*reposted from the original interview posted ca 2014 via the http://web.archive.org/web/*/denimbro.com" rel="nofollow - internet wayback machine
Recently I had the
great good fortune of meeting Daniel DiSanto at a local jeans
manufacturer during his delivery and installation of some vintage sewing
machines. After talking with Dan a bit, I was pleased to discover that
he had worked at LVC designing some of their initial offerings in the
mid 1990s, and later at RRL. The more we talked, the more I became
fascinated by his long career in the garment business. I asked Dan
if he would consent to an interview, and after a little cajoling, he
agreed, and graciously invited me over to his home for dinner and a
talk. Dan's home is on Alameda Island in the San Francisco bay, just
offshore of West Oakland. Alameda is surprisingly quiet, green and
lined with well kept Victorians, one of which is occupied by Dan and his
husband Walt- a sewing shop/design room, a couple of cats, and a
mind-blowing collection of antique glass oil lamps and clocks, the
latter of which filled the audio tape of our interview with a myriad of
clickings and whirrings and occasional chime crescendos which
necessitated periodic pauses in our interview.

Dan outside of his home in Alameda
-When did you first find yourself interested in making or altering some form of clothing?
I
was 6 years old when I started sewing. When we'd visit my Grandma's
house, she had this neat old black Singer in the corner, and I was
fascinated by it. She would only let me run it by turning the wheel
with my right hand- I was too young to use the electric pedal, she
thought! She also had this fantastic piece of pale rose colored napped
Mohair to cover it. It was so shear and had the most amazing wear marks
on it plus the edges were pearl stitched. I still remember how it
smelled. I was fascinated by it too. The second thing that got me
really sewing the families clothes was that my Mom was developing an eye
disease when I was about 7, and that prevented her from doing the
mending easily, so I offered to help. She had a black Singer too, and
she let me use the electricity! I remember clearly when I was 7 years
old we made a big trip into downtown Cleveland to get a McCall's pattern
and some pale blue shantung, and I made my Mom a dress. I can still
picture it and the time I spent making it. That would have been in
1962. I started my own patterns shortly afterward, and that added the
thrill of sculpting a pattern to fit a human. I remember early on quite
a few Simplicity patterns I bought where there was not the right ease
ratio between the sleeve cap and armscye, so I thought I would have at
it and it was the patterning process that really hooked me. To make a
2-d shape in paper fit a 3-d moving body was, and still is, a big charge
for me. Don't know why - just is.
When did you notice the
imperfection in the Simplicity patterns? When the garments were finished
and worn, or could you initially see it in the pattern itself?
It
was when I was sewing the pieces. They just weren't going together
properly. I could see that I wanted to reshape the pieces. Pretty
quickly I did. Newspaper was too flimsy to use for paper patterns that
needed to last more than one time, so I reused the simplicity pattens. I
cut bigger pattern pieces down or taped new scraps on to pieces that
were too small. I started making clothes for my family, and after people
at my local fabric store started noticing, I got my first paying jobs,
which led to me doing my first wedding when I was about 13.
Did anyone find this odd- that you possessed this kind of skill set when you were only 13?
Dan:
Hmmmnn… No, actually, which I guess is kind of odd when you think about
it. Maybe I was some sort of sewing prodigy? Not that I was a concert
cellist or anything, but somehow I did just know how to sew and cut out
patterns.
How did your professional sewing develop from that point?
Dan:
I started getting more work through word of mouth, and eventually a
fabric store hired me as their designer in residence, and that's when my
custom career really took off. I kept getting more and more work, and
so just kept raising my prices to see where it would go, and my
clientele ended up being Cleveland Old Money- women whose husbands gave
them $20,000 a month clothing allowance! I'd wear a jacket and tie and
go to this fancy neighborhood of Cleveland called Shaker Heights with my
tailor's bag. I started doing a lot of work there, making cotillion
dresses and opera gowns. I paid my way through school and then college
doing that. It was good. It was lucrative. And I learned to sew a whole bunch of different fabrics and met some nice people. There
was a little bit of garment manufacturing still happening in Cleveland
in the 1970s. Hugo Boss still manufactured his men's suits there, for
instance. Eventually I met and started working for Phyllis Sydney, who
manufactured plus size clothing for women. That was where I learned
factory pattern making. Back then, it was all done by hand- the grading,
marker making, and cutting. All of the tools and techniques had been
around for a long time, centuries, except for xeroxing. There were giant
revolving tables there where you would draw and cut each piece for each
size in a run out by hand from oak tag [a heavy, two-sided card stock]
and then grade up each size and cut all of those pieces too. There were
hundreds and hundreds of pieces for a single size run. Then someone
would manually lay out all of the pieces on photo paper and xerox the
whole series for future use when the original pattern pieces had
deteriorated.
