- Marcel Proust wrote, "The real voyage of discovery "consists not in seeking new lands, "but in seeing with new eyes."

I think I could watch and listen to our next guest for hours.

His mind, his experience, his expertise are all things I know I want to learn more about.

Robert Danes has a line of dresses in Bergdorf Goodman in New York and specialty stores and he is our guest today.

Watch with new eyes as Robert takes the ordinary and turns it into something unique and unexpected.

All today on Fit 2 stitch.

(lively music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Kai Scissors, (gentle music) Bennos Buttons, (gentle music) OC Sewing, Orange County, (gentle music) Vogue Fabrics, (gentle music) Pendleton, (gentle music) Imitation of Life (gentle music) and Clutch Nails.

(gentle music) - I think we've all heard the word, couture, but I don't think many of us have really ever been behind real couture.

And I'm so excited today.

Robert Danes of Danes NYC, is here with us from New York and I am thrilled and honored to have him.

I think my goal today is to just get inside your head and try to pull out everything we possibly can.

- Oh, I'll see what I can do.

- You do Bergdorf Goodman, you do specialty stores, you do custom couture, all of those things.

How did this get started?

- So my grandmother taught me how to sew when I was 16.

I was in high school down in South Texas.

- Now, we can't just gloss over that.

Say that one more time.

- Yeah, okay.

My grandmother taught me how to sew.

- For all those grandmothers listening.

- Yeah, and my grandmother's from North Carolina, my family is from North Carolina.

She grew up sewing, you know, as everybody did in the South at that time.

And she made her own wedding dress in 1931.

I mean, she's just this amazing woman.

- So she was very good.

- She was really good.

- But you had to have shown some kind of interest.

Did you hang around - Well, I just-- and talk to her while-- - You know, we were always together, she always lived with us when I was a kid growing up and everything and I spent a lot of time in the South and in North Carolina with her.

The family was all into, you know, everybody sewed.

My mom sewed, my sister sewed, my grandmother sewed and I just got bored one time and said like, "Maybe I should try that," and it was great.

It was like a light bulb.

- I have four sons, so I really like hearing that (giggles).

I taught them all to sew.

- It's an amazing thing.

Really?

- All right.

So your grandmother taught you to sew?

And that was the beginning.

- Mm-hmm And that was the beginning and it was just a hobby.

I mean, at that time there was no kind of idea that I could be a designer, especially in South Texas and I was even kind of, I wouldn't tell any of my friends that I was sewing So it was like I was (mumbles) under the cover - I understand that, yeah.

- And I went to Yale for architecture.

That's what I was gonna do, but somehow it just never kind of resonated with me like making clothes did and I went to Wall Street - Even when you were in architecture at Yale.

- Yeah.

I mean, I loved it and the program was really interesting and it taught me to think about how to design and how to put things together and think about like, inner modules and stuff like that, which we'll go to later, but I don't know something about buildings.

It was just never, never kinda caught my interest or caught my love.

I never felt a passion for it.

And I was always feeling passion for like the things I was making.

- And you recognized that.

Somewhere you trusted your-- - Yeah, I did.

But I went on to, I got a job on Wall Street when I got out of school, because that was what you did at that time coming from Yale.

- (giggles) that's what everybody did at Yale, right?

- And it was great.

It was really amazing, but I kept thinking during the day - And you made a good amount of money.

- I made a lot of, I was making really good money at that time.

- And still you said to yourself, "This isn't what I wanna do."

That's a lot strength.

- Yeah.

I mean, you know, I was doing this job and all day long I was thinking about my sewing project that night.

I was thinking about - Oh my gosh!

That's just fascinating to me.

- The dress I was gonna make for somebody or, you know so it's like, yeah, it was really fantastic.

- You were sewing on the side even though you were doing all of this, you still had that sewing machine with you.

- Yeah.

I mean, I've worked a lot.

I was like, had the same machine.

I'd gotten it, I'd gotten a sewing machine when I graduated from college, I got a Bernina.

It was like a great gift.

(Peggy laughs) And I just sewed and I sewed and sewed.

And I guess at some point working on Wall Street and it was only for a couple months, I made a decision very quickly, but I realized that like I wanted to be a designer and I'd never really thought about it that way before.

