Book Review: "Patternmaking for Menswear"

This week's book review is a pattern making book focused solely on menswear! Gareth Kershaw's "Patternmaking for Menswear" is one of my favorite menswear patterning books. It's made for with professionals and students in mind, and provides an excellent step by step guide for different classic menswear patterns.

I thoroughly enjoy the layout of the book. First it starts with short introduction to patternmaking for contemporary menswear. It describes how "working on these garment silhouettes you will learn the basic principles of patternmaking" and can then use those as your building blocks to alter and create your own patterns (Kershaw). I like how the introduction walks you through menswear over the years and how silhouettes have changed. After this you're given five chapters that encompasses the entire process for you. Chapter One focuses on the prep work for patternmaking - what you should have, what the different terms mean, how to take measurements, and more. After this Chapter Two explains slopers, making plans, tracing patterns, and using the terms you've learned. The next three chapters separate categories of patterns: Shirts, Pants, and Outerwear. There are 20 patterns with step by step guides with both illustrated flat diagrams and illustrated instruction steps as well as muslin progress photos and actual model photos. What I love is how it covers classic garments such as a "Casual Long-Sleeved Shirt" to more modern and trendy pieces based on your classic slopers. 

When I was in college I wanted to focus on menswear, for men's fashion but also from an androgynous and gender neutral point of view. The image on the right is a snapshot of the male models from my senior collection. The pants and button down tops were created from using the different pattern guides from the book. This book really helped me since almost everyone focused on womenswear in my classes. Out draping and patternmaking classes were all womenswear and we only had a few male body mannequins. One of my professors recommended that I use this patterning book to create my male slopers. After making a view paper copies of different parts of the book for me, I decided I really needed to own the whole book and purchased it for myself so I could actually read the whole book and utilize the different pattern instructions. If you're looking for a solid understanding of how to make and work with menswear patterns, this is a great book to have in your collection. Also, went I went to look for a link to the publishing company they didn't have it under "Patternmaking for Menswear." I believe it may now be called "Pattern Cutting for Menswear." Either way, excellent patternmaking book focused on menswear pieces.

Works Sited:

Kershaw, Gareth. Patternmaking for Menswear. Laurence King Publishing, 2013.