 A 1970s catalog from Phyllis Sydney.
Did you have one particular instructor in learning this craft?
Dan:
Yes, a very stern German Master Pattern Maker who had a little Hitler
mustache and always wore a starched white shirt. He was very strict and
precise, and all of the rules had to be followed exactly. Pencils could
only be sharpened with sandpaper, for instance, as pencil sharpeners
didn't give you a fine enough point. And you had to stand at all times.
The only people allowed to sit were women who were menstruating!
He sounds imposing…
Dan:
Oh, yes, the Pattern Maker really ruled the roost in the factories back
then. I remember that the NY Times did a series in the eighties where
they found and interviewed keystone people in various professions, and
they were rarely CEOs or managers. For the steel industry for example,
the key person they interviewed was a smelter, and for the garment
industry it was a pattern maker. Back then the pattern maker interacted
with everyone: the designers came to them with their drawings, the
fabric came to them, they sourced the thread and hardware and oversaw
the production. They were the conduit between the design side and the
finished product. Its all very different now of course- pattern
makers use design software that can essentially make patterns from 2-D
drawings and automatically grade all of the size run. It's mostly done
off-shore in Asian factories that produce clothing for a lot of
different companies, and the end result is very cookie-cutter, and
usually doesn't fit. Although I have to say, some of the kids I work
with now who do computer pattern making are just dying to know how to
actually build something, how to sculpt. There seems to be a little bit
of respect coming back for craftsmen who can draw, cut and sew patterns
that will actually fit the human body. At least, I hope so…
Where did working at Phyllis Sydney's lead you?
Dan:
Well, at the same time as I was working there, this would be the
mid-'70s, I was also doing a lot of theater work- costuming for the
Cleveland Playhouse, where my brother was active, and the Cleveland
Ballet in 1976, so I made clothes for Dennis Nahat and Cynthia Gregory
there. I also had a scholarship at this time and was briefly enrolled at
Case Western Reserve in their pre-dental program, but organic chemistry
ended that for me. I was also second flautist at the Cleveland
Institute of Music. I also volunteered at the Western Reserve Historical
Society and did garment restoration and conservation.
So you were just hanging around, not accomplishing anything, not pursuing any interests…
Dan (Laughing): Yeah, I was just a slacker! I did all of that at the same time, I don't know how.

Some of Dan's work for the Cleveland Playhouse.
Did
you have a mentor aside from the German Pattern Maker? Someone to show
you how to approach a technique or fabric you hadn't worked with before?
Dan: No, I just figured it out on my own. I never went to any kind of school or did an apprenticeship for any of this. In
fact, the first actual degree I got was a bachelor's in mathematics
from Ursuline Catholic Girls College, in around '82 or 83.
Wait, what?
Dan:
I was teaching there, pattern making, for their fashion design program,
and in return I got to take any other classes there I wanted, so I
studied Philosophy and Mathematics at the Ursuline Catholic Girls
College! I enjoyed teaching, and was good at it, so I decided to get a
masters in Textiles and teach that, and at the time the prime place to
get your masters in Textiles was North Carolina State University. I got a
Master of Science in Apparel Management and Textile Engineering. That's
where I really learned the weaving, the knitting structures, yarns, the
muscle of clothes design.
Muscle?
Dan: Ah- For
me, the whole apparel design process consists of bone, muscle and skin,
The bones are the pattern and shape, what I called, when I worked at
Levi's, Jean Geometry. The muscle is the fabric, and the skin is the
surface of a garment- all of the design details. I think Levi's may have
copyrighted that terminology that I came up with actually…
 Levi's Jean Geometry chart.
