Coat Fabric Trends: Season A/W 2010/11

Textile Update
Here are some musings on the A/W 2010/11 textile season.

Colours
Whilst we fully expect the berry palette to continue for the new season, the new narrative for the coat revolves around camel highlighted with mid to light blues. With big hitters such as DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger, Chloe, Miu Miu and Max Mara, all promoting a variety of camel tones on the catwalk. Wrapped or DB styling to the fore, soft in structure and hand feel.

Best Sellers Plains Articles
One fabric in our collection stands head and shoulders above the rest hitting all the sweet spots for touch, drape, richness and depth of colour, price and very importantly from a lead time perspective. A cashmere touch but with a price of less around $9 this 550gm fabric ( 70/25/5 wool/viscose/nylon) is perfect for volume business and when you consider we hold large reserves of ecru ready for dyeing enabling us to offer incredibly fast lead times it’s a no brainer.
Noble fibres are represented best this season by the alpaca and angora yarns. Our 85/10/5 wool/alpaca/nylon represents excellent value for a luxury item at around $12 and we have two options in wool/angora blends that are proving popular for those that require a soft hand feel but with a shorter pile.

Fancy Articles
At last, some proper design input from China! Slightly drawn articles in 100% wool or wool/polyester/viscose blends in transitional weights being the bases for well balanced check designs utilizing colour combinations of greys and yellows to compliment the predominately grey tailoring story for the season.
Alternatively there is the double face fabrics in wool/nylon blends that at 750gms are perfect for that sophisticated duffle look.

More stuff to follow but feel free to contact Will to see the complete collection of fabrics plus several new prototype garment styles just in.

Elvish Adventure

Designed in our Istanbul studio, here is the first of many proto sample offerings for A/W 2010/2011. You don’t have to be the Lady of the Wood to wear this little beauty. We like it for the fitted styling, the utter frilliness of it and the lustre of the fabric which is given by the silk content blended with the wool and cashmere or maybe its Elvish magic!

What can I have in the way of garment sampling?
We can make you a counter sample as the original or we can amend to your design and measurement specifications. We can use the original or offer substitute fabrics to achieve different price points. We make fit/salesman’s samples in the factory of choice, backed up with a UK based garment tech service. Please quote style ref. 5869

What are the production options?
For this product we offer two fully factored options (CMT n/a for this style): We can make in one of our high end Turkish factories where we can offer smaller production runs of around 200 pieces per colour or alternatively we can make in our main Chinese coat factory where we would only need a minimum of 800 pieces per style to produce backed with a weekly critical path update.

Do you just want the fabric?
That’s ok, we love this fabric and we know how well it performs. We can deliver a minimum of 1000mts per colour from China, possibly less with a surcharge. The fabric is 80% wool, 10% cashmere & 10% silk, 540gms per linear meter. All bulk fabric is independently inspected before shipment by ITS Shanghai. The new season’s fabric collection will be available to view shortly.

Keep a look out for more protos coming soon and if you would like to touch the real thing and discuss possibilities in more detail drop Will a line on his email or catch him on his mobile 07906 305 377.