We were lucky to catch up with Jack Sivan recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jack, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I’ve always wanted to do my own thing. When I first became drawn to fashion it was more through an interest in tailors and their practice, rather than an interest in working for any big fashion house. From early on success to me meant getting to do my own thing and set my own standards. I have worked for other fashion labels and I think that has been vital to my education, teaching me what to do and what not to do as i planned what I needed to set out on my own. But working in the fashion industry also shifted my final idea of what that independence looked like. Where at first my aim to work for myself was really just about creative freedom and setting my own pace of work, it has evolved into an aim to create a company I’d actually want to work at.
That’s not to say I’ve disapproved of every one of my past employers, but none came close to doing what truly interested me. I want to create a well crafted tailoring house who’s design is steeped in the classics of the menswear cannon but is also willing to explore beyond the constraints of tradition and gender that are often found in that cannon. I want to build a brand that centers its ethics, with natural and sustainable materials and small/local manufacturing, to have all that wrapped up in a bow of some really well produced garments, and ideally without making it all too prohibitively expensive. I realized that none of that seemed to actually exist all in one place, or if it did, they weren’t hiring.
I knew that there was a hole in the market in this area (in part from observation, and in part because I wanted it filled for myself), and although I’m not really a marketing person, I had a feeling that if i just started building it then people would come, and they did. When I first opened myself up to bespoke orders, clients started coming in, and I built off of that custom base. I used what my clients were missing and asking for and blended that with my own tastes and after a few years started to see the beginnings of a brand identity coming into place. Over time i came to realize that what I was working on what appealing to a certain set of groups in the fashion market: people who loved the classics and love tailoring, people who love menswear but find that in it’s traditional form it does not make space for their identity, and people who care about a well made and sustainable garment. In my mind, these still are just the things that interest me, if there is any innovation, it’s just the way I like to do them together.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My interest in fashion started in high school when I happened to be recommended some reading on fashion through the lens of sociology and communication (I wont say which book specifically started it since I’ve come to dislike the authors politics), and that idea of fashion as a language and form of self expression very much appealed to an awkward teen who only just beginning to come to terms with a sense of self. The history and structures of menswear immediately drew me in, and as someone who was already interested in the arts and planning on pursuing it professionally, I naturally gravitated towards the art of actually making clothing.
My first attempt at a fashion business was a bow tie company I started with a friend, which up-cycled old neckties and other vintage fabrics into bowties. We were right on the “twee” trend and did pretty ok when prom season came around, but were mostly self taught and only got so far as a couple arts fairs before we set it aside and went to college. I attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where I majored in Apparel Design and minored in Sustainability Studies. This was my first formal education in fashion design and garment making, and my time there taught me a lot about how to be self sufficient as a designer, and where my strengths and weaknesses lay. While I was aware of fashions involvement in climate change, my education also taught me how dire it truly was and opened my eyes to what my responsibilities would be as a participant and (hopefully) future business owner in my industry.
Those became the cornerstones of what I would offer my clients as a bespoke tailor: the craft, and the conscience of sustainability. I think the two meld well with each other. Most of the techniques of tailoring already supposed a long lasting durable garment made from natural fibers, for a wearer who will keep that garment in use for a long time and would be unlikely to toss it with the whims of a trend cycle. As my business is currently in the process of restructuring for ready to wear production, those same ideals are at play, only scaled up slightly to account for material efficiency and accessibility to more people and body types.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I’ve had to pivot many times in my career already. Early on I thought the best was to reach my goal of having my own label was to work with other small brands that were in their infancy so that as they became more established I’d be able to grow with them both in experience and also in position, but found that that wasn’t the most secure base upon which to build a career. Aside from small brands being amateurish by definition, and not being able to pay me enough or at all in order to live in New York, the work i was doing during the day at established fashion labels was not only going to make living in the city and having a bit left over to pursue my own projects much more possible, but I was learning a lot more about what to do and what not to do from those companies than I was from a small mismanaged that was trying to learn all those lessons at the same time. And so i chose to put more energy into those day jobs, taking note of how much I could learn from my coworkers there.
Another pivot was around building the base for my label.. My end goal was always to build a ready to wear collection, but initially my plan was to build it off of my bespoke commissions. The issue is that as a solo bespoke garment maker, the margins are pretty bad and don’t leave room for growth. An individual commission might cost a pretty penny to a client, but considering it had to also pay for my own time in not only sewing, but also conducting fittings, sourcing materials, and client outreach, at the end of the day there wasn’t much money or time left to be making small production run, let alone marketing and selling it myself. I realized that I needed to focus on getting my collection into stores, which meant I needed to develop a new pricing structure based on a wholesale business (where I’d be selling my garments to a store) rather than a retail one (where I’d be stocking and selling directly to shoppers). I realized my reach wasn’t big enough to move enough product to make it worth it, but that a store has an existing clientele already planning to come see what they had. And so I shifted the collection towards a whole new pricing structure with the aim of taking our clothing to stores. We’re still working on the actually getting into stores part, and are intending to take our developed ready to wear collection to menswear tradeshows happening in the next couple months.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
Everything is made in New York.
Our process is very dependent on in house development. I design, pattern, and prototype all garments in house (in
my studio in Brooklyn), which allows me to be more precise and in control of the end product, and cuts out a lot of the development cost and time of shipping samples all around. Once samples are developed to a point I’m happy with I’ll take them to one of the factories or seamstresses I work with in the garment district (in Manhattan). The factories I have set up to take bulk orders, and the seamstress is there to make some small runs (some items I only need 5 of which is too little for a factory to bother). All of these manufacturers are contacts I’ve developed through past jobs, and have worked with them in various different capacities, but developing whole new structures for myself rather than just building off of the programs from past employers is still a challenge. From there, those manufacturers will create an additional prototype based off my patterns and my prototype, give me a breakdown of how much/long they think they’ll need to make it, or if they think there are any changes that should be made to make it more easy to produce, since there are always small differences between how I might make something one at a time myself vs what is more efficient when scaled up.
Not all manufacturers are created equal, even though I knew them from past jobs, I spent a while interviewing factories, making sure they had the machinery and specialization i thought I needed, And even then there’s just the basic struggle of getting a manufacture to take you seriously. I may have done this before but I’m still young and plenty of vendors who have been around for a while have definitely tried taking me for a ride, de-prioritizing my orders, or even tried swapping materials out expecting me to either not notice or just accept it and move on. In those cases I’ve had to be wary and clear and draw lines where I need to let vendors know that they cant cross.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Sivanapparel.com
- Instagram: @sivanapparel
