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

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.