Dan:
So, While I was at NCSU I really became interested in the geometries of
pattern making. There was a German woman who came and lectured there
named Gabriele Knecht, and she had a design shop in NY. I hit it off
with her, and when I graduated I went to New York and worked with her
for a year and a half. She was one of the first people to get a patent
for apparel- for the geometry she put into her sleeve design. What we
worked on was 3-D pattern making, which was a very new thing at that
time. You would design on a computer generated 3-D model and then it
would peel the pieces off perfectly. I had done a lot of research in
this field at NCSU. Gabrielle had studied human anatomy, and ergonomic
and anthropometric body measurements on the scientific end of it, so we
collaborated for a while. After that ended, a college friend who was
working in Delaware doing textile development research for Dupont
called me up and asked me to come work with her. Dupont was coming up
with new synthetic fabrics, and you can't just show a bale of Kevlar,
Lycra, or Tyvek to designers or manufacturers. I was working with the
textile developers and then small manufacturing houses to learn how to
cut, sew, & work with these new materials and produce good-looking
sample garments. Nurses uniforms, diapers, dresses, jackets, all
different things.
What is Tyvek?
Dan: A synthetic
cloth, very thin, strong, and wrinkly, and doesn't breathe. Oh, you
know, Tyvek jackets? We made a bunch for MTV. We're talking mid-80s
here. They use Tyvek for insulation now. It was awful! But Dupont was
convinced it would be the fabric of the future.
Some of Dan's Tyvek jacket designs for MTV via Dupont.
Dan:
A plus of working at Dupont was that I had the freedom to do any kind
of pattern making I wanted. For a while I did one piece patterns, which
is actually a pattern making niche right now, and is a from of Zero
Waste or Zero Fallout design, which is something I've become very
interested in.
Wasn't there waste when the one piece was cut out?
Dan: No, the knitters were amazing, they actually just made the shape. If you cut it out there's no point, as you create waste.
Oh, they knit the fabric directly into the shape of the pattern? That's amazing! Kind of like an early 3-D printer.
Yes,
I guess it was! So, When Dupont ended I came out to California to work
for O'neill making wetsuit patterns. It was crazy, and very
challenging. We made custom wet-suits and uniform pieces for the Coast
Guard- you'd have to put three coordinates on them to grade them, and
then cut these huge serpentine shapes out of neoprene and put them
together, almost like constructing a shoe, so I learned about gluing and
taping heavy synthetic fabrics there. I did this until about 1991, when someone I knew at Levi's called me up and asked me to come work for them. I
started there in the Red Tab division, doing trucker jackets and tops. I
worked on some of their strange, but very cool, slouch jackets, and the
pants that were hugely over-sized and skewed. I did that for quite a
while. Eventually the opportunity came up to work on the launch of the
Levi's Vintage Clothing subdivision under Geir Tandburg. I was picked,
along with Monica Schmid, to research in the archive, pick models, and
develop the patterns. Monica cut the patterns for the jackets, and I did
the jeans and the sawtooth shirt. I spent a lot of time in the
archives looking at scores of jeans. For some reason I seemed to be
looking at them in increments of 11 years- I developed a notion of a
1922 jean, a 1933, a 1944, a 1955, a 1966… I remember wondering,
after looking at so many pants and starting to take measurements of
representative samples, why did some of them fit so differently, when
their measurements were very similar. In all honesty, when we started
this project I didn't know how exact of a replication Levi's wanted us
to make. Monica and I really didn't know, we thought, maybe they just
want a design which would merely suggest the original? But not at all! I
remember at the first fitting we had with our samples, everyone was
aghast at how horrible they were… because we were making them based
entirely on the measurements we took in the archives. But the fits were
all wrong, and didn't look anything like the originals. We went back to
the drawing board and started looking more closely at the archived
jeans, including constructing the negative spaces in the pattern. We
took more measurements and measured in different ways, did stitch count
and followed the warp and weft yarns orthogonally rather than measuring
directly across areas. We developed different geometries and shaping
strategies. After a lot of work we came up with new samples that
actually looked a lot more like the originals. One interesting thing we had to contend with was the way denim shears. See this? [Dan frames a 4" x4" section of denim with his hands and gently moves his hands in opposite directions] The
amount of shear is how much you can manipulate the fabric like this
before it buckles. Plain weaves hardly have that, but twills do. That's
why denim will mold to your body, like a leotard, almost. We had to look
at every inch of the archived jeans with an eye towards that property,
and that helped us out immensely. The jackets, the Type I and II
especially, were interesting to work with Monica on. They are cut almost
entirely with straight lines- there's no curves anywhere in them.
