For years there's been a dearth of production options for fashion designers in Portland. In a city that places so much emphasis on its local artisans, it's been difficult for Portland designers to keep their operations within the city limits up to certain point in their careers. Hey, it's great if stores want to sell your designs, but it's another story when you're faced with having to produce a huge run of garments on your own, often within very limited lengths of time. Certainly Portland designers have enlisted others to help as independent contractors, although this can be tricky and it can be hard to find people whose quality of work you trust. The Sofada team recently began offering production work to local designers, under the name Alice, Inc., but this week marks the opening of the first production house solely serving designers throughout the region. The Portland Garment Factory is the brainchild of founder Britt Howard, who got the idea by seeing how hampered many Portland designers were by this void, and decided to fill it. She and her team are already generating interest among locals like Kate Towers and Moth Love, and if you're a designer in town looking to preserve the locality of your designs (not to mention foregoing the cost of shipping things back and forth from New York, Canada, China, etc) you'll want to grab a peek at this week's two-pronged grand opening celebration: Thursday Oct 2 7-10 pm & Fri Oct 3 5-8 pm, stop by the factory space at 2324 SE Belmont for wine, snacks, and socializing, plus find out about pricing and range of services, or just give Britt a big high five for bolstering the local economy in this essential way.

There has been sporadic talk over the years of starting some type of unifying organization for the Portland design scene--the Fashion Incubator is long gone, but the Fashion Fight Club is a recent example of designers banding together for strength in numbers. May Tee, a Portland-based designer, has ambitions on a new organization, the first project of which is underway: Portland Fashion Synergy has already begun a design contest and scholarship program available to Portland Art Institute students themed in this inaugural year as NEXT. As in (partly), what's next for Portland design students after they graduate? One of the goals of PDXFS is too strengthen relationships across the community, and allow young designers the opportunity of exploring some of the alternatives to leaving town or finding a job at a sportswear company. This could take any number of forms: It's all brand new, and Tee is still in the brainstorming stages (full disclosure: I've been trying to help her). If you're a local designer or design student, check it out. It's an opportunity to get on the ground floor and make out of it what you would most want to get out if it; the door is wide open.

A look from May Tee's S/S '09 collection--find pieces for fall on sale now at Marios.

With runways around the world showing next season's looks, attention once again in being paid to the ongoing debate over skinny models. Madrid is holding to its word and having models checked for a body mass index minimum of 18 before being allowed to walk (only one out of 45 models were eliminated). The CFDA maintains its hands-off approach and receives the expected criticism. Through the din (which is not nearly as deafening as it was last year) comes a very clearheaded analysis of the issue from the Huffington Post:

So then why do we keep seeing such delicately thin young girls model clothes meant to be sold to women with mature figures? One little addressed reason may have to do with the manufacturing process: it's cheaper and easier to mass manufacture clothes that have less built-in shape. Garments with less shaping hang more attractively on linear bodies. Bust darts, waist darts and curved seams are all more difficult to both fit and sew than straight seams. These are the elements of tailored garments that enable clothing to sit smoothly over shapely curves. But-- it takes time and expertise to perfect these elements and this can cost a lot of money. Additionally from a financial perspective, garment pattern pieces with straighter seams can produce better yield from a bolt of fabric. Think about it like this: if you have two cookie cutters, one square and one round that you apply to equally sized sheets of dough, which will give you more cookies with less wasted dough in between?

Fashion cycles keep whirling faster as stores both encourage and cater to consumer demand for a constant influx of new merchandise. Designers are being pushed to their limits to keep up. In today's global market place, having a fashion business is all about dealing with economy of scale- if you can't produce quickly and in large volume, it is very, very difficult to stay in business.

It's definitely worth a read if the issue troubles you at all, and it rightly doesn't let anyone, including consumers, off the hook.