- Wow, that's a harsh left.

Harsh right turn, harsh, yeah.

- Big left, big left.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And did your family encourage that?

Did they say, you know "What are you doing?"

- They didn't encourage it, but they understood it and they supported me, which was really fantastic.

- That's huge for families period, you know, especially once, you know if my son's, once you graduated and you've got that first job and now you're going to do what?

And then everybody is like, "huh!"

They're just like, - (giggles)Wait a minute.

- "We don't have to worry about anything."

So no, they were very supportive and there were times, you know, when it, you know, 'cause it was a very crooked line to get where I am now.

I went back to school at FIT to study fashion for about a semester and I just couldn't do it anymore.

I'd been in classrooms enough.

I needed to kind of do it on my own.

And you know, you're 21, 22, you're young you're kind of naive, you're stupid.

And you think you can do anything, which is important, 'cause you wouldn't do it if you weren't, if you didn't have that mindset.

- And I felt quite certain if I said to you, wouldn't go back and do it the same way the answer would probably be yes.

- You know, I never look back.

That's what it was.

- Oh, that's great.

That's even better.

- That's what it was.

That's even better.

- You know, and it's made things in some ways very difficult because I didn't have an education, I never worked for an event, I never could get a job working for anyone in the garment industries or in the industry.

But it helped me do it my own way and so I go about designing clothes in a very distinct way from most people.

- And so you left that financial job and you got a job in New York.

You were in New York-- - But I sold clothes.

That was the only thing I could do.

- Women's clothes.

- I sold clothes, women's clothes for a year and I did that and finally I had a boss and I did, you know, I waited tables, I managed a restaurant, I was a carpenter.

I did a lot of different things, but I always was making collections and I would take them to stores and at first people laughed and then eventually, I got better at it.

- People laughed?

- The first collection I had, I took it to a store in Soho and the guy, the buyer came in, he looked at it, he didn't say anything and he just started giggling and he walked away.

And that was my first collection and you know, basically I think the whole collection ended up in the garbage can.

- God, that hurts for me just listening to it.

I can't imagine being you.

- It was hard.

It was really hard (Peggy laughs) - But there were a lot of moments like that.

- But you didn't quit and you didn't say, "I can't do this."

- No, it was what I wanted to do, you know.

- All right.

So now I know that you do an incredible, your couture gowns.

What was your, let's go back to that first collection for a minute.

What did you sell those dresses for?

What was the price point of those dresses?

- So the first, you know, first women's collection I did was I think dresses were very contemporary.

They were like $120, $200, something like that.

And that's kind of what I did but I sewed those samples myself.

Like I said, you know, all the samples I used to sew by myself and they were pretty poorly made, you know the patterns, (Peggy laughs) I did the patterns myself - It doesn't say much about your sewing (laughs).

- No.

Well, you know.

And there's also a difference between kind of like a factory kind of sewing and you know, hand sewing, not hand sewing, but like, you know home sewer.

And I was a very much a home sewer at that point.

It took me a while to get to the point where I was like doing it.

I mean this whole time, 30 years, it's been a learning experience and still learning.

- So that first collection and just not to get too nosy, but what do your dresses, what do your collections go for today?

So today we sell dresses from, you know we sell some for 3000, some for 4,000.

We also sell things for 8,000, 12,000, 15,000.

So it all depends on the time and what goes into that dress?

- It just depends, I mean, you know, we do different kinds of things and you know, they're all valid.

I don't prefer the more expensive ones.

Sometimes the less expensive ones are the more difficult to really design and to make and to kind of like get everything perfect.

But you know, it's all fun - To the home sewer, bias is always a topic that is hands-off, don't like, don't touch.

We can't do this - SO I do everything on the bias.

I mean, pretty much., I mean, when I take a fabric and I drape it's princess lines, straight grain or everything like that, it's always just kind of, hmm.

You know, it's just, there's no femininity to it, there's no like-- - I would have to agree with that, the bias is-- - And so we do it in a bias, all of a sudden, all the curves that, you know are part of a woman's body are expressed in the fabric but it's very tricky.

- We all love bias, we just can't do it.

