Who Wears The Pants In This Family?

It’s Mercedes Benz Fashion Week here in Amsterdam and we are SO excited! After years of watching Project Runway and hearing about Fashion Week, getting the chance to go has us all giddy, even if it’s Fashion Week Amsterdam rather than New York. Who cares? It’s FASHION WEEK!!!!

IT’S FASHION WEEK!!!!

Along with all the sponsored events, there are a number of off-site happenings as well and this is the story of one of those. Anner and I were out exploring the city and shopping when we stopped into a great little boutique called Lab 13. It has a mix of vintage stuff with new pieces by Amsterdam designers that seems quite well chosen – we liked quite a bit of it. Well, as Anner was trying on an amazing cape, I came across this ad on a table.

The ad that started it all!

Turns out there are a number of folks taking advantage of Fashion Week to host their own events and this flyer was advertising a week of make-your-own-clothes workshops. Anner was pretty hesitant, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to check things out that afternoon and see if any of the workshops looked interesting. As fate would have it, the two women organizing the workshops were both there, making cool clothes, eager to chat aaaaannnnd happened to have one spot left in that evening’s workshop! It was just too cool and I couldn’t let Anner pass up the chance to do her own bit of art on our trip. After all the times she has supported me, getting the opportunity to inspire her to try her hand was wonderful! Sooo, we signed her up to make her very own set of custom pants that same evening!!! How cool is that?

Patterns and samples ready for the workshops!

The two women organizing these workshops are Holly, an event promoter who is working to create a more environmentally sensitive fashion clothing production process and Natalie, a seamstress/pattern maker who leads the workshops and designed the clothes for them. They are working on a concept of purchasing remainder textiles from industrial manufacturers and re-using them for clothing. Like me re-using scraps of wood in my jewelry, these remainders would otherwise be burned or added to the landfill, so this is much more environmentally friendly.

A few of the cool patterns and fabrics you could get via Pulp.

Their idea is for folks to purchase the fabric and patterns and make the clothes themselves at home or in a workshop, hopefully then keeping things as simple as possible. I can see it working with the workshops, but I’ll be curious how many women (all women’s designs so far) are up for creating these fashions on their own. Anyway, Anner chose to work on creating her own pair of pants using this amazing double-sided rich blue/burnt orange textile. I wonder if it was just so she could call them her Razzle-Dazzle pants…

The cool textile Anner chose…though she chose the blue side.

I have to admit, I’m not sure who was more excited – Anner to be creating or me to be watching and documenting. Regardless, allow me to present the story of Anner and her brand new, ultra-cool, Amsterdam-chic pants!!

The project begins with the pattern for the front of one leg!

This was the first time the pattern was being used so the darts had to be cut out.

Then Anner traced the pattern on some white paper and adjusted it for size.

Natalie came over to help with the fabric and make sure all was looking good.

Let the cutting commence!

With the pattern cut out, it was off to the overlock/serger machine for combining seams.

The overlock was cool, but there was some regular sewing to be done as well, especially the darts.

At first try-on the waist was a little low…

…so back to the sewing machine to add a high waist band around the top…

…and just a couple of hours after she started Anner has new pants!!!

There’ll be some hemming to do when we get home, but they are totally wearable right now and super cool! We think the pattern could be adapted to make pajama pants from some of the spectacular Tanzanian fabrics we bought way back when. Perhaps a new wardrobe is a-comin’ when we’re back in Seattle??? Can’t wait to see what she creates!

The lovely and talented Anner Charrier in her brand new cape and pants! Ooh-la-la, fashion world look out!!!