TARROW TOKYO × SOCIAL APARTMENT Article.3 | TARROW TOKYO

TARROW TOKYO × SOCIAL APARTMENT Article.3
Now, let's talk about the clothes making. It took about two months of planning to get to this stage. During that time, the Kamikitazawa team made time for this project almost every day after work.

● Conducting a survey

To confirm whether the concept that Taro Staff and the Kamikitazawa team had come up with would resonate with people and whether there was anything that had been overlooked, we conducted a survey about loungewear (in the survey, we called it roomwear to make it easier to visualize) targeting all properties with the cooperation of Global Agents, the operator of the social apartments.

The contents are mainly as follows:

• What price range do you feel is affordable?
• What do you look for in loungewear?

  *Personal interview surveys were also conducted individually with multiple residents.

We decided to base our pricing, fabric selection, and design decisions on the results of this survey.
Thank you to everyone who participated and shared your valuable time and opinions.

● Silhouette design / fabric selection

①Silhouette design:
We polished the design, incorporating the image that the Kamikitazawa team had in mind and the survey data.

The areas they paid particular attention to are as follows (comments from the Kamikitazawa team):

The theme of our project is "making clothes that people within a 3m radius will want to wear," so we aim to listen to the real voices of people close to us and use that to make clothes. We really put a lot of time into it, trying to pack in a variety of details, but we especially want to focus on the silhouette and durability. As for the silhouette, we're going for a looser silhouette, but for the S size, we're thinking of making it easy for women to wear. Our ideal is to create a silhouette that makes lots of people want to wear it. Next is durability. There are two reasons why we focused on this. First, in the survey, many people were concerned about wrinkles and shrinkage after washing. If people actually wear the clothes a lot, the number of times they need to wash them will increase, so we took that into consideration when choosing the fabric. The second reason is that we respect the important ideas of TARROW TOKYO. Since they value the goal of "making quality clothes that can be worn for a long time," we thought from the beginning that the durability of the fabric was essential.

② Fabric selection:
Search through fabric swatches and samples to find something that is close to your image.
It took us a long time to make a final decision because we had to choose a fabric that met these criteria: "comfortable to wear," "washable," and "looks high-end."

We actually ordered samples and narrowed it down to two candidates.
After doing all this, we can finally move on to making the sample.

● 1st sample completed

It’s been about four months since the project started.
Here is a sample that was completed over a long period of time.

It's a little hard to tell from the image, but both are made from knitted materials, with one made from tightly twisted yarn*.

*Highly twisted yarn: Yarn with increased twist strength. Wrinkle-resistant and durable.

The sample was made of tightly twisted yarn and had a moderate firmness, so there didn't seem to be any problem with the "expensive look." The other had a soft texture that was characteristic of knitwear, and was extremely comfortable to wear.

From Taro's perspective, we were relieved that both works turned out better than we had expected, but we were a little nervous when we actually showed them to everyone at Neighbors Kamikitazawa.

Below are comments from the Kamikitazawa team:

When the samples arrived, it was the first time for all of us to make clothes from scratch, so we were all excited to see them take shape and were excited to open them. I tried it on immediately after opening it and had my housemates at Neighbors Kamikitazawa try it on and give me their honest feedback, including how it felt to wear. As for the finish, I was surprised at how well-made both were. Especially the fabric! It was very sturdy and I could feel the high quality. To be honest, we had a lot of trouble with the fabric before we could create the samples, and I was very worried, but I thought that this was a great example of an OEM brand (laughs). That very evening, we used the advice we had received from our housemates and discussed ways to improve our second sample.

Although it was still only the first sample, both parties were very excited at how well it turned out.

All that's left to do next is make fine adjustments, decide on the color, and finally decide which type of fabric to use (tightly twisted yarn or not) in preparation for commercialization.

I hope you'll look forward to seeing what the final product will look like.

Bonus: On display at Social Good Lounge Tsunaguichi!

The first sample of this project was exhibited at "Tsunaguichi" held on Sunday, June 18th.
This exhibition was organized completely independently by the Kamikitazawa team, and thanks to it they were able to hear direct feedback from visitors and discover new areas for improvement that they would not have noticed on their own.

Social Good Lounge Tsunaguichi This is an event where items such as fashion and books that you no longer wear or read, but are too attached to throw away, are passed on to their next owners. [Event Information] Date: Sunday, June 18, 2023 14:00-18:00 Location: The Millennials Shibuya (1-20-13 Jinnan, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo) Price: 500 yen (1 drink) *Free for elementary school students and younger What to bring: Clothes, fashion accessories, and books you want to wear next ※Source: https://www.social-apartment.com/lifestyle/detail/230612