- But you know-- - Talk to us about bias (giggles).

- So bias is definitely tricky.

It requires a lot more fabric, you have to be really generous with bias.

You can't, you know, you can't pull it tight.

You have to really let it loose, let it go.

- Because it'll stretch.

- It'll stretch.

You know, it stretches down.

You have to give it, so you have to give a lot of room, a lot of like, you're very generous with the fabric.

You have to kind of go with the fabric.

You can't, you know, the biggest problem with bias is like trying to do like side seams on a gown or a dress or something like that.

They don't ever work.

It's always going to pucker.

I mean you can do it for one woman in that hour, you can sew it and that'll be perfect and two hours later it's not the right thing.

'Cause she's changed a millisecond later.

- She's changed a little bit.

Yeah.

But if you do it a different way, if you sow with the fabric, if you sew like, if you got you know biases like this or the grain of the fabric's like that, if you sew this way on it, it's always gonna be a problem but if you sew with the grain or across the grain, it's very easy.

It works really well.

- So when you're working with a bias, do you have to do each particular design in that actual fabric?

- Yeah.

I mean, you know if you can do kind of a rough thing you know in a muslin muslin, but basically we're always using like silk and you know, I used to try to use like polyester 'cause most of the fabric I work in is silk.

But I would try to do like polyester charmeuse or something like that, but it's not the same thing.

You really have to work in the fabric theme.

Even the same weave, the different fiber - Same weave, different fiber is different.

- reacts differently.

Oh, that's interesting.

- For sure.

- That's interesting.

And so, you know, it's easy for us cause we have a lot of, so it's we do this thing where like, I'll give, you know a new pattern that I've, you know, I've draped the pattern, I've cut and then from the drape, I've made the pattern and I give the pattern to my cutter and I'll say, you know we're going to make a muslin of this and she knows, I mean by that, like silk charmeuse which sells for like $22 a yard or something like that.

But she'll just like take a piece of this color and a piece of this color and a piece of this color and put it together and so we got to dress that's like color-blocked because like part of it's this, - But you're looking past that you know.

- And I look past it, but you know, for instance, this piece, this was a muslin for the design that I'm gonna show you about and I gave her the piece and it was big and it took a lot of yardage to cut and I got just this one motif out of it.

And so she took this one and she took that one and she's got a really good color eye.

So we got this kind of very interesting color block, but this is like how we work in the workroom.

- So before you even get to here, do you sketch?

- So for instance, you know, different dresses, different pieces will have different, I go to them in different kinds of paths.

This one was an idea that I came up with and it goes back to architecture, thinking about repeating forms.

That was one thing that I really loved about architecture and you know, like tiles or, you know, a building the has fins or something like that into these repeating forms.

So I designed this repeating form.

It's the same thing, but done over again and at different places, the way it's overlapped you get different kinds of textures.

You're getting raw texture here, this kind of weaves like a skirt and then this piece, which is like banded and everything which can wrap around and all of these cut on the bias.

- How many gestures, how many yards would you even think is right here?

- I think it's about four and a half.

- Yeah.

Just in one little-- - Yeah, I mean I use a lot.

And this is the thing.

You have to be thinking, 'cause we're not making art, we're making design.

People have to wear it, which means they have to be able to afford it, which means that you know, it has to be worth you know, it's like-- - You have to check all those boxes.

You have a lot of boxes.

- You have to all along the way, you have to do that, because, you know, I'm doing this, this is not a particularly expensive fabric but when I'm doing something like this I'm thinking like this is gonna be, you know one of the more expensive gowns I make.

So I come up with this idea and it was all sketched out and I take this and like, so I've got this made and everything, but I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.

You just know you like - I just know I like it.

- the folds and the way it looks.

- It's just like interesting to me, you know?

- I love that - And at this point, it still gotta be interesting, you know, it's like, if it's not interesting, then you need to do something else.

So I'm taking this and I'm like looking at it and trying to put it on-- - And you say at this point it's been how many years?

- It's 30, 35, something like that.

- Yeah and you still want all of that.

- It still gotta be fun.

I mean, you have to wanna walk into the studio every morning.

- Otherwise you could go back to Wall Street (laughs).

- I think that ship's gone.

