Fashion Masterclass

Couture Craftsmanship

Here Sascha Johrden is hand-sewing on his design of a couture dress to be presented at the "L.O.B. Sophisticated Fashion Award" 2016 during the Leipzig opera ball.

Sascha is a 2015 graduate of the fashion design education at Lette Verein Berlin. He was one of eight top graduates selected for the Lette masterclass, an extra course initiated and led by Lette Verein lecturer Jochen Pahnke and endowed by the Berlin Senate Department for Labor, Integration and Women.

On top of their three-year education, these future "masters" have the chance to further sharpen their creative and manufacturing profile aiming at competing in international fashion awards and exhibitions.

The Fitting

Sascha and his favourite model Johanna in a last fitting right before the competition is on in Leipzig.

Sascha spent about 100 hours of pattern making, draping, testing and sewing, in fact a real couture approach of creating such an outstanding evening dress.

Johanna, goddess-like in sea-silk satin.

Mariya's design focusses on classical tailoring with an edgy twist. She combined chocolate brown woolen pants in mid-length with an eccentric X-line tailleur.

Due to the exceptional material for the jacket, a synthetic fabric usually made for tents and tarps, the sharp seaming and couture-like organic collar is reminiscent to the typical look of the Eighties represented by famous French designer Thierry Mugler.

Austerity meets comfort, an eclectic mixture of layers, shapes and fabrics.

This is Dan Winkler's approach to fashion design: traditional style codes need to be broken by trying out yet unseen combinations of clothes wrapped around the human body and layers organically floating into each other. An exceptional signature of taste with style!

Dan's ideas seem to be endless, and already in his well-made fashion sketches he shows his outstanding skills and understanding of 3D design thinking.

For his outfits, Dan managed to cooperate with a Portuguese textile company that is specialized on virgin wool fabrics for plaids, scarves and cushions. So the long comfortable coat is made of a large woolen plaid in herringbone pattern.

The "Fürstenzug" fabric cut into pattern pieces for the bodice

The design and pattern making was a very special challenge for Sascha: the idea was to arrange the pieces according to the special fabric pattern so that the images of the procession become vividly clear on the dress.

Therefore, Sascha developed in 3D: he decided about the allocation of seaming and images by trying out and draping the fabric on the dress form.

An insight into the manufacturing process, the middle parts already have been assembled by machine-sewing.

A bandage for a bodice?

As the rattan rods, now inserted into the bodice, are flexible for shaping, the bodice was put on a dress form, then sprayed with water and later wrapped with toile fabric. This special bandage technique eventually makes for the required body-shaping silhouette!

A true Royal Appearance

The Fürstenzug dress in full view shortly before it is brought to completion. For the back of the skirt, two pieces each in full length and width were manufactured and it gets clear that in fact the fabric pattern mainly is arranged in stripes of procession images.