The credit for the success of the day goes to having a great group of people involved.

Nathan

Tim

Let’s start with our fantastic models, Tim Ryan and Nathan Kamp.

Not only do these guys look great, they make us look great. They are so easy to work with. Professionals in every sense of the word.

They get in front of the camera, and immediately we get great shots, so we can move right on to the next product.

They are intelligent, they are fun to work with, nice to talk to, aren’t moody, and they eat the food we provide without complaint!

Just a real pleasure to work with.

Most of the time, in fashion work we want a serious, moody, or dramatic look, as illustrated in the first two photos. But it’s hard to keep that up all day, and there are many lighter moments during the shoot (lower image at left).

Nathan (left) and Tim (right)

Tim and Nathan don’t spend all their time modeling. They both run marathons, for example.

Tim ran the New York City Marathon last year, about which he says “I successfully crossed all the bridges and ran through all five boroughs!”, adding “26.2 miles, with 4 blisters, 2 black toes and one sore body!” And while doing that, he was raising money for charity. He plans on running the NYCM again this year, both to beat last year’s 3:48, but also to raise money for the Max Cure Fund at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The fund is dedicated to researching rare pediatric cancers, improving treatments and finding cures that will save children’s lives, a cause Tim became involved in through one of his wife’s friends. In preparation, Tim has been running in races and training all summer. For more information, and to help support this cause, please see Fred’s Team.

Tim is also an actor (he recently recently worked on The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon, and Sex and the City 2). And just to keep himself busy, he also coaches his son’s soccer team.

Nathan, when not modeling or running marathons or playing basketball (which he loves to do), cooks! But this is not the celebrity-chef-at-the-stove-with-the-fast-knife kind of cooking, this is about the relationships among food, friends, and family, and how these elements get woven into an upbeat, positive lifestyle. You can get the full story at his Live To Eat website.

It’s interesting to note that Nathan writes his own scripts for the videos, shoots them, and does all the editing, with just a friend helping out. So in his videos, you are really seeing into his world through his eyes and hands.

Gerardo in Action!

A good photographer makes a photoshoot easy. So please meet Gerardo Somoza, our master of lenses and lighting. He not only snaps the pictures, but he also directs the models for poses and looks. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to use the helicopter during our shoot! This photo is from a shot Gerardo did for a client who manufactures helicopters.

A major challenge in photography is the equipment. There is a lot of it, and it gets used hard. When it breaks, everything comes to a halt. And break it will. So it’s helpful that Gerardo brings enough equipment that quick substitutions and repairs keep the day going smoothly.

And a good camera, a steady hand, and a good eye are all important.

Temple Detail

Here’s a detail from the above picture of Nathan and Tim (it’s the temple from Tim’s glasses). This is a blowup from a hand-held camera shot. As you can see, Gerardo has a steady hand on the camera and shutter.

Finally, I’ll just mention that a photoshoot takes a lot of people. The models and the photographer are the “stars” of the show, but a photoshoot doesn’t happen without a photographer’s assistant (several, in our case), stylists, people to select outfits, somebody to run out for food and drinks, run the computers, do makeup—well, it’s a room full of people.

Special thanks go to Jason Wehlage and David Duralde of Kenmark Optical, who were at the photoshoot all day, and were a pleasure to work with. People who are on top of their game, don’t fuss, stay focused, and know how to laugh make the day go along smoothly and pleasantly, and help make sure we get great photos. Thanks, guys!

P. S. As you would expect, Tim and Nathan appear widely in Jhane’s Online Store. Once you get to know them, it’s easy to spot them there, even though we don’t show their faces.

In the nearly three years that I have worked with Jhane, I have witnessed fashion’s ebbs and flows, and have been impressed with Jhane’s ability to accommodate changing tastes while remaining true to her own aesthetic. My daily responsibilities have shifted, too. Whereas I used to spend a lot of time weaving (on a wonderful, 24-harness AVL compu-dobby loom), I now focus on computer aided design.

More specifically, for the past year, we have been pioneering a new concept in print design: engineered digital prints. Jhane Barnes Digital, set to hit the stores this fall, features a line of clothing printed with millions of colors. In each garment, the print coincides with a specific part of the garment, resulting in a synthesis of color, composition, and form.

Jhane Barnes Digital is fashion’s future. Jhane is changing with the times, and is even ahead of the fashion curve.

As a designer, I am excited to experience these transitions. The only downside is that I am no longer weaving. We are designing fewer and fewer woven dobbies, and are selling two of our looms. I am very sad to see them go! I am grateful to the looms for all they have taught me, and hope their new owners love them as much as we did.

image above: Iviva weaving

Neptune and the Seahorses (Painting by Dr. Robert Elliott)

I love hearing from the men who wear my clothes. Dr. Robert Elliott, who has been wearing my clothes for years, sent me some paintings for Christmas! I was so excited when I opened the package and saw these watercolor sketches based on Da Vinci’s drawings. I just had to call him and thank him.

