Tracey

The Journey

01.16.2017 by Tracey //

Slouchy Skirt

So, let’s start at the beginning. No, not my beginning. And not THE Beginning. I’m talking about the origins of the fabric that I used to make this skirt. I stumbled on to something really special and the story is worth telling.

Slouchy Skirt

This skirt fabric is made by an Italian company called Gandini Tessuti Alta Moda. With a name like that, you know we’re talking luxury. You don’t even have to see the fabric to know it’s high end. Gandini has been around since 1925, but it was Susy Gandini who took over in 1961 who really brought the company to where it is now. When she began running the company, Gandini Fabrics became a “converter”, meaning they took raw fabric from mills around Lake Como and customized it. Using various finishing techniques, they changed color and texture which obviously alters how it looks but it also changes how it feels and how the fabric behaves.

Susy Gandini then sells the converted fabric to the best design houses in the world. Chanel, Valentino, and Dior are all clients. What’s left over can sometimes make its way to places like Mood or Mendel Goldberg.

Slouchy Skirt

When I was in Paris with Susan Khalje, we went fabric shopping at Janssens & Janssens (FYI, AMAZlNG!!). While there, I’m having a grand time picking out my choices. I’m working with a lovely sales woman and she’s giving me the requisite “ooohs and aaahs” at the things that I’m bringing to the cutting table. Just as I’m starting to think that I’m finished shopping I spot a fabric that was almost too high for me to reach. I have to stretch for it and pull it out from under a stack of other bolts. When I take it to be cut, my charming sales woman, who has been all light and smiles, looks at me with an evaluating eye and says with dead seriousness, “You have good taste”. Up until that point, I think she was humoring the American. But something shifted when I presented her with the Gandini fabric, and without knowing it, I passed some sort of test. Can I tell you, I felt like I won something big! I came outta there, beaming with pride.

Slouchy Skirt

Now I wonder, if a fabric could have feelings, how it must have felt being put in my suitcase and brought to the southern United States. Not necessarily the most glamorous destination. Could it be that it had high hopes of being turned into something fabulous by Karl Lagerfeld? Or is it more that it had sat so long in the fabric store that it was just grateful to be bought like the damaged teddy bear, Corduroy? Whatever it’s feelings, it was mine now to hopefully not screw up.

Slouchy Skirt

Let me just say that to really appreciate this fabric, it has to be handled. The feel and the drape is not like anything I’ve ever (ever!) worked with. It’s simply extraordinary. I looked around for a pattern that matched what I had in my head but didn’t find anything, so I decided to drape it myself. My favorite way to dress is to play with contrasting elements and it seemed appropriate to me that with such a luxury fabric, it would be fun to make a casual and slouchy skirt.

It may have been adding insult to injury that I took the skirt to a mountain top farm in Colombia. Or maybe it’s just happy to be seeing the world. Who knows?! I tried getting the dogs, the cow, and the chickens to join me in one of the photographs but they wouldn’t come close. You can draw your own conclusions.

Pattern, Self-Draped Skirt with Pockets

Fabric, Gandini Silk Blend, Janssens and Janssens, Paris

Couture Details, Handsewn Pick-Stitch Zipper and Narrow Machine Hem

Photographs by Santiago Vanegas

Location, Colombia

(The information about Gandini came from The Mood Guide to Fabric and Fashion. Also, I didn’t make the shirt I’m wearing. It’s a vintage linen top from my closet.)

Power Dressing

01.02.2017 by Tracey //

Power Top

As human beings, we are so fortunate to have many ways to express ourselves. We can talk, write, scream, make faces, sing, paint, perform,…and we can dress. I’ve never seen fashion as something frivolous. Instead I regard it as a potent way to let people know who we are or who we want to be or maybe most importantly how we want to be treated. Because of that basic belief, I take care in what I put on every day. And oftentimes what I’m wearing may seem to be at odds with what I’m feeling. Let me explain. At the moments that I’m feeling vulnerable or scared, I’m likely to dress like I’m wearing armor. Biker boots, black leather jacket, and lots of heavy jewelry. It’s only when I’m my most confident self, that I can wear something soft and feminine. Because I know that if I present myself to the world in frills and ruffles (which I love by the way), I had better be ready to back that up with lots of self assurance and a belief in my own power and strength. Otherwise I’m going to get steamrolled.

There are days that I feel so good that I can go head to toe “pretty” and not worry that the world is going to eat me up. But on most days, if you were to run into me, there would be at least one element of “tough” in my outfit. It’s because I DON’T feel tough that I have it on. If I’m not feeling powerful enough to hold boundaries, I’ll let my clothes do the talking for me.

And that’s what was going through my mind when I designed this t-shirt. I hadn’t been planning on designing or making a t-shirt, but I came across a photograph of Johnny Rotten in all his Sex Pistols glory and I was so struck by his attitude and the attitude of the t-shirt he had on. I knew that I had to make something for myself that conveyed that message.

Now you may be wondering what I have in common with a 70s British Punk. Haven’t we all felt, at one time or another, anger at the status quo? Right now, I’m pretty damn mad at the way women are treated in this country and around the world. And as a survivor myself, I’m frustrated that sexual assault is treated as a non-issue. So, I’m wearing clothes to meet 2017 head on. Because going into the new year does not mean that we have a clean slate. We bring all of the experiences and lessons of 2016 with us. And that’s a very good thing because we will need all of it to be the agents of the positive change that we so desperately need. So pull out whatever you have in your closet that makes you feel powerful and get dressed! We’ve got work to do.