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Learning how to design a garment through flat pattern drafting and sewing from scratch can bring an empowering life skill and knowledge into your life

Success, happiness and fulfilment are what everybody is desperately trying to achieve these days. Unfortunately, in the current environment of our world today, nobody is looking out for you, whether it is your current boss, your co-worker, our prime minister, our provincial premier, your city mayor, politicians, friends, and so on. Tragically, it seems as if the world is now “every man for himself”. You are not alone. You don’t have to live paycheque to paycheque, feeling numb. You need to take control of your life and start controlling your fate and destiny, and never let others drag you down because they are jealous of your new mission in life. Life is extremely short, so choose a path and a career that makes you feel good, passionate and fulfilled. It is never too late to change your path, create a new chapter in your life and make everything right for yourself.

While visiting Southeast Asia this fall, I was impressed by how quickly the fashion industry in Asia has rebounded, although, of course, there were also a lot of business casualties along the way. I have not been back to Asia since the Covid-19 outbreak began about four years ago and, yes, it was one of the most difficult trips I have done in a long time. I saw many empty garment factories, as well as retail spaces abandoned and deserted, many of which had gone out of business because of the pandemic shutdown. Many of the large, medium, and smaller-sized fashion businesses were decimated. However, there were also many old and new businesses prospering during this tumultuous period. The fashion industry is somewhat similar to the Covid-19 virus: people in the fashion industry had to quickly learn how to survive by evolving and adapting their business practises to become more resilient and defiant during the most challenging, toughest times when all of their cash flows evaporated into thin air. Please keep in mind that many of these businesses did not receive any financial subsidies, grants, loans or any other sort of help from their own government and country. When I spoke to many of the current fashion business owners, they said “life was a hell” during that time. However, many businesses found a way to survive through different means of life support, even without their government’s assistance, and they are now looking forward to thriving and growing their business next year. One of the greatest lessons I learned from this trip is: if you want to survive through any period of difficulties in your fashion career or business, you not only have to be strong and resilient, but you need to be determined and defiant in every single business decision you make and action you take, if you want to survive and prosper.

In the 21st Century, you no longer need to attend a fashion school to become a successful fashion designer, tailor, or seamstress. The only essential technical skills you need to become a good designer, sewer, patternmaker, or a sample maker are sewing, pattern drafting, pattern grading, French draping, and a good knowledge of Tech Pack. Everything else you learn in school is absolutely bogus and irrelevant. I have over three decades of experience in the fashion industry and I have travelled all over Asia. I have also visited hundreds of garment factories and met thousands of fashion designers, tailors, sewing operators, pattern makers, pattern graders/cutters and seamstresses. Quite frankly, all of the people I have met spend most of their day, everyday, making patterns to grade, and cutting and sewing garments to sell or deliver to their clients, whether in their own home, a factory, a fashion studio, a retail store/shop, a showroom, or even right on a city sidewalk. You do not need a fashion degree or diploma to become a great designer or a tailor/seamstress. Nobody cares!

At Vancouver Sewing Classes (VSC), many clients ask why we give away so many Free Bonus Gifts (worth up to $17,000 for each client). So, what is the catch here?

The answer is quite simple. There is NO catch. Anybody who comes from the fashion industry knows that, if you don’t have all the sewing machines, equipment, and tools, you simply cannot make a professional looking garment. This is a fact. And, if you don’t have the right techniques, you are doomed to fail in the fashion industry.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, we seem to be seeing more and more unruly behavior by people coming to Vancouver Sewing Classes (VSC), with negative attitudes and feelings of entitlement. Let’s be realistic here: most people come to VSC is to learn a practical life skill, either as a hobby or as a profession. Our staff are here to help you achieve your goals; our mission is to help you become successful in your future endeavours. Our motto has always been, “your success is our success”. We are not like those fake schools that scam and steal people’s money. As a matter of fact, we have given away over $850,000 in FREE BONUS GIFTS over the years, and we will continue to do so, to support our clients in achieving success in the fashion industry! In fact, we are the ONLY organization in the world that is doing this! We are very proud of this huge accomplishment! Do you know ANY fashion sewing studio, college, university or academy doing this to help their students to succeed? NONE. We are doing all this to help you build and perfect your technical skills, business acumen, fashion brand, portfolio, reputation, experience and confidence, as well as make money and profits. Do you think your school or other sewing studio will bend their back to help you achieve your success?

We are living in strange times and the world is very fragile. People are behaving very oddly. At Vancouver Sewing Classes (VSC), we have had a few incidents in the past, and also fairly recently, where clients came into our facility to check out the vibe of our industrial fashion design studio. First of all, VSC is a design production facility, where we do custom design work for our private clients. Secondly, we are a commercial industrial sewing studio, where we teach our clients how to cut, sew and finish garments in three hours.

Many people who get into fashion without the proper technical skills training are losing up to $60,000 per year on their investment, without even knowing it, because they have to hire somebody to do all of the pattern drafting, sewing, grading and Tech Pack to help them create their fashion line. In fact, many Canadian and American designer contractors or garment factories charge their clients up to $5,000 per style for each sample to be made, which means, if you have four samples to create each season, it will cost you a whopping $20,000 just for one season, and, if you are doing two seasons each year, it will cost you an astronomical $40,000! For that amount of money, you might as well learn the REAL SKILLS of technical fashion design at VSC because you will spend far less in the long run, gain a whole lot more in technical skills, experience and knowledge, AND your business will already be established and you will have a great product to launch at the end.

This is why many people come to VSC to learn how to draft and grade their own patterns, sew their own samples and create their own Tech Packs, so they can work directly with garment factories in Southeast Asia to produce their fashion apparel line at a fraction of the cost. You do not need to work with North American fashion contractors and garment manufacturers; if you do, you will run out of money fast, and be gouged in many different directions.

Firstly, you need to figure out which program(s) you would like to register for and, once you know which program(s) you want to enrol in and pay for, you need to then either email us at https://sewingclassesvancouver.ca/contact/ OR call us at (604) 879-2100 to arrange a date and time to meet with us in-person at our fashion design studio (located at: 1229 Kingsway, Vancouver, BC) so you can register/sign up and pay in-person.

After you register and pay in-person (pre-paid program) at our fashion design studio, you can then book your lesson in-person (at the time of registration) OR you can call us at (604) 879-2100 OR you can book online at https://sewingclassesvancouver.ca/contact/.

Every year, VSC gets so many fashion graduates from elite design schools reaching out to us for assistance but, painfully, it is often far too late because they have no money left to enrol in our Fashion Design Long Programs. VSC is not a non-profit organization nor a charity; therefore, if you are a fashion graduate that got screwed over by your fashion school, we cannot help you to recover the money taken by your design school. Quite often, we ask these fashion graduates why they did not come to Vancouver Sewing Classes in the first place to get their technical skills training, instead of investing all of their money into a fashion institution, and their answer is always the same: because their fashion school is very posh, pretty and offers a degree. So, we ask these fashion graduates, “How did that fashion degree/diploma help you with your job search?” And their answer is always the same: “I couldn’t get a job in the fashion industry”.