I ended up telling Dr. Elliott about some of our new designs. He was intrigued by Jhane Barnes Digital, a new line featuring engineered, digitally printed garments. I explained to him that in an engineered print, each aspect of the print coincides with a specific portion of the garment, so that there is a complete synthesis between the fabric and the garment. As a painter, he appreciated the fact that digital printing allows me to design with millions of colors. And then it hit me: “Why don’t I make an engineered digital shirt out of your painting inspired by Da Vinci’s “Neptune and the Sea Horses” drawing?” I asked. He was thrilled by the idea, so I worked with one of my designers, Heidi Bender, to adapt his painting as a print.

In this video, Heidi explains in detail how she transformed the original painting into a shirt.

This shirt is a true collaboration between Heidi, Dr. Elliott, and me. Our design process is as important to me as the final garment. I love when people and ideas cohere into a great finished product, as they do in this shirt, Neptune. Thanks, Dr. Elliott, for allowing me to adapt your painting, and thanks, Heidi, for adding your own painterly touch.

This shirt, like a number of my designs, is an exclusive item. I only produced a limited number. Currently, you can find this item at my online store: Jhane’s online store

When I am designing with Jhane, I am inspired by so many things. My painting background influences me to think about pattern, color, texture, brush strokes, light, space (not “outer space” LOL) and transitions. The analytical part of my brain leads me to think about algorithms, iterations, mathematics and fractals. When these things work in conjunction, it’s magic.

Working for Jhane, everything always goes back to fractals, somehow.

At the end of “Geek Fashion”, I mention how some art critics and mathematicians believe that the action paintings of Jackson Pollock are based on fractals. I was so excited by this tidbit of information that one night, after several pints of Guinness, I told my painter friend about this. He wasn’t as excited as I was… He said he had heard that one before and didn’t really put a lot of stock in that theory.  (Since this conversation did take place at the local pub, you can imagine that this is the family-friendly abbreviated version…) Still excited about my new information, I protested, “No, but you don’t understand!  I spend hours a day everyday at work thinking about painting and art and fractals and algorithms!” (To read more about Jackson Pollock and fractals, Jennifer Ouellette wrote a definitive article for Discover Magazine: Pollock’s Fractals.)

Ok, so I admit, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration to exclaim that I spend hours a day thinking about fractals, but it does seem that somehow everything goes back to fractals. To me, the fact that so many experts could find iterations and patterns in the seemingly random paintings of Jackson Pollock…this validated my whole existence…well, at least for that brief moment….

Fractal broccoflower, also known as Romanesco Broccoli

And sometimes I’m not even thinking about work or art or fashion and fractals pop up….Here’s another example:

Jhane and her team are always looking to try new healthy foods. A recent obsession for me was broccoflower from Trader Joe’s produce section. Broccoflower looks like a broccoli-cauliflower hybrid.  It tastes sort of like cauliflower, but slightly different. I admit, it’s mostly the novelty of a new vegetable that thrills me so much! Thinking about the cloned meat controversy, I wanted to know more about how this unusual vegetable came to be.

I did a little research and found out that what I was buying at TJ’s is literally green cauliflower. And that there is a second type of broccolflower, which is the result of broccoli and cauliflower cross-pollinating (which can happen by natural means). This is also known as Romanesco Broccoli, and has beautiful spirals which follow Fibannaci’s sequence. Each big spiral is made up of lots of little spirals, similar to sea shells. To read more about broccoflower, John Walker wrote a great article called “Fractal Food“.

Besides being mathematical equations, fractals also occur quite frequently in nature. If you would like to know more about this, you can check out an episode of Nova, which Jhane participated in (Chapter 3), which is all about fractals.

-Heidi Bender, Assistant Designer at Jhane Barnes Menswear

Jon Armstrong

Jhane was just interviewed by Jon Armstrong, noted author and host of if you’re just joining us. He and Jhane discuss Jhane’s passion for Star Trek, fractals, how Jhane got started in business, and Jhane reveals some insider information about secret Japanese technology that goes into her fashions. Check out the podcast.

As a toddler, I would climb out of my crib at night and scribble all over my walls with my orange crayons.  Always orange.  I don’t know why my mother didn’t just throw away the orange crayons.  I was always creative, and I excelled in art class, as well as many other right-brained activities.  However, I discovered that I was really good at left-brained activities as well, like math.

My mom is left handed.  She loves to cook, and has a flair for decorating her home — she is typically right-brained.  My dad is extremely left-brained, he’s a numbers guy.  He loves money.com and Business Week, and in fact, I can’t remember ever seeing him read a fiction book.  In high school, I enjoyed both art and math.  I was encouraged by my parents to pursue both activities, but always felt I was supposed to pick one or the other.