That ship's passed.

But you know, so like here and I'm thinking like that's not working and somebody would go back to here just see how it does it.

And then what I kind of decided on-- - Oh, you actually put it on - Can you hold this (mumbles) and just kind of.

So form is critical for you.

- Yeah.

Everything's gotta be on the form.

So, you know there are people who do flat pattern drafting and they'll draw, they have a, you know sketch in their head they take and then go out.

There's a Japanese technique where you can take an idea and you just, with numbers, you can draw the pattern.

I mean, it's like, you know, you don't have to do anything.

It's just, you don't need a slope, where you just like you've got a table and you do this one here, this one here, this one here and you've got a pattern.

I don't do that.

- (chuckles)I love it.

- But when you're working with bias it doesn't work anyway.

- Yeah.

Bias, you can't predict - You know, bias is just, every fabric is unpredictable, period.

- And so we're going to do something like this and this is kind of hard.

And I do this on, so something like this is draped on a corset for the you know, you'll notice these, like this one here and this one here, we do a lot of gowns because there's a lot of strapless and that's how I started with it, was making a corset underneath it and then doing the dress on top.

And it's like the corset has to be like the, it has to be perfect.

You've got to get the corset perfect and then the dress kind of follows - So you literally fit the corset to the woman that you're doing it for?

So if we're doing like a custom something for a woman-- - 'Cause there's two fields.

You do, you do the ready to wear, per se.

- Yeah, we do like, probably half of what we do is just like, you know stuff that we make for stores, stock items and everything and then they alter it there.

But then we also do a lot of special orders.

A woman will come in or call the store and say, "Can we meet with them?

"We like these clothes.

"We wanna meet with them and do something "in a different size or different color, way," or maybe they need sleeves, or they have like, you know, fitting, you know, they have body issues that they're concerned about, they want to like take care of them.

We don't, you know, we love everybody.

We wanna work for anybody.

- I would think the woman who doesn't feel as good would be more fun for you to just make her beautiful.

- It's more challenging.

It's more challenging, definitely.

- You know, making clothes for a model's really simple.

There's like nothing to it.

You know, they can wear anything and everything, but that's not that interesting.

It's not really that much fun.

And the challenge is really important.

I mean, you need challenges and stuff like this.

- Well, I would think the gratitude of the customer would go off the charts too, you know, when they can't go in and buy something ready-made.

Are there certain designs that are limited to that you look at a woman and say, no, that's just not gonna work and do you have to kind of tell her that's just not gonna happen?

- No, you know, I worked with my ex-wife for a long time, my partner and one of the things I learned from her was that like and we decided early on was that we would always make things that we could make for anyone.

- Oh, that's nice.

Okay.

- And we wouldn't do designs that were like, - Classic styles.

- Well, not even necessarily classic just like we would not make something that was so difficult that you know, most people couldn't wear it.

You know, we wouldn't make model clothes, you know?

And early on, we realized and I learned that, you know when you have, you know, cause you have to show things on models at first and everything, but then you have to redo everything so that it works for regular people.

So we had a fit model that we worked with for years and she was five, five.

She was my, she was like 45 when we were working with her.

She had know she had breasts, she had boobs, the hips, you know waist, and everything.

She was curvy and we made things fit on her.

And more importantly, we learned that, you know we had to ask her, "Do you feel like you look good in this?"

Because you know, the most important interaction in all of this is the woman with the mirror before she walks out of the dressing room, you know she needs to look in there and say, "This looks good."

I mean, I know I need to fit like that.

- So talk to me about what happens to get this corset and what is evolved 'cause I noticed when I was doing this one here, it was pretty cool, this little, whole zipper thing.

So this is kind of a little bit of a stretch.

It's a little bit of knit to it.

- It's a very very strong Lycra.

So it pulls in, you know, it's like we're not gonna use, you know we don't want people to use shaper under the dress we wanna do it for them.

So it's all kind of one part.

- So you can control all of that.

- So you can control everything.

I mean, we started out doing corsets just because you know, we were doing strapless dresses, you need something, hold the dress up, but then we realized that we can and I realized that we can, you know, pull it in we can change that, we can do a lot of things that women want to have done.

