HelenaCáceres
Design DeveloperPattern MakerFashion × Technology
I build patterns.
I question the systems around them.
I’m exploring what fashion can automate next, and what it never should.
Zara Woman
Pattern Maker · 2023 – present
Ricorrrobe
Pattern Maker / Assistant Designer · London · 2020 – 2023
I was the right hand of the creative director: new designs two seasons a year, drafted by hand, shown in Paris and produced in our small studio in London.
On paper
Every piece started as a sketch and a paper pattern, pleat by pleat.
On the stand
Then the toile on the dress form, adjusted until the volume felt right.
In 3D
A check in CLO3D before cutting the final fabric.
The samples
Pleats Dress, A Dress and H Dress, made in our studio.
Worn
Out of the studio and into real life.
Paris
Every season I directed our showroom in Paris during Fashion Week.
In the shops
Buyers chose each piece in the colour and fabric they wanted, and every shop styled our designs in its own way.
Nina Skarra
Digital Pattern Maker · Remote · 2022 – 2023
Nina Skarra is a luxury fashion designer from Oslo. Her pieces were sold online from 3D renders, before a single one was sewn.
I built each garment in CLO3D and created the renders for the online shop. Once the orders were in, I drafted the production patterns and the pieces were made in London, only in the quantities sold.
1 · Built in 3D
Each style patterned and sewn virtually in CLO3D.
2 · Sold online
The renders went straight to the shop for pre-orders.
3 · Made in London
Production patterns drafted once the quantities were known.
Secret Art
Gallery
Immersive experience for the Jubilee weekend in London. Costumes for the gallery's immersive experiences.
Made by hand
Emmeline
Costume Assistant · The Cockpit Theatre · London · 2021
A play about the suffragette movement, written by Beatrice Hyde and produced by The Theatre Lab Company. I was the costume designer's right hand, cutting the patterns and sewing the costumes.
Women in prison
Sylvia
Emmeline
The girl that dreams of going back in time, wondering if she could have helped fight for the women's vote.
Working women, cellists, intimewear, Christabell
Age Revolution
BA Final Collection · LCI Barcelona · 2020
P.07 · Independent R&D · v0.1 concept
Pattern
Intelligence
A searchable memory for pattern-making knowledge. Photograph a garment, find the base that already solves it.
Personal concept and independent project. Not a product of, affiliated with, or used by any employer. All data shown is illustrative.
Then I started noticing the system.
Every garment passes through the same chain of decisions. Some need a pattern maker’s judgement. Many are repetitions: finding a base someone made two seasons ago, re-applying a correction made a hundred times, adjusting a length across a whole size range. And a lot of that knowledge lives in people’s memory, where nobody else can search it.
- 01Design brief
- 02Base searchThe right base exists somewhere. Finding it depends on who remembers it.
- 03Pattern
- 04Fitting
- 05CorrectionsThe same fit fixes, repeated garment after garment.
- 06GradingRule-based work still done largely by hand.
- 07Production
A generic development flow. Blue notches mark where repetitive work hides.
A The problem
Pattern departments hold an enormous amount of knowledge: bases, previous patterns and the experience of the people who made them. Yet finding the right base, adapting a pattern, grading it or repeating a familiar correction is still mostly manual.
B The idea
Turn that knowledge into a structured library anyone on the team can use. Upload or photograph a garment; the system reads its silhouette, fit, volume, length, structure and construction, compares it with the library of bases and returns the closest starting points, each linked to its pattern and CLO file.
- 01CaptureUpload or photograph a garment.
- 02AnalyseSilhouette, fit, volume, length, structure, construction.
- 03SearchCompare against a library of bases, by meaning, not file name.
- 04MatchTop pattern matches, ranked and explained.
- 05OpenGo straight to the pattern and the CLO file.
Garment reading
Top pattern matches
C What it could automate next
- R1Grading
- R2Fitting corrections
- R3Pattern adjustments
- R4Length modifications
- R5Repetitive pattern-making operations
D Tools I’ve explored to prototype it
- FlutterFlow
- Supabase
- React Native / Expo
- Computer vision
- AI embeddings
- GitHub
I’m not a software engineer and don’t intend to be one. I use these tools to test ideas quickly and to speak the same language as the people who build products. My value is the pattern knowledge that tells a system what actually matters.
“AI should not replace pattern makers. It should remove repetitive work so they can spend more time making decisions.”
Outside
Kitesurf · Surf · Mountains · Travel
Most of my free time happens outdoors. Wind, salt, cold and constant movement are where I see what a garment really has to do, and that is the kind of clothing I want to build.
- Water
- Kitesurf, surf, kayak
- Land
- Mountains
- Always
- Travelling
From the first sketch
to the last stitch.
- Helena Cáceres Muñoz
- CV
- Download PDF
- Languages
- Spanish, Catalan, English
Basic: Italian, French, Japanese