We've Decided to Start a Clothing Line! Great... Wait... I've Never Sewn Knits before...

A complete amateur to the t-shirt game, I realized that in order to make a tee you need to have access to a machine called a serger. Besides having taken only one clothing assembly course in college and enjoying to sew as a hobby, I had to educate myself on the four-threaded nightmare otherwise called a serger.

Not cheap to own, I wasn’t fully prepared for all the set-up costs that creating a clothing line requires. But happily, with a bit of saving we purchased this machine and so began the next process, creating samples!

-Leu

How a Night at the Bar Led to Launching a Clothing Line...

To backtrack a bit... The story of how we started our clothing line is an odd and and funny story. 

Basically, while at a late night happy hour, the otherwise brief yet cordial acquaintances of D. Tan and L. Solomon became slightly buzzed and booked a trip from Minneapolis to California on a complete whim - to visit mutual friends. (We actually booked the tickets from our phone at the bar!) While on the trip we became good friends and began chatting about how fun it would be to start a clothing line... 

A few months later, that pipe dream was taking shape and turning into reality. After paying money to patent our name, Daniel and I got together for a brainstorming meeting. Neither of us went to school for clothing design but as an avid seamstress and fashion enthusiast, I felt excited to take on the project. (My advice, if you’re going to start a business with someone it's helpful to meet and make sure you’re both on the same page.)  As Daniel mentioned, we have a list of certain designers we love and although sometimes our styles can be different, we both love each other’s fashion profiles.

Style-wise, I’m eclectic and love to mix colors, styles, and shapes. I love this look by Sass and Bide; it’s casual but sexy/playful.  

 I also dig layered style like what Sienna Miller’s doing in the photos below:

-Leu

Brainstorming: Tan & Solomon ideas

So we haven’t posted in quite a while, but we’ve been busy! Getting a clothing line off the ground is so much more challenging than I ever envisioned. For the whole 2009 summer, we were brainstorming ideas.

For the most part, our design aesthetics are pretty similar. We both love aspects of prep, grunge, hip-hop and (parts of) the 1980’s.

Leu’s ideas are probably a bit more eclectic, while mine are a bit more structured. But we both love brands like J. Lindeberg, G Star, Diesel, Rock and Republic, Rag and Bone, Mike and Chris, Sass and Bide, Theory, and Tom Ford.

Getting all our ideas down on paper was the challenge. We discovered that we both need to motivate each other, so we started scheduling regular meetings at a Caribou Coffee, to get all our ideas on paper (or computer).

-daniel

TRADEMARK & LOGO!

We’ve officially filed for a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. We are now waiting for the “all clear”. It’s pretty exciting to think that our line is shaping up, from a just a thought a few years ago, to steadily building some momentum!

We’ve been working with a web developer on our website. We actually met him while we were in high school; he was a foreign-exchange student from Ukraine! Through the magic of Facebook, we’ve reconnected, and he and his team are now developing our site. Living in Ukraine makes things tricky, so we’ve learned to heavily rely on email and the occasional Skype conversation. Tentatively, we’d like a “condensed” version to launch for Holiday 2009… stay tuned.

Here is the logo we've agreed to use… They are starting to take shape!

-Daniel

Let Us Introduce Ourselves...

We’ve decided to start a clothing line. Leu and I met while we both worked at Macy’s buying office in the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. For years we’ve been talking about starting our own line… it originated as just ideas for clothes discussed over random work happy hours. Then this summer (2009), we started getting serious about the idea. So we hired a graphic artist and a web developer and got to work. Leu pretty much handles all the clothing design ideas and development, while I work on creative.

We’d really like the clothes to represent Minneapolis and “feel” Midwest, while still pushing the edge, trend-wise. We’d like for TAN & SOLOMON to be bigger than us; it would be great to connect with local artists, musicians and actors to push Minneapolis arts forward.

-Daniel