Textiles

Jhane Barnes—Designer, Mentor, Educator

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Hi. I’m Iviva, one of Jhane’s designers. I’ve been working with Jhane for the past couple of years, and having her as a mentor has made a huge impact on me.

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.

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.

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Rhedux: Clothing with an Environmental Edge

Monday, April 13th, 2009

My passion for design is evident in every product I create, from carpets to men’s fashion. My products also reflect my passion for the environment. In my Spring 2009 men’s line I launched Rhedux, clothing with a fresh look, a trimmer silhouette, and an environmental conscience. Here is a quick look at Rhedux, and how I am working to adopt environmentally sensitive practices in everything I make.

One area that has always intrigued me is the amount of sample materials, including yarns and fabrics, that mills produce and inadvertently throw away. All mills create sample yarns and yardage to market to designers. Some of these materials, often of the highest quality, may be too expensive for their intended audience, or may not meet designers’ aesthetic needs for that season. In this case, these high-end materials end up in the trash.

For years, I dreamed of a way to collect and harness these materials. Just think—a literal gold mine of fabric was going to waste at mills all over the world! Finally, in 2008, I made an extended tour of many of my factories.  I identified a number of truly luxurious fabrics that were being stored in research labs, purchased them at a good price, and worked with my design team to make them look more like me.

Crescendo (Rhedux Collection)

For example, here is Crescendo. The reclaimed fabric was a soft seersucker with simple grey and white stripes.  While the texture was intriguing, the fabric needed more color and depth. I designed a blue print to sit on top. The print is digital, which uses less wash water than a regular screen print, and also has an unlimited color palette. The resulting shirt has a sophisticated interplay of color, texture, and pattern.

I am now using digital printing in ways no one has ever done before. In Fall 2009, I am introducing Jhane Barnes Digital, a line of engineered digital garments! While I love the freedom to design with millions of colors, I also love the fact that I am helping to reduce water wastage.

Another recent development is the introduction of shirts made in India, where printing and dyeing is done by hand. The dyeing and printing use less wash water than a screen print produced at an industrial mill. This is just one more way I am choosing to partner with mills who are sensitive to the environment.

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Inside One of My Favorite Spring 09 Shirts

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

When I started my career, I was purchasing fabrics from other people. But I was dissatisfied with the designs that were available. Eventually I realized that to get the fabrics I dreamed of, I would have to create them myself. So I bought a loom and taught myself how to weave. I also discovered I had to learn how to design weaving patterns. All my designing was done by hand, with paper and pencil. A few years later I got my first computer (an Atari) and discovered what a joy it was to be able to design so much more quickly, to experiment, and to learn. I love complex woven designs, where yarns and colors and weaves interact to create layers of design and texture.

Dentrite

Dentrite

Jumping ahead a quarter century, I’m still loving these complex designs, and always learning new ways to design. I have recently designed a number of “push-pull” shirts.  Here is a glimpse of how push-pull works.

At first glance, you might think this shirt (at left), called “Dentrite,” is printed, but it’s actually woven, as you can see in the close-up (below left).

Dentrite Closeup

Dentrite Closeup

The weave structure is called “double-weave” because the fabric is woven in two layers. Most of the shirt is constructed so that these two layers are tightly bound together. In these areas, you cannot easily tell that the fabric is in two layers.

But other areas of the shirt are woven with the two layers entirely separated. You can grasp the outside and inside of the shirt, and pull the two layers apart, creating a hollow space within the fabric. The large, dark, diamond shaped areas are done this way.

After the shirt is woven, it receives additional processing (called “finishing”). One step in this process slightly separates the two layers of fabric, and then moves the weft yarns in the front layer sideways.

As a result, the weft yarns no longer run in straight lines, but curve quite dramatically. Some of the yarns cluster together, and some of them move farther apart. You can see the resulting wiggling in the photograph of the shirt, and in the close-up below. This technique is called “push-pull.”

Dentrite Showing Push-Pull Effect

Dentrite Showing Push-Pull Effect

Note that the front layer of the shirt becomes quite open in places, as a result of the weft yarns being moved aside. You can clearly see the back layer of shirt fabric showing through these spaces (an effect called “grin through”).

The construction is 108 ends per inch by 100 picks per inch. The yarn is 80/2 cotton warp, while the weft is 80/2 cotton and 40/1 cupro rayon weft, pick and pick.

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