A day with Sienna in the Garment District
Seven in the morning, Greene Street. The sampling room is the coldest part of the studio and Sienna works in it first, before the machines warm the space, because she says she reads a seam better when she is slightly uncomfortable.
The morning is fit corrections on Collection 04 - a shoulder that sits a quarter inch too far forward on the size 14 grade, which is invisible in a photograph and unmistakable on a body. Grading is where most small labels quietly fail; a pattern that is beautiful at a size 6 and merely scaled up is not a pattern, it is an approximation.
Midday is mill correspondence and the unglamorous arithmetic of yardage. Afternoon is the cutting table. By four the sample sewer has a second Halsey in muslin and the shoulder is right.
Six pm is a fit appointment with a customer who has been buying from us since the first collection. She tries the corrected blazer, turns once in front of the mirror, and says nothing for a moment. That silence is the whole job.
