MITRA CHESTER
AT HER SHOP AND
STUDIO, DELUXE
P H OTO BY TO D D C O O P E R
FASHIONING INDUSTRY
an
Local designers want to bring garment production back home
EUGENE, ORE., APRIL 2015 : The fifth annual
Eugene Fashion Week is only days away and the Eugene
Garment House is a beehive of activity. Frenzied designers
dart around the open space on the third floor of the
Woolworth Building overlooking Willamette Street,
colorful swatches of fabric tucked under their arms and
pincushions wrapped around their wrists. Apprentices
hurriedly reorganize racks of fluttering paper patterns and
sample garments while production sewers put the finishing
touches on a pair of couture overalls and a hemp wedding
gown. At one station, a team of interns dyes a line of jersey
dresses. In the corner, set up as a mock catwalk, local
designer Mitra Chester is fitting a local model in an edgy,
tailored three-piece skirt suit made out of repurposed,
studded leather. “Where are my recycled couch-brocade
fabric cigarette pants?” one designer yells above the din.
This hasn’t happened. Yet. No one is manufacturing
couture overalls or hemp wedding dresses, or losing it over
a cigarette pant in some hip loft space downtown. The
Woolworth Building doesn’t host and has no plans to host
any kind of House d’Eugène. There is no Eugene Garment
House — but there could and should be one. As Robert
Kennedy said, “I dream of things that never were, and ask,
‘Why not?’”
10
December 6, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
Now, sir, I’m no Robert Kennedy, but perhaps it time for
Eugene to ask “Why not?”
A garment house, or a production factory, is where
designers can go to have their designs professionally
produced, allowing for much larger batches of couture
overalls, for example, than an individual could possibly
produce. They are equipped with industrial machinery,
such as sergers (for hems and seams) and sewing machines
that can easily send needles through inches of leather —
machinery that is typically too costly for an indie designer
to invest in alone — and depending on the factory, they
provide services such as drafting, size grading, sample
construction and design consultation.
According to many professionals in the local fashion
industry, Eugene needs a garment production factory like
Portland needed one in 2008 when clothing designer and
entrepreneur Britt Howard opened the Portland Garment
Factory to help local indie designers produce their smaller
lines — lines that are too small to be profitable for larger
domestic and overseas clothing manufacturers to take on.
The Portland Garment Factory has been a wild success both
critically and financially, receiving accolades locally (The
Oregonian, Portland Mercury, Portland Monthly) and
nationally (The New York Times) and now has over 45 clients.
BY AL E X N OT M AN
Local designers and business owners like Mitra Chester
of Deluxe, Laura Lee Laroux of Redoux Parlour, Loralee
Harding of Circle Creations and James Breech of Trust
Hemp are convinced that Eugene is ready. They don’t just
foresee potential for demand to make a production house
profitable — the demand is already here, and they can no
longer keep up with it. A factory where local designs are
produced would not only be a boon for designers but an
investment in the city’s economic and cultural future, as
well as a method of creating jobs and keeping labor
conditions humane, especially after the fatal factory fires
in Bangladesh in November. Before Eugene can become
the next Milan (or Portland), however, an airtight business
plan is needed, and, of course, financing. But if Eugeneans
want their beer brewed around the block, their coffee
roasted where they can smell it and their food harvested
within biking distance, then why not their clothes?
A Passion (and Demand) for Fashion
“If I could, I would be producing my wallet cuffs like
crazy,” Chester says, while stirring a cup of coffee at Sweet
Life Patisserie. Chester has a popular line of wrist cuffs,
made of repurposed materials, that also function as
wallets — in a nutshell, what Billie Joe Armstrong would