INDUSTRY VISIT

Feb 14, 2017
2 min read

Today, I had scheduled a field trip to a samll city called Gent which was part of a course called "Organisation du travaille". Actually, I am not enrolled in the course but I heard about this trip and was interested to see how fashion companies work and maybe ask for some internship.

Van de Velde is based in Belgium with it's main office in Gent. It has a long tradition in making luxury lingerie and was founded in 1919 by Margareta and Achiel Van de Velde opening a conrsetry studio in Shellebelle, Belgium. Since that time, brand has expanced and become internationally well know with it's three inside brands - Marie Jo, Prima Donna, Andres Sandra.

The excursion started with an hour long presentation in Dutch. You can imagine that I understood almost nothing. This language is mixture of French, English and German which is an officail language of Flemish part of Belgium. However, I still managed to make some notes.

Then we did an tour in a design studio. I learnt something about 18 months long process, which starts with moodboard developement and finishes with final product being packed and sent to the retailers.

It takes only six months to prepare a collection. A team of 27 people wear samples from the collection first, to discover and correct the little mistakes before the collection is sent to production

They create a so called "book" for each every lingerie with precise discription of the materials they need and CAD drawings.

CONTROL OF ELASTICITY

Here you can see a machine stretching lycra and the following step is to leave the fabric to rest to be ready for cutting.

CUTTING ROOM

I was curious if they use laser for cutting but I got an answear that knife is better because laser would be too scratchy on a body.

They pursue to have as less waste as it is possible, because it is more economical for the company. Therefore, they create a 4 cm thick "mattress" of fabrics wchich has to rest 12 hours before cutting. Then they calculate a precise plan in a computer which is printed and laid on top this "mattress".

A little interesting thing to know is that, they cut annually over 6 million pices of lingerie.

Following step it is to pack all these cutted pieces together in to the boxes and send them to the production in Tunisia or China.

STOCK

There are 8000 finished products stored here.

QUALITY CONTROL

In this room are the final products carefully checked through for any mistakes, holes, missing clothes tags, and so on. Actually there is only 0,6% return rate from the customer.

This company runs a fare local business and try to be transparent for a customer. However, I didn´t like, they are making their products abroad. The truth is actually, that young people here in Belgium ( and I know this is the same problem in Slovakia) are no more interested in sewing and there are only older left. Which means, this profesion will soon dies out. I can understand that in a future most likely maichines will replace people but, I still do believe that good old craftsmanship will be always more appreciated than clothes made by machines.