This photo shoot image was taken by Calgary photographer Aaron McCullough for our 2015 annual fashion event. All the garments you see on the model, draped over the sewing machine, and hung on the rack are created by Elfriede vintage couture except for one. I’ll leave you guessing which one for the moment.
Our philosophy at Ecole Holt Couture follows the founder’s principles of creating couture that is lasting. This means more than one wearing, more than on season, more than one year, and likely to last for several to many years. The way to do that is to put the best quality workmanship into it, using the best available quality natural fibre fabrics, and not least applying designs that last. We call this ‘classic’ design style.
How do you achieve this? The founder’s professional career in the fashion industry has lasted for over 60 years and what Elfriede noted were the styles that kept reoccurring in everyday fashion over several decades, or repeated over many decades since 1900, that included aesthetic appeal and functionality. Although slight differences in detail, material, and uses have changed, the basic garment remained authentic in design.
Elfriede used those historic, vintage, and trendy fashion garment commonalities to demonstrate and teach applied sewing methods and techniques from the simple to the highly complex in Ecole Holt Couture’s Dressmaking, Couture and Tailoring programs. Students learn how to apply design elements, how to incorporate functionality, suitability and personal style, for each prescribed project employing relevant work sketches, appropriate fabrics and materials, custom measurement taking, original pattern drafting, cutting, assembling, fitting, appropriate construction, pressing methods, sewing, and detailing. That is a lot of information applied to each project.
Even though the way we live today and fashion is different than even 20 years ago, the same principles still apply, and perhaps even more so, to garments as we go forward and return to more sustainable fashion in 2020’s.
Have you decided which garment you think is the most recent one in the photo? The green linen safari style dress on the rack is the newest created by one of our students during their time at Ecole Holt Couture as one of the 50 garments created during four years of full-time instruction. And yes, the safari style is just one which has come in and out of fashion since around 1910 morphing from sport hunting jackets to casual dresses to men’s shirts to quite formal ladies suits. The details identify the general style, the designer or client [ultimate consumer] defines the current colour and occasion, but the creator ensures the appropriate fabric, the most functional with the best fit, and the appropriate sewing construction methods that make it come to life.
As we ended our full-time on-campus instruction and slowly transition to home-study and guided study-at-your-own-pace online instruction, combined with on-site workshops, Ecole Holt Couture’s original teaching methods endure. We will post some free introductory videos to our YouTube channel so you can get an insight to our teaching methods and decide whether you’d like to take up this craft as a career or as a valuable life skill-set.
Until next time, cheers! J
Ecole Holt Couture - School of Couture Sewing & Design 
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