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As many designers know, sometimes your best friend in these moments can be YouTube. Sure, it’s filled with distraction, but it’s also brimming with clear, comprehensive guides from professional tailors, couturiers and streetwear nerds. Of course, nowadays, art schools and DIY designers are increasingly made up of digital natives, making online, video-based formats all the more important to one’s formal or self-taught training.
Granted, good, old-fashioned methods that the likes of the late, great Louise Wilson purveyed can’t be skipped – there’s no shortcut for graft – but you can always bolster experience and time in the studio with a little, at-home learning. And so, after speaking with some of today’s contemporary and student designers cutting their teeth or setting up labels for recommendations, we pulled together some of the trustiest tutorials, ticking off everything from basic, freehand tracksuit design to historied silhouettes like the Chanel suit, that seamless Balenciaga dress of Cristóbal lore or the best blanks suppliers.
How to know which fabric to choose
Niklas, the Cologne-based sewist behind YouTube account Vintagebursche is a die-hard traditionalist, favouring natural fibres over anything chemically tainted. Nonetheless, he does a fine job in distinguishing the make-up of your contemporary polyester and viscose from the age-old favourites like linen, wool (woolen and worsted) and cotton. Undoubtedly, for anyone – designer, tailor or streetwear entrepreneur – this explainer provides savvy hints regarding which fabric might be best for a garment. Want to design with wool, but keep it cool? Try fresco, a thick, tightly spun yet, due to its coarseness, breezy wool suitable for Spring suiting. As for tweed, Niklas is clear: opt for protected or trusted mills, such as Harris, Lovat and Abraham Moon and Sons.
How to get perfect seams
Guest couturier, Barbara Pesendorfer, joins costume and fashion history expert Bernadette Banner for an instalment focused on meticulously pressed garments. Guiding viewers through the protocol basics, she punctuates her tutorial with experience-gleaned details that take a jacket, blazer or corset from amateur to professional. This might be, say, her choice of fabric for a pressing cloth – silk organza for delicates, linen for wools and cottons – or simply some damage control, such as incorporating a cloth brush into one’s workflow to soften any garment fibres that have become shiny. Go against and with the pile, she advises.
How to sew a shirt yoke
“I remember this video being very useful when I was trying to figure out how the hell to sew a yoke properly – no seams on the outside,” says designer and Fantastic Toiles member Jonty K Mellman. Indeed, as long as your edges are aligned, this “burrito” approach is foolproof.
How to sew a sleeve placket and cuff
Shirting enthusiasts, take note. This handy walk-through showcases in detail everything you’ll need for polished dress shirts, blouses, or even buttoned workwear outers. Here, the trickier elements – such as pleating, corner neatness and finish – are broached with simple solutions, be it the use of notches, folding rather than trimming or, perhaps counterintuitively, ending the process by topstitching from the wrong side first.
How to repair Jeans with sashiko and whipstitches
Using patchwork and Japanese handiwork – specifically, ‘sashiko’, a stitching technique that both bolsters the strength and adds character to a design of denim – the tutorial is ideal for anyone following in the footsteps of wabi-sabi legends. If you’ve ever wondered how Junya Watanabe crafts wrought pieces that are directional, reversible, and almost jigsaw-like in construction, this is a great place to start.
How to get that 1950s Dior shape
Another favourite from Bernadette Banner and Barbara Pesendorfer, this tutorial broaches the Dior Bar jacket, debuted by Christian Dior in 1947. Today, the wasp-waisted classic remains not just an icon of mid-century fashion design, but also an eternally viable template for contemporary designers keen to reimagine the hourglass silhouette. So far, we’ve seen twists from everyone, including Wales Bonner, who updated the pattern with a Caribbean flourish for a Dior Cruise 2020 collaboration, through to Yohji Yamamoto, who gave it an embroidered, raw-edged or gowned finish for his AW95 collection. Still, to get the stiff structure and firmness without it landing as bulky requires serious savoir-faire. Barbara’s experiments and research go a long way in this respect. Alongside her go-to interfacing tips (yep, silk organza for thinner fabrics), the tutorial keenly suggests men’s tailoring shoulder pads as the solution for maintaining a non-clumpy and shapely fit. Wadding, bye.
