How to coordinate a collection as the idea evolves
In 2022 I wrote to a man I’d never met about a brand I knew very well.
I’d heard that Gianluca Sessarego had acquired GURU. For me, the news felt personal: I’d worked at GURU from 2004 to 2014. Ten years is a long time, especially when the products, the people and part of your life are all bound up in it.
In the message introducing myself, I wrote:
“For ten years I was the ‘mum’ of the Guru brand. I celebrated its successes, but I also suffered when it met a fate it didn’t deserve.”
‘Mum’ isn’t exactly portfolio language. Yet it had seemed the most precise word for my connection to that brand.
I congratulated him on his commitment to relaunching it and offered to work with him. I’d attached my portfolio: I could back up that affection with professional work. I knew that world and still had something to offer.
That message started a conversation which eventually led to the creation of GURU Bloom.
Returning to a brand you feel close to also means making room for what it might become. The GURU I knew was part of my experience; the collection I was developing needed to find its own form.
For Spring Summer 2025, I worked on the City Surfer theme: bringing a surf attitude into urban life. The collection’s showpiece was to be the Jumpsurfer, a unisex jumpsuit in 100% cotton loopback sweatshirt fabric, digitally printed and then garment-dyed.
From idea to first sample
The first Jumpsurfer sample had too short a rise, not enough length or width, and the wrong leg openings. It was supposed to be the collection’s showpiece. For now, it didn’t fit the way I wanted.
It was still quite a few centimetres short of my idea of GURU. But I still believed in the garment. I’d put together the moodboard, sketches and some AI visuals to bring the result into sharper focus; with the sample, I needed to work out what to change to get there.
With the agreement of Gianluca Sessarego, the brand’s owner, I worked directly with the pattern-making team, print house and dyehouse. I followed the corrections and assessed the results against the garment I’d designed. One change could solve a problem and create another: I needed to know what to check before moving on.
I needed to see the idea before testing it
I’d put together the moodboard and some AI visuals to clarify the atmosphere, the relationship between the floral motif and the garment, and the attitude of the people I imagined wearing it. They helped me see a possibility more clearly. The product still had to be developed.
In the Jumpsurfer sketches, a man and a woman wore the same design. The promise was a fit that worked for both. To keep it, I’d need an accurate pattern and fittings on real bodies, as well as a convincing image.
The print before and after dyeing
The first difficulty was the digital print: it had to remain visible after overdyeing without becoming overpowering. The motif colour had to be chosen with the next treatment in mind. Approving it only on the fabric before it went into the dye bath wouldn’t have answered the question I needed to resolve.
One test came out in a royal blue that was too strong. In the note kept in my archive, I’d asked for it to be redone in a lighter shade, closer to indigo. The correction had a precise focus: the print’s hue and intensity. I wasn’t asking for the motif to be removed or its layout changed.
The new file, though, was still a proposal. To assess the effect, we needed to repeat the printing and overdyeing. Direct contact with the print house and dyehouse allowed me to follow the relationship between the two processes: what came out of the first went into the second, and I was assessing the final result.
Five colours and a motif that had to stay legible
The colourways were white, violet-blue, yellow, pink and aqua. The print had to work across them, remaining recognisable on the darkest colour without dominating the lighter ones. There were plenty of trials.
In the drawing, I could get close to the effect I was after. The treated fabric allowed me to decide whether that relationship really worked. A print that looked good on its own wasn’t enough to approve it: it had to find its place on the garment and within the collection’s colours.
The official GURU Bloom page is the public reference for the line and shows the range currently available, or rather, what’s left of it. The drawings and trials reproduced here, however, document the development of Spring Summer 2025. They serve a different purpose and come from that specific season.
Unisex had to be checked on the body
The first sample didn’t meet the needs of the design. The rise and overall length were too short, there wasn’t enough room, and the leg openings were wrong. Writing ‘unisex’ on the drawing wasn’t going to fix any of those proportions.
With the pattern-making team, the work focused on the overall volume. Correcting one point wouldn’t have been enough. The jumpsuit needed enough room while keeping the shape I wanted on both a woman and a man. Making it wider without checking the rest could have produced a different garment, still far from the idea.
After the changes, the second prototype fitted exactly as I wanted. In the two photographs of it being worn, I could see the result of the pattern work. The colour needs a word of explanation, though: to save time, the prototype had been added to a dye bath already in progress. That green was not a sixth colourway.
The corrected pattern and the final colour were therefore two separate matters. Saying that the prototype worked meant recognising the fit we’d achieved, without turning the test colour into a choice for the collection.
An approval has to say what it authorises
Following the changes directly meant I also had to be precise in my assessment. A corrected file wasn’t yet a print checked after dyeing. A prototype that fitted well didn’t automatically have its colour approved. Whoever took the work forward needed to know which part of the decision had been settled.
The CottonWorks technical resources on dimensional change explain how processing and finishing can affect fabric dimensions and, in a garment, fit and the relationship between its components. This does not attribute the faults in the first Jumpsurfer sample to dyeing: the corrections described here concerned the pattern. It does, however, remind us why construction and treatment need to be considered together when developing a dyed garment.
To read the material in this case study, the checks can be distinguished as follows. This is an editorial summary drawn from the archive, not an approval form used at the time.
My responsibility was to decide whether the results, brought together in the product, still gave us the Jumpsurfer. The pattern-making team needed guidance on proportions; with the print house and dyehouse, the discussion concerned how the motif looked in the chosen colours. Not every change involved the same people, but all of them had to refer back to the same garment.
Recognising the garment after all the corrections
There were also screen prints, hand-worked darning embroidery and accessories. Once the sampling problems were resolved, the garment came out as I’d imagined it. That was deeply satisfying.
Looking at the campaign photograph, I still go back to the first sample. The motif was already recognisable, but the jumpsuit didn’t fit. Between those two images are the colour trials, pattern corrections and checks that made the result possible.
I’d changed the print’s tone to preserve the relationship I wanted with the background. I’d had the proportions corrected so the unisex design worked when worn. The temporary colour of the second prototype had allowed sampling to move forward without changing the planned palette.
The initial image helped me understand where I wanted to get to. Seeing the second prototype on a woman and a man, I could finally recognise the Jumpsurfer I’d had in mind. Everything was in balance.
Romina Tosi.
Materials and photographs from my personal archive. AI visuals are identified in the captions and distinguished from photographs of the actual garments. The articles and references concern past collections, in compliance with confidentiality obligations and the applicable time limits.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this article reflect my personal analysis of the information available at the time of publication. The sources consulted are publicly available and may include official documents, trade union communications, press reports and other materials accessible to the public. Artificial intelligence tools were used to support the identification, consultation and preliminary verification of sources, as well as to locate and check the links included in the article. Before publication, I reviewed the relevant sources and verified that the links corresponded to the materials cited. AI assistance does not replace my editorial judgment or my responsibility for the final text. Links were checked at the time of publication and may subsequently be changed, moved or removed by their respective publishers. I do not disclose confidential information or information obtained through privileged professional access. Facts, statements, allegations and opinions are presented according to their nature. References to individuals, companies or specific cases are included to examine matters of broader relevance to the industry. They are not intended to attribute unlawful conduct beyond what is expressly documented in the cited sources. Assessments concerning industrial strategies, financial decisions and production models represent personal opinions, not findings of fact or definitive judgments.
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