Wardrobe Refashion in the News

I wanted to like the LAT wardrobe refashion article, Dowdy to Divine. But quotes like this

"This was one of those '80s boxy dresses," Raymond says, flicking through a rolling rack stuffed with matte jersey and silk Jacquard on a recent afternoon at The Way We Wore, her La Brea Avenue vintage boutique. "This was a generic, '60s cocktail dress. And this one," she says with a smirk, "I swear it was a Republican. The scoop neck was horrible. I could maybe see selling it in Texas."

ruined it for me. The accompanying slide show is worthwhile, though.

There were several more eco-recession chic articles, but my favorite was the interview with
Dosa's Christina Kim .

Kim believes that supporting these artisans, and having regular contact with them in good times and bad, builds long-term, trusting relationships. It also fits within her broader philosophy of encouraging people to consume less but cherish more the things they buy and wear, including the sweat equity and consummate craftsmanship of the people who made them.

For Kim, that means appreciating not only the textures, colors, shapes and patterns of materials but also their histories and identities, the multiple lives they may have led while traveling from a Yoruba cloth market in West Africa, say, or an Indian women's sewing cooperative, to Kim's downtown L.A. retail showroom.

"That's probably the biggest thing you give," she says of her relationships with far-flung collaborators, "that you're not just looking at them as tools, you're looking at them on a human level."

Kim believes that when garments, housewares and other items pass through multiple pairs of hands during their construction, they undergo a "transfer of energy." She regards clothing imperfections not as "flaws" but as personality markers, as distinctive as a mole or a beauty mark.

Similarly, she considers the discipline imposed by working with finite resources to be not an impediment but a spur to imagination and inventiveness. Recycling limits you to "essences," she says.

Read the whole thing and view the slide show. Visit the Wardrobe Refashion Blog.

In between market work, family work and recovering from the never ending parade of infections this winter, I have a few wardrobe refashions to show off. Maybe I will get around to posting that about the same time I show off the rest of my Spring sewing. ;-)