Delivering extreme creativity to the runway is what couture fashion designer Jeremy Scott does best.  You won’t fall asleep during any of his famous runway shows as he takes his imagination and inspiration and transforms them into fun and fab, not predictable or drab. 

Silk Jersey Icing Dress

For the Spring 2006 New York Fashion Week, Scott turned to First2Print to make his cartoon- and fast-food-inspired designs a reality on the runway.

First2print is the industry leader in large format fabric printing.  The company supplies digital textile design and printing services to customers worldwide.  Combining today's most popular textiles along with state-of-the-art large-format color printers, customized software, and specially formulated inks, First2Print supplies some amazing fabrics for its clientele. 

Unlike traditional mills which have a minimum yardage and long turnaround time frames, First2Print can deliver yardage in just days.  And it was just days, in fact about two weeks, in which the entire concept — from idea, to drawings, to digital files of engineered panels, to printer, to sewing machine — took place during the Jeremy Scott project.

Scott has designed for the likes of Bjork, Brittney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Christina Aguilera, and the evergreen Madonna — to name just a few.  For the Spring 2006 Fashion Week show, Scott interpreted his images of cartoons and fast food into quite extraordinary men’s and women’s fashion wear.  Prints, prints, and more prints.  Picture a HoHo cake silky dress, a French fry drop-off-the-shoulder gown, a waffle-cone dress with matching finger-to-elbow gloves, an ice-cream cone corset atop a flowing (envision dripping) dress, a hamburger with a French fry sweater and pant ensemble, and a stunning pizza kimono.  Yes, a pizza kimono – which stole the show.

“What really drove me to work with First2Print is the idea of doing something custom,“ said Jeremy Scott, couture designer.  “A lot of flatbed or even rotary printing companies just can’t handle the time constraint and the fact that I wanted to print on fabrics like raw silk.”

Two Scoops In Silk Charmeuse & Nylon Tricot

Outside of the traditional textile world, great ideas and beautiful designs are converging for unique and novelty items.  Designers and artists face a completely different sort of issue—where to go to print their small-scale yardage needs.  First2Print uniquely combines its knowledge base of the textile industry with the digital world and graphics design.  The company offers a selection of synthetic and natural fabrics for creating short-run textile designs.

First2Print can produce 5-500 yards of a specific design which is washable, wearable, and ready for retail.  During these more custom-oriented projects, First2Print works with its customers throughout the entire design process to engineer a final product assembled with textile. 

For the Jeremy Scott project, First2Print had to work closely with Scott and his design team to help Scott’s team change from designing repeated patterns using the traditional rotary approach to designing for digital direct-to-print.  For a traditional rotary method, design specifications are for cutting screens, usually about 12 screens per garment pattern.  The patterns have to fit into a specific repeat (rotary) circumference size.  Designing digitally, there is no need for screens.  Garment pieces can be designed as continuous yardage to be sewn according to a pattern.  Or they can be designed as actual engineered pattern pieces with the imagery printed individually, inside of each pattern piece. 

In the case of the pizza kimono, the garment design was an engineered pattern. 

Silk Charmeuse Evening Gown

“For the pizza kimono with cheese, pepperoni, olive and crust designs, we would have the left side of the arm in the actual pattern piece with the pizza imagery inside of it,” explained Paul Cartelli, digital colorist for First2Print.  “Rather than putting a pattern piece on top of the image, we would print the pattern piece with the pizza imagery inside of it.  For the kimono, we printed about 30 or more digital files, each an engineered pattern piece.”

For First2Print, no two projects are alike — each carries its own intricacies.

“The biggest challenge was the organization of the files to make sure that the pattern pieces were correct to all parts of the final design,” added Cartelli. 

“Typically, prints are a laborious process with lots of different elements of artwork that need to come together in the final piece,“ noted Scott.  “But with the added benefit of digital printing, I had much more freedom.  And I could just give the artwork directly to the staff at First2Print that understood both fashion design and digital artwork.  It was a real thrilling experience to be honest, because it was wild to be able to have the possibility of doing some of the subtleties that digital printing allows.  I had the opportunity to really use millions and millions of colors.” 

Silk Charmeuse Kimono

In the end, the deadlines were met and the collection was a hit.  Several Hollywood stars have already asked to wear a few of Scott’s fast-food gowns.  What does the future hold for Jeremy Scott and his design team?  Well, that’s always a surprise.  You’ll need to come to the next runway show.

About First2Print

First2print is the industry leader in digital fabric printing. Located in the heart of the design communities in NY and LA, the company supplies digital textile design and printing services to customers worldwide. The company combines today's most popular textiles along with state-of-the-art large-format color printers, customized software and specially formulated inks to print the best possible fabrics. Unlike traditional mills which have a minimum yardage and long turnaround time frames, First2Print can deliver yardage in just days. First2Print has a wide range of customers who use the company's fabric print services for prototypes as well as short-run wearable and washable production. Typical applications include printing fabrics for strike-offs, short-run fabric and textile production, fabric and costume design, novelty print fabrics, interior design, and more.