How to construct Balenciaga’s minimalist ensemble
Despite Cristóbal Balenciaga shutting up shop in 1968 – only for the label to be resurrected decades later – the designs that aired for his Spring 1976 show were cemented into fashion history. Containing just one seam, the designs baffled and inspired in equal measure; nowadays, they often appear in acts of homage on runways, renewed and reiterated. Certainly, getting behind the genius of his collection can go a long way in improving a contemporary creative’s pattern-cutting skills. Fortunately, in 2017, as part of its Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion exhibition, the V&A Museum shared a visual insight into those very archival patterns, giving another generation a go at the formalist capes and dresses. This clip is a gem.
Where to buy your wholesale blank T-shirts from
Designers keen to make their name in the streetwear or fashion world more broadly know just how valuable launching a hot-shit tee can be in making an entry-point product. To do this, a blank tee to print on is a basic business necessity – Gildan, American Apparel or other. This thorough walk-through is one of the key videos featured in Virgil Abloh’s legacy “FREE-GAME” page, a resource for newbies starting a brand. What to know? Blanks are a simple, quick and cost-saving resource, best bought via wholesale.
How to sew the zipper on trousers
Like it or not, one design feature that every designer needs to master – bar, perhaps, sportswear specialists – is the trouser fly, a process that involves folds, flaps, under-flaps and panelling. For Diego Tarabal, founder of Troye Sivan’s favourite, fetishistic label, Tarabal, this clip was a life-saver during his studies. “It’s one of the many videos I’ve saved along my journey,” he says. “The narrator goes in detail through every step, every stitch, every top stitch, and you cannot go wrong if you follow his instructions.”
How to make a Chanel-inspired jacket
These days, the Chanel jacket is a byword for feminine elegance, not to mention a blueprint that can be tweaked and jibed on – à la Franco Moschino – to communicate one’s vision, be it prim and proper or kitsch and postmodern. What first appeared in the 1920s when Coco Chanel began pioneering a boyish (‘garçonne’) look, using jersey to create cardi suits, was revolutionary because of its unfussy appeal. Following a war-induced hiatus, Chanel’s return to fashion in the mid-century brought forth a tweed iteration in 1954, before Coco’s label went on to license the blueprint for department stores and even M&S. In this explainer, you’ll learn how to make the now-ubiquitous suit style, gleaning core tips on over-locking – which is always helpful in preventing unwanted frays. To get to the signature soft Chanel shoulders, smaller, reduced padding is encouraged, too.
How to sew a tracksuit with lining
Some designers prefer to keep it freehand. After all, relying heavily on pre-made patterns can sometimes make clothes feel formulaic. This how-to is ideal if you fall under the more adventurous bracket, offering a faff-free, strictly instructional approach to a loose, classic, sporty design primed with a decorative panel wrapped across the leg. And yes, you can draw your own pockets.
How to sew like a pro
Learning to sew and design is a process, one that brings its own lessons with time, especially where quality control is concerned. Here, vintage sewist Evelyn Wood pinpoints some of the key errors newcomers make in their early work. Her five key lessons? Maneuver the fabric purposefully, move with the garment when sewing curves, always focus on the stitch line, almost never sew over pins, and don’t just assume patterns are the be-all and end-all – you’ll always need to adjust them in line with your fitting model or personal design vision.
How to sew a patch pocket
If there’s one country renowned for its clothing production, it’s Japan. Here, we get inside a Shibuya-based factory for a rigorous tutorial on bluff stitching – in other words, stitching that doesn’t show. Close-up action, minimal talk (none, actually), and a rare look at how to get impossibly perfect pockets from sewists who have been working for over 35 years make this one for the seasoned perfectionists.
Words Joe Bobowicz
