Research Internship with Blue Tin Production Co-Op
Blue Tin Production Co-Op, an all women, immigrant and refugee run, slow fashion, ethical and sustainable fashion manufacturing company—the first of its kind in the United States. The goal of this company is to challenge fast fashion and shine a light on what garment workers right should be when companies prioritize talent and quality in the production of their garments. In achieving such a business model, Blue Tin Production Co-Op will offer U.S. designers a no brainer alternative to sweatshops with radical transparent production.
Internship
Responsibilities
One of my major responsibilities was to conduct research on various different issues Blue Tin needs to tackle before the end of their pilot phase. Some of these topics included sustainable alternatives to poly-bags, how to get certified as a Fair Trade Business, and different processes garments have to undergo before distribution.
Doing research for real-world situations helped me learn how to target my research correctly and efficiently. It is a whole different experience than it is to do research for a project. There are budgets and tight timelines that need to be taken into consideration every step of the way. I have often focused on the creative side of the Fashion Industry. This experience helped me realize how much work it actually takes to get from a conceptual idea to the actual development and distribution of the product.
Blue Tin Production Co-Op does business with both big and small companies, and often times, there is a language barrier. I was their Spanish translator for a few business meeting with people interested in working with them.
Being bilingual is an immense strength in the business world. Working with Blue Tin, an immigrant and refugee run co-op, being inclusive and accommodating to everyone, no matter where they are from, takes priority. During my internship, I sat through three business meeting helping translate the needs and concerns of different companies. Doing this taught me a lot about how to interact with consumers and finding solutions to problems in order to make our service their best option.
A service Blue Tin offers in order to make their business as economically feasible for their clients is to take on the fabric sourcing. I was tasked with going to various fabric stores around Chicago to find as many options for the needed fabrics within their budget. I took notes on the wholesale cost, fabric weight, composition, and color/design options.
Through fabric sourcing for other designers, I have learned so much. I learned about the importance of fabric content and how they affect the properties of the garment that will be produced, I learned about the weight of fabric, which is something I had never heard of before, and how important it is to the production of items such as hand bags, I also learned that in business, every penny counts. I went to numerous fabric stores in the Chicago land area looking for the cheapest possible canvas, chiffon, and cotton fabrics. Even five cents lower in price would facilitate Blue Tin's production immensely.
Blue Tin Production Co-Op obtained historic patterns dating back from the 1920s that were used for production of Saks Fifth Avenue clothing. Because these patterns are such a testament to Chicago History, it has become one of Blue Tin’s missions to preserve and immortalize this wealth of information. Part of my internship with Blue Tin Production was to digitize these pattern pieces. To accomplish this, I worked with SAIC Professor Aubrie Meyer. We established an organized naming system that would allow us to categorize all pattern pieces effectively by style number, size, type, and piece description. She then taught me how to use AccuScan from Gerber Technology to create proportionally accurate digital versions of these pattern pieces.
One of the internship objectives I had set for myself at the beginning of my time with Blue Tin was to learn how to use new technology and equipment. Getting to work with professor Meyer was an incredible experience. She is a professional Pattern maker and has been in the industry for decades. She not only taught me about AccuScan but also about how to digitally fix the old pattern pieces, create missing pieces, make adjustments, and print the digitized pattern once it is done. Being in her studio and getting to see how all the different equipment make patterning more efficient and precise opened my eyes to a side of the industry I had never imagined. Pattern making is now definitely something I am interested in pursuing as a career.
Blue Tin obtained thousands of historic pattern pieces. They hope to used them for future manufacturing projects where they create the patterns for designers. To make this possible, they need an organized catalog of these patterns so they know exactly what they have. It was part of my job with Blue Tin to create this catalog with information such as Style #, Type of Garment, Year Created, Number of Pieces, Sizes Present, Style Card, and comments on anything unusual that came up.
Cataloging the old pattern pieces was a very time-consuming task, as they are often missing pieces or sizes or the style card, which is a big help in identifying exactly what the pattern is. For many of the patterns that did not come with a style card, I had to lay out the pieces present and try to decipher what type of garment it is. I personally really enjoyed this, as some of these patterns are really intricate in their construction, and they’re quite a puzzle to solve. I learned so much about garment construction through this experience.