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One thing i'm doing this summer is working part-time down in Raleigh at Tumbling Colors, a custom dyeing and surface-design facility that caters largely to the couture industry. They specialize in quick-turnaround small-batch customized dye effects, color matching, and textural design (think stonewashing).
The business is owned and operated by Chuck Stewart, a second-generation dyer--his father was a superintendent of dyeing at Cannon Mills--who brings 25 years of industry experience to his company, itself now in its tenth year of operation. He and his wife Donna (a chemical engineer) keep the colors literally tumbling through the labs, machines, and out into the market, along with a small staff of professional dyers and color chemists and interns from the NCSU College of Textiles.
TC aren't the people dyeing thousands upon thousands of garments for pret a porter retail lines--they focus on samples and small batches for...well, for a bunch of famous names i can't mention because of industry confidentiality. (Believe me, you know them.) They've got a spectrometer for color analysis from Pantones or provided swatches and scraps, and if his press is to be believed, Chuck's the best color-matcher in the business. That there's got my respect, given how hard i find color-matching, myself. Luckily, that's not what i'm doing for them!
He's also probably one of the most pleasant, laid-back guys i've met; he didn't freak out in the least when, last Thursday, i went to lift a 5-gal bucket of dye and the handle broke, spilling the entire bucket of dye all over the floor of the lab i was in! (That's also a pretty good testimonial for the import of wearing protective gear in a dye facility--never know when an accident like that is going to happen.) Boy, did i feel like a first-class tool though, regardless that it was a case of equipment failure and not operator idiocy. :)
TC is definitely the largest company i've worked for yet, in terms of facility size--they're housed in an 18,000-sq-ft warehouse full of enormous laundry machines, industrial dye equipment, lab stations, aging and breakdown machinery, you name it. Staff-wise, no way; there were probably 8-9 times as many employees at the LA Opera when i was there in 2005, or at Parsons-Meares last summer.
I'm hoping before the summer's out, I'll get permission to take a few interior photos of some of their set-up--the color-mixing lab and the distressing mannekin are what i'd really like to have images of--but it's dicey. I haven't even asked yet, partly because i've been busy working on the project i've got, but mostly because so much discretion is required in a field as competitive and trend-based as fashion.
I can't even tell y'all what i'm working on there [1], beyond to say that i'm doing the R&D and sampling for a whole new set of services they're hoping to add to their roster soon. I'm sure that once the stuff i'm working on is up and running and actually available for designers to contract, i'll be able to at least talk about it a bit; for now though, i figured i'd mention the existence of the company, in case it's a useful resource for designers in the readership seeking a higher level of custom color control beyond "what's already out there."
[1] I feel like in a blogging context, you can't even get away with that old saw about "I could tell you, but then i'd have to kill you," y'know?
The business is owned and operated by Chuck Stewart, a second-generation dyer--his father was a superintendent of dyeing at Cannon Mills--who brings 25 years of industry experience to his company, itself now in its tenth year of operation. He and his wife Donna (a chemical engineer) keep the colors literally tumbling through the labs, machines, and out into the market, along with a small staff of professional dyers and color chemists and interns from the NCSU College of Textiles.
TC aren't the people dyeing thousands upon thousands of garments for pret a porter retail lines--they focus on samples and small batches for...well, for a bunch of famous names i can't mention because of industry confidentiality. (Believe me, you know them.) They've got a spectrometer for color analysis from Pantones or provided swatches and scraps, and if his press is to be believed, Chuck's the best color-matcher in the business. That there's got my respect, given how hard i find color-matching, myself. Luckily, that's not what i'm doing for them!
He's also probably one of the most pleasant, laid-back guys i've met; he didn't freak out in the least when, last Thursday, i went to lift a 5-gal bucket of dye and the handle broke, spilling the entire bucket of dye all over the floor of the lab i was in! (That's also a pretty good testimonial for the import of wearing protective gear in a dye facility--never know when an accident like that is going to happen.) Boy, did i feel like a first-class tool though, regardless that it was a case of equipment failure and not operator idiocy. :)
TC is definitely the largest company i've worked for yet, in terms of facility size--they're housed in an 18,000-sq-ft warehouse full of enormous laundry machines, industrial dye equipment, lab stations, aging and breakdown machinery, you name it. Staff-wise, no way; there were probably 8-9 times as many employees at the LA Opera when i was there in 2005, or at Parsons-Meares last summer.
I'm hoping before the summer's out, I'll get permission to take a few interior photos of some of their set-up--the color-mixing lab and the distressing mannekin are what i'd really like to have images of--but it's dicey. I haven't even asked yet, partly because i've been busy working on the project i've got, but mostly because so much discretion is required in a field as competitive and trend-based as fashion.
I can't even tell y'all what i'm working on there [1], beyond to say that i'm doing the R&D and sampling for a whole new set of services they're hoping to add to their roster soon. I'm sure that once the stuff i'm working on is up and running and actually available for designers to contract, i'll be able to at least talk about it a bit; for now though, i figured i'd mention the existence of the company, in case it's a useful resource for designers in the readership seeking a higher level of custom color control beyond "what's already out there."
[1] I feel like in a blogging context, you can't even get away with that old saw about "I could tell you, but then i'd have to kill you," y'know?