Although I took A.P. Calculus my senior year and tested out of all my college math requirements, art did eventually win.  I went to Philadelphia to study painting at Tyler School of Art.  When I got to art school, I met the most amazing group of creative, inspiring, and artistic (right-brained) people.  But the left-brained thinkers were few and far between.

I still felt really unresolved because only half of my brain was being challenged.  Years after I graduated, still trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I started hand knitting.  I realized that I really loved figuring out the interloopings of the yarn which create fabric.  I wanted to design fabric for bulk production.

I attended FIT and studied Textile & Surface Design.  Besides satisfying my creative side, weaving also engaged the left side of my brain — how many vertical threads vs. how many horizontal threads, figuring out complicated weave structures, and the science behind the different fibers which make up yarn and are woven into fabric.

I remember hanging out with an old art school friend, and trying to describe why textile design was such a good fit for me.  I described how sometimes designs are very complicated or have deep concepts behind them, and sometimes just an orange scribble is enough.

When I started working for Jhane almost a year ago, I found her to be creative and artistic, and also inspired by mathematics and algorithms.  In fact, Jhane employs mathematicians who write her exclusive proprietary software which we use to generate abstract geometric designs.

Working with Jhane, I have discovered my inner computer nerd.  I have learned to use so many new graphics programs.  We’re using software that no one else in fashion is using like fractal software, mathematical generators, and 3-D animation software. We’re even beta testing brand new software as well.  I still love Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and I’ve looked to other industries to find alternative ways to use these programs.  Since the main focus of our sportswear line is shirts, I took a pattern-making class to learn how a shirt is constructed.  By the way, there is a lot of math and geometry involved in pattern-making.

This is a sneak peek at a engineered digital print for Spring 2010—a tribute to the "orange scribble".

A lot of the skills that I learned as a fine artist are transferable to textile design.  For instance, even in menswear, it is important to know how to draw flowers traditionally, before you can draw flowers abstractly.  Color is the first thing that people notice, and if it’s not pleasing to the eye or flattering, it doesn’t matter how well a garment fits or how innovative the fabric.

We just finished designing our Spring 2010 line, which was loosely inspired by grafitti and painting.  Some of these shirts were actually approached in the same way that I would make an abstract painting, with the exception that I used a computer to literally layer high resolution scans of paint strokes, drips and splatters, instead of real paint which is messy and toxic.  In fact, many art critics and mathematicians believe even the action paintings of Jackson Pollock are based on fractals.

-Heidi Bender, Assistant Designer at Jhane Barnes Menswear

When I turned 30, I did something that was scary for me. Despite having a successful career in non-profit management, I felt unfulfilled, and decided to go back to school to study textile design in FIT’s one-year AAS program.

When I started at FIT, I knew I loved fabric, but I did not really know what a textile designer does. I soon fell in love with the traditional hand-painting techniques for print design, and even more importantly with weaving. When I graduated, I hoped to find a job that would allow me to continue doing what I loved. My professors warned me that a weaving or hand painting job would be hard to find, as most textile design is done on the computer. After six months of interviews, I finally found a match—I began working at Jhane Barnes Menswear.

This is one of the first swatches I wove for Jhane.

Going into work was like a dream come true: Jhane had her own looms, and an endless supply of yarns. Even better, for my first six months, my main responsibility was to weave sample swatches for our Hong Kong mill. I learned how to operate a 32-harness dobby loom and use Weavemaker software. I fell in love with weaving all over again from a new perspective. Finally, I got to experience the full process of making a garment from a designer’s initial concept, to a small handloom, to sample fabric, and a sample shirt.

How we design and what we make at Jhane Barnes has changed since my initiation into weaving. Jhane believes in life-long learning, and passes this value onto her staff members, sharing information and resources, and encouraging us to do the same. Our design process is collaborative and ever-evolving, just like our designs. One person may have an initial concept, and another will offer feedback and advice on tweaking the color, or adjusting the layout. We also constantly share new tricks for using Photoshop and Illustrator to get the results we need.

In addition to teaching herself about weaving and becoming an expert (Jhane bought her first loom in 1978!), Jhane has embraced computers and technology. She is ahead of the curve in incorporating these tools into her design process. In Fall 2009, Jhane will launch Jhane Barnes Digital, a line of garments with engineered digital prints. In an engineered print, each aspect of the fabric pattern coincides with a specific part of the garment. We use numerous software programs to create these designs, and are always discovering new plug-ins and ways to use them. Creating engineered digital prints has been extremely challenging. The placement of each motif and every detail is critical! The result are garments with incredibly rich color that look like nothing else in the market. Once again, through a desire to move beyond the ordinary, Jhane is redefining fashion, and learning and sharing new skills along the way.