ownership, is where she launched her line of sustainable
prairie couture, Revivall Clothing — one of the fi rst clients
for Silver Lining. As a designer, Eugene Fashion Week
producer and former storeowner (she is selling The Redoux
Parlour), Laroux has long seen the need for a production
house. With her dream in mind, Laroux needed help.
About a year ago, Grace McNabb responded to Laroux’s
Facebook post looking for an assistant for Eugene Fashion
Week. McNabb and Laroux recognized immediately
that their working styles aligned, and they continued to
collaborate on the Summer in the City and Whiteaker
Block Party runway shows.
Besides their professional synergy, Laroux brought
McNabb into the fold because of her fashion and marketing
acumen in both Portland and Eugene.
“I was part of a fashion incubator that launched Portland
Fashion Week 10 years ago,” McNabb says. McNabb
originally joined the incubator as a jewelry designer (she
still has her own line, Accents of Grace) and eventually
became marketing co-chair of Portland Fashion Week for
two years. Then a job opened up in Eugene for a product
line manager for jewelry retailer Jody Coyote, now Oak
Patch Gifts. “I came down and within the fi rst week of
working with them I was at a trade show in Hong Kong,”
I had my own business for 22 years and then she gave me
Laura Lee’s information.”
Vega was born in Estado de Michoacán, Mexico, the
daughter of a seamstress. At 19, following her parents, she
moved to Los Angeles. Vega found work as a production
sewer before starting her own business, with help from her
then-boyfriend and future husband, sewing blouses in her
father’s garage. It was the 1980s and “Made in America”
was still a reality. They quickly outgrew the space and
moved to a larger place in the San Fernando Valley, which
became Irma’s Fashions. At its height, Irma’s Fashions was
producing upward of 1,000 dresses a day. Vega managed
anywhere from 60 to 75 employees at time, and in 1991,
Irma’s Fashions pulled in $1 million in sales. The next
year, Vega saw a shift in the industry.
“They started sending the products overseas, fi rst to
Mexico,” Vega says of her clients. “They want to pay us
the same as Mexico. We tried to survive from ’92 to ’95.”
Finally in 1997, Vega had to close her business for good.
She moved to Eugene with her husband, who had family
in town. Over the next 15 years, Vega pieced together work
sewing for different local companies like Burley, Innovative
Sports, Fleece and Beyond and Whitewater Designs. She
even sewed dresses for dancers at the Silver Dollar Club.
‘
A lot of our mission is to bump everything up to
that next professional level in a way that allows the
community and the country and the world to see
what we’re doing here as legit and real and powerful
and creative, and not just brush it to the side as some
subgenre of hippie tie-dye clothes coming from Eugene.
’
LAURA LEE LAROUX
After Vega sewed for The Redoux Parlor for a couple
months, Laroux began pestering her to join the team for a
garment production house. By October, Vega was on board
as the third partner.
At this point, McNabb and Laroux were still attending
meetings for the Eugene Garment Collective. The collective,
whose members include local designers and sewers, has a
longer-term plan to offer garment manufacturing, classes
and membership. But the duo was itching to get started and
the Eugene Garment Collective’s timeline was too far out.
Then came a fateful week in October, a week McNabb and
Laroux call the “turning-point week.”
“I dare you to take the reins,” McNabb recalls telling
Laroux that week, trying to nudge her into a leadership
role. “That was the week that Sue walked in the door.”
Enter retired commercial real estate broker and
Lincoln Lining
On one of the fi rst sunny March afternoons of 2014,
Laroux, Vega and Prichard are working a pallet jack
to move fabric cutting tables, shelving and other offi ce
furniture leftover from the previous tenant, QSL Print
Communications. The second-fl oor 1,800-square-foot space
on Lincoln fulfi lls many romantic notions of a creative
warehouse space: exposed brick, high ceilings and good
neighbors. As Laroux gives me a tour of the space, the train
whistle blows from the tracks below their offi ce window.
Silver Lining will share the fl oor with Peter Gribskov,
the building’s owner, and FertiLab, a biotechnology
“thinkubator.” Directly below them is Outsiders Craft Cider,
a hard cider house also due to open this month, which is lined
up next to the offi ce and gallery space of Oregon Supported
Living Program’s (OSLP) Arts & Culture Program. Arbor
South Architecture sits on the north side of the fi rst fl oor.
After reading the “Fashioning an Industry” story in
Eugene Weekly, OSLP Executive Director Gretchen Dubie
alerted Laroux about the space. Laroux and McNabb fell
in love with it instantly. Under the mentorship of Prichard,
they worked with real estate broker Christian Fox to
secure the space. Silver Lining has a three-year lease in the
Lincoln Street building.
“Because my career for the past 30 years has been
commercial real estate, I’ve been in a lot of buildings like
this and a lot of manufacturing facilities and I know what
it takes to do something like this. I know it’s really hard.
It’s expensive and it always costs more than you think it’s
going to cost and it never happens exactly when you think
it’s going to,” Prichard says.
But with the three partners investing their own funds,
a loan, Prichard’s investment and money raised from the
Territorial runway show, as well as a space to call their
own, Silver Lining is ready for business.
“She’s starting out modestly, small, and that’s smart,”
Prichard says of Laroux. “My prediction is they’ll grow
out of this space.” ■
For more information, visit silverliningproduction.com. Look for part two of the
fashion New Economy series later this year.
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she says. After three years of doing international product
development and national branding, the recession hit and
McNabb was “laid off with accolades.” After a couple
of years of stringing work together, McNabb saw the
Facebook post and as of autumn 2013 became Laroux’s
fi rst offi cial business partner.
Between the two of them, they fulfi lled the design,
marketing and product development aspects of the fashion
business, but there were still some big gaps to fi ll. They
needed someone with experience in large-scale apparel
production. In walked Irma Vega, literally.
Vega fi rst visited The Redoux Parlour in June of 2013
looking for designers who were willing to share fabric. “I
saw the sign that they do alterations so I ask if they need
sewers too. They say, ‘Yes.’ They ask me my experience
that I have in sewing,” Vega recalls. “So I told [Grace] that
volunteer Sue Prichard. “Most of the volunteer work that
I do is kind of related to land-use issues but this last fall I
thought, you know, I want to get involved with something
related to sewing,” says Prichard, who had been sewing
as a hobby for decades. “So I Googled seamstresses in
Eugene because I hadn’t really been involved in that sector
very much and I came across [Laroux’s] blog … I read
her whole blog and it was really touching and I thought, ‘I
have to know this woman.’”
By November, Prichard was not only an investor and a
mentor, but she was also helping produce the Silver Lining
fundraiser show, “Launch,” at Territorial Vineyards. With a
starting team in place, Silver Lining needed a home.
LAURA LEE LAROUX
GRACE MCNABB
SUE PRICHARD
IRMA VEGA
EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • MARCH 13, 2014
13