Fashion Garments

If you don’t think you know anybody important in New York, leave your hotel about 8 a.m., make your way to the heart of the Big Town and carefully watch everybody who dodges into the revolving doors at the corner of 7th Avenue and 39th Street.

Hold your eyes there and soon you’ll see a beautiful girl with long, glassy, black hair dodge in. If you’re close enough and yell, she’ll turn and smile. Tell her, “I’m from Orangeburg.” She’ll call back, “I am too.”

Nothing Yankee about Beth Gilliespie.

She’s been in the big city several years, first earning a degree from the famous Parsons New School for Design and now has become the assistant fashion designer for thousands of women’s jackets, pants and skirts her firm, Atelier Apparel, delivers to stores every month.

Flash! All you females! For the first time in several years, Atelier has created a rack or two of bright spring dresses which are now being delivered to chains like Nordstrom, Lord and Taylor, and individual shops in every state. They will sell for about $127 to $137 dollars. Each has been conceived by Beth and her four bosses who own the company. Well-schooled in the revolving designs in clothes, they are sensing a strong return to skirts which will fall just above and below the knees for spring. All you men, “Hip, hip hooray!”

The Rebel sisters

from Williamsburg

With her sister, Salley, Beth lives in Williamsburg, a section of Brooklyn.

Salley works in a cocktail party to banquet firm which plans, decorates, invites and arranges meals for every kind of club, ball, fraternity and church convention. Formerly a commercial district of big warehouses and old tenements. Brooklyn is slowly being converted into modern apartments and condominiums. Most of the residents are young professionals with whom the sisters ride the subway to Manhattan for 20 minutes every morning.

Once at 7th and 39th, Beth is soon in her office at a drawing board, sketching frocks or slacks, etc. Then she and her colleague, Robert Arochas, one of the partners, confer on new designs, new fabrics and a lot of the fashion activity from outside. Both keep in close touch with the sometimes mad world of the fashion business through department store representatives, wholesale distributors, advertising agencies and fabric manufacturers. Often she visits the prestige stores to keep abreast of new trends, some of which she may incorporate into Ateliers styles.

These can be decisions on adding pockets or belt loops (maybe double loops); long sleeves, short sleeves or no sleeves, or decorations such as additions of lace or tiny beads. Beth meets with the four partners every morning to present her new sketches and discuss their beauty, practically and salability. Many changes follow.

These plans begin six months ahead. When all fabric samples and adornments to each garment are finally agreed on, Beth e-mails a drawing to Atelier’s manufacturing plant in Shanghai where the clothes are made. Soon it sends back a model of each skirt, jacket and dress to New York for a tough, final critique by the partners and Beth. In a single season, 60 to 80 styles are eye-tested, felt and measured. Several usually get the ax. Last year, Bob Arochas thought the double seam around the waist of one dress looked excessive. In no time it was kaput. Some sleeves became shorter; some disappeared. By October a number of the final styles began arriving at Atelier’s showroom for hundreds of buyers to inspect. More arrive all winter.

The hot

new numbers

One of last year’s biggest new sellers was a tweed jacket offered in several colors. It featured a high funnel neck, and single breast, and short length. It’s popularity soared soon. One of the company’s continuing winter styles were its pants of poly viscose featuring a coin pocket.

Considering the complications, demands and talent demanded by a job such as Beth’s, it was not an easy one to get. After placing her resume (including a description of a year and a half of merchandising in shops in Charleston, Columbia and New York) on the Internet, she waited for six months before an intriguing invitation for an interview at Atalier arrived. The four partners asked for additional interviews about her skills and talents before an offer came.

Now hard at work, she loves the creativity her career brings. Perhaps some of the skilled lady dressmakers who hand stitched for women in Orangeburg and every town a century ago, felt a mite of the same achievement. Unfortunately, they never knew any such exhilaration as Beth, whose styles fill racks from Canada to Nigeria.

On weekends, she and her friends sleep late, then live it up at a dozen kinds of inexpensive foreign restaurants, music events and small to larger parties in their apartments. Young adults often finish schools with a yen to taste other places and adventures. Beth is having her time at this and relishing every minute.

Note: Beth and Salley are daughters of Dr. David and Jeannie Salley, and spent their first 18 years enjoying Orangeburg friends, sports and parties.

Retired editor and public relations executive Thomas Langford’s column is titled “Some Edisto stories.” Let him know if you have stories to share: 803-534-2097.

source:http://www.timesanddemocrat.com/articles/2010/01/03/opinion/columns/doc4b3d22b08c9e9889922750.txt