Claire Shaeffer writes informative books about sewing and fabrics for the home sewer. Claire Shaeffer should have either stayed in the sewing industry or gained real experience in the garment industry before she dare charge $71 for a vacuous outsider's perspective of this so-called "apparel industry". The book has a generic text book tome and the corny needle and thread clip art screams "home sewer". There is nothing wrong with home sewing. I've been sewing since I was 10. Making clothes has been my quiet hobby and a source of unending fascination. The truth is: the garment industry doesn't want to deal with home sewers. "Fashion" designers and home sewers both share ignorance and arrogance as annoying, unappealing traits. Anyone can doodle on a napkin, but who can construct it from a sketch, fit it right, and sew it up professionally, within your cost structure? Not a "fashion" designer or a home sewer can do that, yet they think that they are greater than the process for they are completely unaware of the process. The goal is to work well with the fashion and garment industries. If you are looking for this kind of information in this book, you won't find it.

This book is expensive, inaccurate, and underwhelming. The "sewing on paper project" (page 50) is laughable. How will sewing on a piece of paper get me any closer to dealing with "the apparel industry"? Claire Shaeffer's terms are off. Apparel is nebulous - it's either the fashion or garment industry. The fashion industry sells the clothes while the garment industry makes the clothes. It's "block" rather than "sloper". Good blocks are everything, so learn how to make them and alter them yourself - for everything revolves around your blocks! It is your block that you take to garment manufactures from which they sew a sample. They don't need your pretty little sample. It is good to sew your "first sample" for your benefit, for you will know, in general, how to construct it and the number of steps for costing benefit. What are those 101 steps of garment production? You won't find the answer in this book. It is quite a leap going from home sewer to design entrepreneur and those of us taking that leap need accurate and relative information about the ways of the garment industry. Without accurate information, that leap means you'll never know how to contact garment manufactures; you can't define what you want and they don't know what to deliver; your clothes will never fit and you will have committed tons of money on a "dog"; you won't ever know the language of the garmento and you will sound like an a buffoon; you will sew the long, circuitous route rather than the expedient way like the professionals using industrial machines and practices. For those of you looking for information to facilitate crossing the chasm from home sewer to design entrepreneur, you won't find it here.

This is the type of book that should be used in schools for Merchandising OR Fashion Design. I cannot get over it's usefullness. Everything I wanted (and needed) to hear about about clothing manufacture is in this book! Fairchild Pubs could never publish such a USEFUL and INTELLIGENTLY WRITTEN book. Those bastards always make textbooks difficult to understand and fill them with meaningless JABBERWOCKY!! Half the time, they don't even have a decent glossary or INDEX (if there is one at all) whereas Claire it seems, has given us the full tour. Peripheral data you could care less about is not here!! Nothing to waste your time, only a step-by-step layout of what happens when a person or people manufacture clothing for retail purposes. From the design concepts (who and how they're created) to what type of people you would need (including full job descriptions) to what the considerations are for contracting, shipping etc.. There are also tons of other little things including pictures that are laid out in a very intelligible way. The beauty of her writing is that the data is always concious that you may not be a huge entreprenuer, and applies methods for the little guy as well. Just an amazing book. I almost don't want anyone else to know about it...