Maybe they were into Zero Fallout patterns early on?
Dan
[laughing]: well, they were! Or close to it. Very boxy, mostly squares
and rectangles, very efficient to cut and not much wasted fabric.
Did Levi's not have original patterns for any of the years you were looking at to work with?
Dan:
There were some, but remember, LVC wanted to wash a lot of these jeans
to look like originals from their archive, so we didn't want a solely
deadstock type-fit, but one that also resembled the worn archived
pieces. Speaking of the old patterns, though, something that was
really sad was that when Levi's Valencia Street Factory was closed, all
of those hard patterns were just tossed in the garbage. The guys who did
that, they were old timers at the Valencia factory who had hand cut and
graded a lot of patterns for decades at Levi's. Just walls of these
beautiful hard patterns hanging on them- they were all tossed in the
trash. Lynn Downey and I were like : Oh No! Can't we save some of
these!!? We did grab some, basically we were dumpster diving.
How long did you work at LVC?
Dan: Until around 1999. After I left, Susan Smith and Issa Beilefeldt took over the pattern making.
Which
jean models did you pattern at LVC? The first three offerings were the
1937, 1955, and 1963zxx, all of which you cut. What came after?
Dan:
I did the 1890, the 1933, 1944, the 1944 was my last jean at LVC. I
remember working on the artwork for the painted arcuate for the '44.
Detail of research material for the LVC 1901 jean. What about the 1947?
Dan: Let me see… the 1947. Honesty, I can't remember, it was so long ago. Probably that was Susan and Issa.
Anything that you wished you could have worked on at LVC that you didn't get to?
Dan:
Yes, quite a few things. A lot of the children's clothing, like the
Kid's Koveralls, would have been fun. Also, I would have loved to have
done tons of the '30s dude ranch era western shirts for men and women…
One
thing that LVC is often noted for is their sizing disparities in tagged
versus actual size. I have handled a lot of the early stuff, from when
you were there, which doesn't seem to vary as much as later items, from
the mid-2000s, some of which I have seen be 5 inches off of tagged size.
Some have suggested some of the disparity is intentional, as vanity
sizing. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Dan: I call the
excess "garment ease" rather than "vanity sizing". Usually in most
companies, the tagged or ticket size refers to the body size. For
example if you buy a size 40 suit, the jacket chest is not 40 but more
like 46. Same with pants. A 34 waist refers to the waist measurement of
the wearer and usually at the natural waist like high up where you'd
wear tailored old man dress pants. You need a bitease, so a 34 waist
ticket would have an actual garment measurement of maybe 34.5 or 35 just
for ease around your waist for comfort. Since jeans are worn low
down by the high hip, the body is bigger so in jeans a 34 waist can
measure about 1 1/2 inch over ticket. And that is not with a low rise,
which means the jean would sit lower on the hip and need a bigger waist.
I've made some jeans up to 2 1/2 inches larger than ticket. At The
North Face, who I'm doing work for now, for some of the ski pants I am
making them 3 inches over ticket. It also depends on the style. Some
guys still wear their jeans around the low butt. But at that point just
buy a larger size! I really don't like going any more than 2 inches
over the ticket - just buy a larger size.
So you continued on with Levi's for a while after you left the LVC division?
Dan:
Yes. After that I worked for a while with Rebecca Hawkins on Levi's
effort to revitalize the 501 design, pulling together a lot of historic
levis' shapes from decade to decade to create the perfect global 501.
After that I did the pattern for the 527 and around 2005 I worked on the
514 and the 511. Around this time Levi's changed their pattern
systems- they changed to Gerber and took most of their manufacturing
off-shore. I had my hands full with that transition for a while...
 Pattern details from Dan's work for Levi's.
Dan:
After Levi's ended, my old friends Mary Bruno and Rebecca Hawkins, both
former Levi's designers, were working for Ralph Lauren, and recommended
me to work for RRL. I think they wanted someone "vintagey". I patterned
a lot of their early jackets, a few shirts and shorts.
Any particular differences in the experiences of working at LVC vs. RRL you'd like to comment on?
