Fashion designer Kenzo dies of covid

[Tanuki]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/04/kenzo-founder-kenzo-takada-dies-of-covid-19-aged-81

"The Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada has died in Paris after contracting Covid-19, a spokesperson has announced. He was 81.

Takada, known best by his first name, was the first designer from Japan to break into the city’s exclusive fashion milieu in the 1970s.

His prêt-à-porter designs with their trademark profusion of bright colours, flowers and jungle prints were a far cry from the traditional Parisian mode of the time, when chic salon presentations were largely prim and proper affairs.

Kenzo, who died at the American hospital on Sunday, was famous not only for his clothes, but went on to create a global brand of perfume and skin products. At the time of his death he was acting honorary president of the Asian Couture Federation."....(more)

[Dream Girl]

1. I remember when I first began sewing and his Butterick sewing patterns we the shitz!

RIP Kenzo. Now I really feel old

[cyclonefence]

2. I was getting ready to post the same thing!

One of my favorite dresses was a Kenzo shirtwaist. I felt very grown up to be sewing and wearing a designer fashion. Plus I had graduated from Simplicity. Thank you, Kenzo. You leave fond memories.

[Dream Girl]

3. I was trying to remember what the other pattern maker was...Simplicity and there was also McCall's

I was never that good, so Butterick was more aspirational for me. I was really more Simplicity level. However, my best friend was so skilled she was all into Butterick. She could make anything, even coats! Do you remember that one hip hugger pants pattern that everyone made back in the day? It must have been Simplicity... I can still see in my mind's eye!

[Ms. Toad]

4. and later, Vogue.

Despite the significantly higher cost - I have never used a Vogue pattern that did not have a sewing impossibility error in it - the last in 2008 when I sewed my daughter's prom dress.

I contacted them about it - they acknowledged the error - and pointed me to some obscure location where they had corrected the error.

Are you talking about the elephant leg pants? https://www.pinterest.at/pin/494481234082269696/

(This isn't the pattern I used, but I couldn't quickly find the one I would did use. I may still even have a pair of pants I made using the pattern hiding in a closet somewhere.)

[Dream Girl]

5. That's right. I never even attempted Vogue. What do you mean by sewing impossiblity error?

It wasn't the elephant leg pants that we all made. It was the hip hugger with the long belt-like tab for 4 snaps or buttons. I made it in a narrow wale corduroy for my back to school wardrobe. Clothes we so much more expensive it made sense to sew. Now not so much...

[Ms. Toad]

7. Telling you to sew something a certain way,

then telling you to flip it inside out when the seams they told you to sew made flipping it impossible. (That is an error I specifically recall from a pantsuit set I made when I was 14-ish. I had to go back and figure out where the opening needed to be in order to flip it inside out, rip out the appropriate seams, stitch up the location of the opening.)

The one for the prom dress was not so much an impossibility - as stupidity. The directions had the wrong sides together, which would have resulted in the back side of fabric showing when it was intended to have both sides with the right side visible. (Inside the bodice, half would have had the wrong side out; the other half the right side out.)

I don't remember the others in between, but after the first one I made a habit of reading completely through the directions once before cutting and several times before sewing. I tried to discourage my daughter from the pattern she wanted for her prom dress . . . but she had her heart set on that one. And, they got me, even though I had read the pattern at least 3 times before I stumbled into the error and had to rip seams in very fragile fabric.

This one: https://www.clbxg.com/dressimage/xullfj.html

[Dream Girl]

9. That is a georgeous dress. Do you have pics of your final product?

[Ms. Toad]

10. I'll send you a link via DU mail. n/t

[Dream Girl]

11. Sounds good! Do bodice reminds me of a top I had in college at a loved. It was a georgette

black garden print. Where do you find fabric these days?

[Ms. Toad]

13. Right now I'm raiding all of my stash

from when my daughter was little to make masks. (I haven't had a lot of time to sew in recent years -so I haven't bought anything beyond thread, needles, etc. recently.)

[cyclonefence]

15. Well, there was Vogue

but talk about aspirational! I never made hip-huggers, but there was a Simplicity pattern for a jumpsuit that I made and then everywhere I looked it seemed like everybody made it, too. It was kind of like when I was pregnant it seemed like everybody walking down the street was pregnant!

[kimbutgar]

6. My sewing teacher in high school in the 70's told us that vogue were crap

She liked Butterick the best.

[Ms. Toad]

8. Vogue is definitely crap. n/t

[Dream Girl]

12. Butterick had more classic styles...Simplicity stuff looks kind of home made as I recall

Vogue was considered more difficult, but more it was because there were full of errors...

[Ms. Toad]

14. I have yet to find a single Vogue pattern

without an error.