Blue Fish Clothing 2001 ~ Pre - Production Information:
“Our raison d’etre at Blue Fish is to support self-expressive dressing as a path to encourage self-exploration and personal growth. Blue Fish is pure style driven by joyful experiment and discovery. Increased feelings of pleasure and harmony are certain.” ~ Excerpt from the 2001 Spring Catalog
It was fairly clear from the very beginning of 2001 that Blue Fish could not possibly last much longer. The shortage of capital in the Fall of 2000 had severely impacted the Spring calendars. It was necessary for the company to ship goods out weekly in order to make payroll, but the spring goods were months behind schedule, so there was nothing left to ship. Most of the organic jersey and the cotton Lycra made it through production before the shutdown. The hemp did not. Hemp cannot be grown domestically and requires a much longer lead time than domestic fabrics. Several of the other specialty fabrics were left at various stages of production: cut work, sewn goods, or not printed at all. Almost all of these goods had been moved through, either by purchase by private parties, or by a skeleton crew working at Blue Fish. The Summer samples were made and the line did go to market. In fact, wholesale orders were being accepted, but the 10 or so sets of samples were the extent of the Summer line and only the first pre-production packet was ready for the fall line.
For Spring I there were wholesale line sheets, but Spring II was a copy from the catalog. For the two Summer deliveries and the planned Summer retail product development, there were final pre-production packets. These were line drawings provided by design directly to production to aid in the creation of the samples. For Fall (Transitions is Fall I), there were the initial pre-production packets. Winter was never more than a sample calendar and a twinkle in Jen’s eye.