Ask any serious sportsman and he’ll tell you the same thing – they hate posers. Yeah, sure, they like to wear the fashions that identify them as being into a particular sport, but they don’t get obsessed about it. There’s something really wrong with people who do.
Different niche sports have their own brands and styles they like to wear. A brown boot is just a brown colored boot unless it has a brand name and style that distinguishes it as a ski boot or a football boot. Savvy footwear companies make casual shoes as wear as footwear for athletes because they know that a snowboarder, for instance, will want to wear their brand on and off the slopes.
Ditto for watches. Surfers and sailors need to wear waterproof watches and they like ones that look good. They don’t, however, wear the watch just because it looks good. What use would a leather watch be to a surfer when he’s being hit over the head by a giant wave!
A surfer likes to wear a men’s sport watch from a surf label, but real surfers don’t buy the leather ones as well. Those are for the posers who don’t actually get their feet wet. They judge posers very harshly, so if you want to be accepted by surfers, be sure you don’t get labeled as a wannabe pretender!
Yes, that’s a pretty harsh judgment to make about a guy who’s just trying to fit in, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Surfers take a lot of pride in their skill and what it takes to get good at surfing. They have nothing to prove because they’ve already proved themselves to their peers. When an outsider who hasn’t paid his dues comes on the scene and thinks he’ll be accepted just because of his clothes, they don’t like it at all!
Just copying their brands is going to backfire on you, though. If you want to be accepted by the surfing subculture, you’ve got to get not just your feet but your whole body wet! If a surfer sees you wearing his gear, he’s going to think less of you for it unless you can actually get in the water and surf. They won’t hesitate to tell you their feelings, either!
Fashion is nice, but skill is all important. Go ahead and buy those trendy watches and shoes, but stay away from the slopes or the waves if you don’t want to tackle them head-on!
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In shop work we have two types of supplies, on hand non job specific and supplies purchased specifically for a particular job.
On hand non job specific supplies include pins, needles, threads, zippers in many colours and lengths, hooks and eyes, basic buttons, interfacings in all weights, china silk for linings, and cotton muslin for making test garments to fine tune design and fit. These are often purchased from warehouses or wholesalers in large lots. I buy rolls of interfacings and linings, never two yards here or three yards there…I always buy a whole roll. For thread I buy long staple polyester on 5000 meter cones, it cheaper to buy in large quantities. Pins come in one pound boxes, stainless steel longs, also known as "dorcas dressmaker pins". Dorcas refers to the length, I have no idea where the term came from. I also have a good supply of fashion fabrics on hand, from rolls of silks to odd lots of whatever catches my eye to leftovers from previous jobs.
Then I also have job specific purchases. For example right now I'm making a bunch of special shirts for a local eatery. For these pieces I needed to buy a few rolls of black cotton spandex, several rolls of lace, and stretch bindings. Another job might include special notions such as hook and eye tape, steel boning, special fabrics, dyes, it depends. I have a few fabric swatch books from suppliers of evening fabrics, dupionis and shantungs, crepe satins, that sort of thing. I can order direct for wholesale prices rather than go to the fabric store and buy retail. For costly fabrics I will make the dress up in cotton muslin and perfect the fit and design and then take the cotton with me to the outlet so I buy no more than I need. For something like re-embroidered brocades that start at 150$ a meter, you don't buy more than you need and you don't waste an inch.
Most dress shops and costume shops operate that way, combining on hand basics with job specific purchases. We almost always we buy in large quantities as it's cheaper that way. We almost always hang on to everything, like scraps, leftover buttons, we never know when it's going to come in useful again. Costume shops will often hold onto costumes and recycle them into new costumes; the Shakespeare Festival shop in Stratford often uses and reuses costumes from previous seasons to make current season's costumes. Here's a little page describing the festival's costume warehouse. also the next site is one used by costume shops, there might be something interesting there for you: http://www.costumes.org/
1:00 it’s submarine