Garde Robe pioneered the concept of Cyber Closet, a dynamic tool for organizing and managing one’s clothing, footwear and accessory collections. Our members can easily view items in Garde Robe’s care and arrange delivery of items as needed. However, the Cyber Closet also displays garments and accessories that are not kept in Garde Robe’s care.
During the inventory process, every item is individually cataloged and categorized by color, designer, size, season, etc.
In order to accurately represent the garment’s color, Pantone’s Fashion, Home + Interiors Color Guide is a useful tool. The Color Guide has over 2,300 named colors created and maintained as color standards by the Pantone Color Institute. Pantone’s color standards are used by fashion designers when working with manufacturers to ensure their intended color reaches stores. At Garde Robe, we use the Color Guide to find the closest color to what we see on the garment to relay the color information properly to our members. To learn more about color standards and how Pantone creates their products and colors, we recently took a tour of the Pantone Color Factory in New Jersey.
The stacks of printed material that have passed their color tests. They only print what they need in a short amount of time, because they want to minimize the time the color has to sit and change due to humidity/temperature fluctuations. The pages get cut down into the smaller sizes and then collated into a book form for the Solid Chips color guide book.
The machine that weighs out the proper amount of color which then gets mixed by hand on the glass table. They say that is the only way to properly ensure the color is mixed thoroughly.
After printing, the color gets tested by a computer and visually in a light box to ensure it’s the color standard they have created.
The other half of their facility is for the Fashion, Home + Interiors where they dye the cotton used for their Cotton Swatch Library books and cards.
An automated machine creates the dyes used for the Cotton Swatch Cards. A finely woven cotton is used to prevent any color variations in texture.
Rejected bolts of fabric that didn’t match the color standard wait until they get donated in their facility. Their tolerance level for color difference from the standard is very small, so it is tested until it is right.
Pantone recently launched a new app, called Studio. The app boasts Pantone’s library of more than 10,000 colors, and lets designers use uploaded photos to create and customize palettes and mood boards. This service will change the way designers interact with color. Once only used at the office or on a paper guide, now it is interactive and mobile. You can read more about it here (via WWD).