So that became a part of all the dresses you did.

- Mm-hmm, all of it.

Yeah.

- So is this process just a kind of a check off the box process?

There's not really much to this that's different from one person to another.

- Well, no.

I mean, you know, so if you're doing something that's custom from us you give us your measurements and everything and the first thing we do is build a form that matches your measurements.

And then we put the corset and we do the corset on top of that and the corset's like the ends of the bras, like for, you know, if the woman's like a 32 double D, we put a 32 double D bra.

- I see.

I see.

So you build the base - It's all done that way.

- based on her.

- And then you drape off of that base.

- And we drape off of that 'cause you know, we have this thing and everything.

So I've got this idea here and I'm thinking like how this works and everything but then the thing is it's gotta work.

I mean, the woman's gotta look pretty and I've gotta kind of figure out so I'll go back from that to the sketchpad and make sketches of what I'm thinking about.

And that's where I came up with this idea.

I mean, this is just amazing.

So this is a new dress that you've done or worked on - Called the Stella.

It's called The Stella.

- You name the dresses?

- Oh, they're all named for women.

- They're all named (chuckles).

So this is Stella and you know we just, you know, it was this idea that I had like this piece coming around here, but then had to kind of figure out how to make the whole thing work.

And so it starts with the, you know, this one piece and these things coming off here, which I knew that this would happen when I was sketching it on the beach.

I mean, that part I kind of had in my head.

- sketching on the beach.

Oh, I love that.

- Sketching on the beach.

- So somebody's at the beach and you're, - I'm at the beach sketching, yeah.

So I got this part - It's a good place to sketch - and everything but then what to do all of this and all of this just happens when I'm, you know when I'm draping it.

You know, the way that this happened, there was an accident.

I wasn't thinking about, you know that we'd have these little pieces coming here and this being like that, it's just that that's what the drape wanted to do.

- What I know about bias is it has to have like periods of support.

So I've noticed with this, there are those.

They're kind of built in.

So have you found that it's just every once in a while you build in those periods, is that evolved with the design of the dress as well?

It's kind of, you know, may know when I'm thinking about it and when I'm draping it I realize like I'm going to have to do it in a certain way so that it can actually be, you know it can be taken off the form.

You can do a lot of stuff with pins and everything but you know, you've gotta be able to take it off the form.

- You have to be able to get it onto somebody.

- On and off, yeah.

- Well and I noticed too, 'cause I put the dress on the form, just little secret, that the zippers are amazing and it goes right up through the garment.

- I mean (chuckles) oh gosh!

- So like, this zipper, this is like there's an outside zipper here and then inside is the corset.

Yeah.

And that's just, that's fascinating to me, just to see all that, that little hook and I just thought this was amazing.

And there's a heavy zipper we use for like most bias and especially for gowns, it's like an invisible zipper but it's like a really heavy ones.

I think it's a number five.

Well, that's an interesting thing to me because I noticed that zipper, I thought, you know a lot of sewers would just go get an invisible zipper, but invisible zipper would never hold up - It's not strong enough.

- Right.

And so everybody kind of thinks it's always them, you know, they're the ones making the mistake.

But really it's the wrong materials that are kind of going into what it's doing.

- And I think these days, more and more of this stuff is accessible to everyone around the country.

You know, if you get online - That's really true.

- you can find all this stuff like, you know and the zipper thing has changed dramatically in the last like five years.

All of a sudden you're getting all of these kinds of zippers that are meant to be on the outside.

They're really beautiful.

- Yeah.

And it is nice.

It's fun to design around them.

If I were to ask you, how many yards were in this dress?

- This one's about 13 yards.

- 13 yards.

- And think it's $9,000.

- And I can't say like how long it takes you, because you couldn't possibly put a time on it but let's just say once it's evolved and once it's to that point and you know what you're doing, how long does it take?

- We'll spend about four or five days on this in the workroom.

I have one woman that in particular does these kinds of things for me, that's been with me for 25 years and she like, you know, she kind of, I can give her, not a sketch, but she'll understand like how I want things.

Because you know, it's important to me that it not be too regular.

It's like the kind of thing with like Persian carpets and stuff that you have to have a little bit of error in it.