Dan:
Well, aside from the much higher budget at RRL, at RRL I wasn't trying
to copy something historical exactly, I was trying to put a vintage look
on something that was newly designed, and that was more like a little
bit of freedom for me, since I had some background in how the old stuff
was really made, they were asking me to put that old stuff into new
sketches. I was working from designers concepts as originals, not actual
garments as originals. I remember they asked me to design a double
breasted denim trench-coat that was just a wonderful challenge. I had to
design it so that when it received a heavy wash it developed a vintage
looking character, which is much more difficult to do than it sounds. After
RRL I worked with my friend Stefano Aldighieri at his consulting/design
company on a number of freelance projects: Wrangler, Rohan Marley,
Victoria Beckham, Ariat…
 Wrangler patterns.
What were the Beckham garments like?
Dan: Pretty much like PRPS.
Ariat the Equestrian clothing company?
Dan:
I worked with Ariat developing their denim line. It is one of my
favorite projects that I've worked on. Ariat makes horse-riding clothing
and footwear, and are always working on new designs and technology to
improve performance. With their denim project, they had me interview a
lot of working cowboys and rodeo riders about their jeans- how they
liked the fit, what made different cuts work or not work for
horse-riding, anything they thought might improve function or fit (which
rodeo riders are surprisingly concerned with). I ended up developing
several design features for their men's denim line after that research-
lots of fine pattern changes and a few large ones, like making the back
waist dip in the center, which prevents plumbers crack. I also gave them
a leather reenforced back center belt loop, since rodeo riders often
clip safety lines there, and a bigger coin pocket which can accommodate
an iPhone. I think the men's Ariat M1 is the best fitting and most functional jean I've ever patterned.

What are you up to now?
D:
I'm working with North Face, again in patterning and grading tops and
jackets. Mostly on their extreme garments, made for risk-takers, that
have high durability and insulation requirements and crazy features like
built in GPS units in case the wearer is buried by an avalanche or
falls off a cliff. One thing that the North Face is interested in,
that ties in with a deep personal interest of mine, is zero fallout
design, where the parts of a garment are patterned like a jigsaw puzzle,
all fitting together so there is zero wasted fabric. I was doing things
like that, just out of curiosity back at Dupont over 30 years ago. Now
there is a growing interest in that practice, which ties in to the
Fibershed movement, which I've also become deeply interested in.
Can you explain Fibershed?
D:
Rebecca Burgess started this movement in Northern California, and now
it's begun to spread, with a number of other Fibershed projects
springing up in southern California and some of the New England states. Fibershed
is about reversing the whole apparel industry paradigm as it is. Now,
marketing people travel the world observing street trends and then tell
designers what to produce in what fabrics and colors and shapes.
Designers come up with two-dimensional drawings that are sent off to
Asia where they are patterned and graded in a computer and the fabrics
and colors found to match. Then things come back as finished, cookie
cutter assembled things. I hesitate to even call them "garments" in some
cases. In Fibershed principles, you start with the Earth. Local
growers tell you what they are going to produce, based on local weather
and environment factors and seed availability. For instance, this year
the Earth might produce green cotton from a new seed source, or it might
be a particularly good year for linen, or wool. You look at the
resources you have to dye, weave or knit the raw material, and that way
you find out what fabrics you have to work with, in what colors, and
this largely influences the types and cuts of garments that you can
produce. [Dan rummages among some garments stacked on a shelf and
pulls out a hoodie made from a soft, light brown heathered cotton. The
back and underarms are complexly fitted in an unusual pattern, but when
he puts this garment on, it fits snugly and neatly.]
This hoodie is
something I designed at North Face with Lydia Wendt, who is very active
in Fibershed. The material is unbleached, undyed, organic brown cotton
grown locally by Sally Fox.
 Fabric used in the zero fallout sweatshirt Dan designed for The North Face, woven from cotton grown by Sally Fox.
Zero Fallout pattern for Dan's North Face sweatshirt.
Dan:
Sally is a very interesting person herself- she raises sheep and
produces wool, and also experiments with heirloom cotton species- aside
from this brown cotton, I've seen naturally green cotton from her farm,
and I think she's working on a blue. You really should interview her.
Thank you Dan! It was a pleasure interviewing you.
Dan [laughing]: Well, no problem at all- but... do you really think anyone will find all of this interesting?
-finish-
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