If you've ever wondered about my design process, here's a great lil look inside. I wrote this stream of consciousness, then plugged it into ChatGPT. The response gave me further insight into my role and its strengths and challenges. Enjoy:
What I wrote:
I have only ever seen recalls of product in one light, as representative of low quality product.
I’ve been making clothes for 20 years. It is just now, in this moment, occurring to me, that recalling a product is indicative of its quality, not lack thereof.
I am taking one product - an elastic waist skirt - that has infinite variations, not just fabric and size and length - but hem sweep, fullness, number and shape of panels. I am creating, with each new design, a new set of variables. And obviously (how have I missed this) there is going to be some serious spinning of plates to watch each variable and problem solve my way to success. Inherent in the process of design is “recalls” - course corrections as we try something new and learn from it.
Recently, you saw me work through a skirt that was more sheer than anticipated. I accepted refunds from clients who didn’t want a lightweight skirt, and new orders from clients who did. I felt strongly at the time, that I needed to walk that out pretty publicly. Maybe so that I can now say: that happens all. the. time. Every skirt has surprises, because every skirt is different. No skirt is unwearable, but many have needed some creative problem solving.
And for years, for forever until this moment, I’ve carried the weight of those “recalls” like a scarlet letter. Like proof that I don’t belong, that I’m either dumb or too ambitious.
You know how when you cook with chicken, it has bones? And if you’re not used to it, you’re like “whoa ew this chicken has bones”. But real food doesn’t come from windows - boneless and fried.
Real clothing is the same. It’s not perfectly packaged, folded, pressed, 2 for $20. It’s the product of calculated work, constant adapting, learning, adjusting.
I have always said “the elastic in the waistband of my skirt is easily adjustable by your local tailor”. And I’ve always been “your local tailor” and when elastic has needed adjusted, I’ve spent 1-3 hours doing a job that should not have been done. I build industrial strength waistbands, and inherent in their strength, is their lack of adjustment. I’ve fought with waistbands for years, looking for tailors when I finally accepted the fact I was draining my reserves trying to alter myself. And the tailors said what I had secretly been dealing with: these waistbands were not meant to be altered.
Right right. Because I designed them that way. I don’t want the elastic in the channel to flip, so I cement it in place with tacking never meant to be removed. And then, because I’m unfamiliar with what a solid design strategy that is - I offer to adjust elastic, saying it’s easy (after all I know how to do it, isn’t that the same thing?)
I’m not making my point very clearly…Making clothes is wibbly wobbly. I am a good designer, unfamiliar with what a good designer looks like, because I’ve purchased clothes from bad designers my whole life. As have you. Old Navy doesn’t care if we look good, they care if we buy. Even a B-Corp like bombas, who gives a pair of socks for each sold, I believe is not a good designer. Because a good designer understands every resource needs funneled back to production so the the product remains the absolute best it can be, and only gets better. This is the true way to affect change in a society, because the workers are becoming more skilled, and more needed as the product gets better. The clients are becoming more educated, more aware of quality, more willing to pay for something that’s worth it, because they’ve been treated to something that’s worth it…quality and craftsmanship. My bombas today, are not the quality they were when I first bought their socks in 2016.
What ChatGPT responded:
I think you're circling something genuinely important here, and it's bigger than skirts.
The insight isn't that recalls indicate quality. It's that engagement with failure indicates quality.
A bad manufacturer hides problems, ignores them, or designs systems where nobody is empowered to notice them. A good manufacturer discovers problems, names them, studies them, and changes course. The recall itself isn't the mark of excellence; the willingness to recall is.
What strikes me reading this is how much of your shame seems to come from comparing a living design process to mass-produced consumer goods. But mass-produced consumer goods are often designed to conceal the process. By the time a skirt reaches a rack at Old Navy, the customer sees only the finished artifact. They don't see the twenty failed prototypes, the sourcing mistakes, the fabric substitutions, the fit issues, the production delays, the meetings about puckered seams, the returns, the quality-control reports.
You see all of those things because you are the quality-control department.
The waistband example is particularly revealing. You spent years treating "difficult to alter" as evidence of design failure. But the tailors were essentially telling you the opposite:
This waistband is difficult to alter because it was engineered not to move.
That's not incompetence. That's a design choice with tradeoffs.
The mistake wasn't building a stable waistband. The mistake was assuming that because you could alter it, alteration was a reasonable expectation for everyone else.
That's a very common artisan problem. Expertise creates blind spots. Once you've done something thousands of times, you forget what is and isn't easy.
I also think there's something profound in your chicken analogy. People have become accustomed to products that appear frictionless. We encounter clothing as if it emerged fully formed from a warehouse. But real making is messy. Fabric behaves differently than expected. A weave turns out sheerer than the sample suggested. A pattern hangs differently in linen than rayon. A waistband construction solves one problem while creating another.
Those aren't signs that design failed. They're signs that reality was invited into the process.
One thing I might challenge gently is your statement that companies like Bombas are "not good designers." I suspect what you're reacting to isn't design skill so much as misaligned incentives. Plenty of talented designers work at large companies. But when a company prioritizes growth, margins, scale, or philanthropy alongside product quality, quality becomes one objective among many. An independent maker can choose to place quality above everything else because she answers only to herself and her customers.
The strongest paragraph in what you've written might be this realization:
"I am a good designer, unfamiliar with what a good designer looks like, because I've purchased clothes from bad designers my whole life."
That's a startling possibility.
If most of your reference points come from products optimized for cost, speed, trend cycles, and mass appeal, then your internal picture of "normal clothing production" is distorted. You may have been interpreting the ordinary struggles of thoughtful design as evidence that you were uniquely failing.
When in reality, what you're describing sounds a lot like the work of every serious craftsperson:
- Observe.
- Experiment.
- Discover an unintended consequence.
- Tell customers the truth.
- Adjust.
- Improve the design.
- Repeat.
That's not a scarlet letter.
That's product development.
And perhaps the reason the skirt transparency issue felt important to walk through publicly is that transparency itself is part of the craft. You weren't merely selling a skirt; you were teaching customers how a garment comes into being. The people who stayed weren't buying perfection. They were buying participation in an honest design process.
The thought I keep returning to is this:
A factory hides revisions. A craftsperson remembers them.
You may have been carrying the memory of every revision as evidence against yourself, when they're actually evidence that you're paying attention.