I wanna look at this for just one more minute.

I wanna get back to the table for a second.

So in this contrast of deciding how it's gonna be and what it's going to be, I think that you've come a long way from your grandmother teaching you to sew (giggles).

Is that a fair statement?

- Yeah, I mean I've spent a lot of time doing it.

- How did you do that?

I mean, how did you?

Give us a lesson, give us a couple tips.

- The biggest thing that happens again and again and again is that you make mistakes or things don't go the way you wanted them to go and you learn from that.

You know, I mean, this is like, you know when I started to do this, it was, you know, started to did this particular thing it was because something happened.

We were trying to fix a problem.

I've got some amazing gowns that I've made because I was trying to fix a problem.

- Oh, that's fascinating.

- And it suddenly kind of occurred to me like, "Okay, this is what you can do.

- So is it fair to say you're patient?

- Yeah, I'm very patient.

- But you also have to - But you know, Sewers are, if you're a sewer, you are a sewer - I think that's true.

- And if you're not a sewer, you're not a sewer.

And it's just like, you know, you know that first time.

Somebody comes in and they say they're in a sewing class and they really hate it.

It's like, "You're never going to be a sewer."

It's never gonna happen.

- (giggles) I think that's really true.

I have so many women who say to me, "I love to sew."

No, you don't (laughs) - Then do something else.

I can't knit.

I've tried knitting.

When I knit something it's like (clicks), like this.

It's so stiff.

- So The lessons came in failures?

- Yeah.

Always.

But I think that, you know it's true with a lot of things.

- It is.

I just think I see so many women who really, they just don't wanna fail.

They don't like to fail.

Is it fair to say adults just don't like to fail?

- Kids don't like to fail.

You know, I think that's the biggest problem I have with my children is like saying it's okay to be not so great at something.

One of the most important things that happened to me when I was a kid was I played tennis.

I was always the worst person on the team.

And you know, I tried and I tried.

My sister was really good, but I was always the worst on the team and yet, but there was something, because I was good at a lot of other things, but being bad at something is kind of like a freeing kind of thing.

You know what I mean?

- That's interesting.

I love that.

- No, I'm bad at all kinds of stuff but I just don't do it (laughs).

- Do you play tennis?

- Badly, still, still.

(Peggy laughing) - It's amazing.

I mean, this is just incredibly beautiful and again, I think for me, I think I learned a couple things, I learned to go without necessarily, even though you have a sketch, you don't have to follow that sketch.

It's kind of a guide.

Is that a fair statement?

- Yeah, you have to let things tell you what thy wanna do.

- evolve And then they have to be wearable.

- Yeah.

- Talk to me about cost, when you get into all this.

- So this is a dress it's going to end up being about 9,109.

And you know, - It's not just a number you make up.

- No, no.

I mean, I spent a lot of time figuring out how much things are and I can also kind of like, just in my head kind of see things at this point, but I mean, you know we're doing this, the people are extremely well-paid.

They've been with me for years and years and years.

- Aw, that's sweet.

- And, you know, they need them to be really like that.

I need the people to be able to make these dresses really perfectly and making them in like a medium.

- It's a real team.

- Yeah, it's a team, definitely a team.

- And you love it still.

It's amazing to me how, when you meet a sewer you like kind of know and things just really jive when you know they sew.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- It's amazing the similarities.

- You've got to talk and it's like you understand everything.

- You love to sew.

- I love to sew.

Nice talking to you.

- Thank you, Robert.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

Appreciate it so much.

Ah, like I said, I could go on and on.

Robert Haven is world renowned for his tambour beading.

What is tambour?

You've actually probably seen tambour beading on ultra fancy gowns, but if you're like me, you just didn't know what it was.

Join me and we'll learn all about what tambour beading is and how Robert applies it to his designs.

Tambour beading, next time on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Fit to Stitch is made possible by Kai scissors, (gentle music) Bennos Buttons, (gentle music) OC Sewing Orange County, (gentle music) Vogue Fabrics, (gentle music) Pendleton, (gentle music) Imitation of Life (gentle music) and Clutch Nails.

(gentle music) (lively music) To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch Series 9, please visit our website, at fit2stitch.com.

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