworld needs to add bigger sizes. Moms want it, girls want it. So this season we're adding sizes 6 and 7.

There is an age, though, where kids stop wearing matched sets. Not that all kids wore them before that age -- but they definitely go from cool to uncool somewhere around age 7. Funny, isn't it?

My two boys, 9 and 7, have made the transition. Now they don't just not match -- they usually clash. Boys' athletic clothes are sold as separates, for the most part, but that doesn't stop the manufacturers from putting all kinds of colors and stripes on them, hence the clash effect for boys!

It seems that beyond age 7 there's a need for a new look for girls, too. Limited Too is doing a great job appealing to tweens, but I've heard moms complain that their clothes look too old for their little girls. At any rate, a little more competition wouldn't hurt, right?

So maybe someday we'll have to start a new line for girls 6-12. So much designing to do, so little time!

Also posted at Pixyworld Blog.