PRINTSewing their own trend
Columbia designers take the fashion world head-on
M. Colleen McDevitt
Lahn Lee (right), a seamstress for Blackberry Exchange, discusses a design with Laura Wilson, the store’s owner and head designer.
August 14, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Budding fashion designers, take note. There’s no need to tackle the French language in Paris or brave the streets of New York City to become a successful designer. As Project Runway’s Tim Gunn says, you just need to “make it work,” and Columbia’s just as good a place as any to do so.
The fashion scene in mid-Missouri has expanded over the past five years, and three designers are threading their way to the national level.
Rachael Trinklein works on her line of “ex-boyfriend” purses out of her home.
“Columbia is a thrift town,” Blackberry Exchange owner Laura Wilson says. “The fact that it can support this trend tells us that people are interested in more than what they can find at the mall.”
Vintage remakes
Wilson has been interested in making and revamping clothes since her early teens. After working at a consignment shop for five years, she opened Blackberry Exchange in 1998 . She decided to take her interest in fashion further and rework the clothing in her shop into new personalized pieces. One year after she opened Blackberry Exchange, Wilson added “fashion designer” to her credentials.
“Columbia’s fashion scene has grown a lot in the past 10 years,” she says. “At that time, if you really wanted something unique, you couldn’t find it. We began by remaking jeans into skirts, and the business grew from there.”
Now, Wilson and her sewing team of about 4-8 employees (depending on the time of year) can give a face-lift to just about any article of clothing: dresses, shirts, jackets, skirts and the most popular items from her line, hoodies. Extra touches such as silver studs, screen prints and splatter paint liven up the clothing and make it imaginative and inspired. A recent idea led Wilson to use leather from a vintage coat and add it underneath the bust of an otherwise ordinary dress to achieve an edgier look.
Wilson believes her medium has no limitations. “Fashion is for everybody,” she says. “You aren’t bound by rules, and it allows you to do your own thing.”
She has been selling her line, Reclaimed, on eBay for the past six years and in stores in San Francisco, New York City, and Ottawa, Ontario, for the past five. A Blackberry Exchange Web site is coming in October and will give Wilson more exposure in the fashion world.
Although Wilson sells clothes nationwide, she knows that fashion is regional. “You really have to pay attention to what people like to wear,” she says. “You can’t buy into any pretense in fashion.”
Empowering T-shirts
Fran Lakatos started with an interest in flea markets, thrift stores and the secondhand T-shirts. From there, she decided to make her own designs on T-shirts.
Lakatos keeps a sketchbook around, and she often transfers her sketches to T-shirts using stencils and spray paint. “I liked the way it looked, but I couldn’t make a lot of each design because the stencil always wore out,” she says. She dug around for alternative solutions to stencils and found that screen prints were a better option.
After three years, Lakatos has been selling her
own line of T-shirts at Maude Vintage. Her designs include retro wrestlers, a black Jesus and girls with guns.
“I sketch a lot, and I make strong images that speak to other people,” Lakatos says. “(The girls with guns shirts) deal with the absurdity of guns. You always see boys playing with guns but never girls.”
"Ex-boyfriend" purses
Rachael Trinklein expresses her fashion point-of-view by putting a fresh spin on handbags. Trinklein started sewing last year and recently started selling her creations. She works from home where she designs purses out of menswear from Salvation Army, Goodwill and hand-me-downs from friends.
“I like to call them ex-boyfriend handbags,” she says. “I make purses out of men’s clothing. It is like a woman reclaiming her identity in a man’s world.”
Trinklein enjoys using ties, suits and, most of all, suspenders. Her suspender bags have been her most popular item at Maude Vintage since she began selling her line there in July.
Later this month, Trinklein will go on a 30-day trip to visit cities including Chicago and San Francisco. She hopes to discover the culture of those cities and its people through their thrift stores.
“I want to check out different fabrics and shops and learn about other sewers and seamstresses,” she says. “I want to learn the heart behind each story and behind each culture.”
Trinklein isn’t going to let boundaries influence her work. “I have realized that being a designer is not something that makes you stationary,” Trinklein says. “It frees you, and you are allowed to create and design whatever you want.”
