So you walk into the fabric store and you see some overpriced bolts labeled “designer fabric”, but just what is designer fabric?
It certainly is not fabric made by a designer. Can you see Donna Karan sitting down in some fabric mill designing cloth? me either. Well…maybe to some extent it is “designed” by the design house, but unless its a really distinct house print (think burberry), it really isn’t.
Designer fabric is basically the leftovers from a designer’s collection that didn’t sell according to plan. Most designers order fabric from overseas mills by hundred yard increments depending on how many copies they project the public will buy. Labor is always more expensive than material so they only produce batches of the clothes based on demand and when a particular collection fails to sell, there’s a lot of left over fabric.
And to prevent losing too much money, they sell the remainder to fabric stores at the purchased wholesale price. You are purchasing it at retail price so the designers don’t profit, only the fabric stores do. With that said, the fabric is usually from previous seasons, but is often of impeccable quality so you be the judge.
Oh, and if you are hunting for some genuine Burberry fabric from last season, stop the search, there probably isn’t any. Houses with very distinctive trademark fabrics usually burn the extra and just take the loss.
