http://eileenfisherampersand.com Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER Fri, 01 Mar 2013 06:40:36 +0000 http://eileenfisherampersand.com en http://eileenfisherampersand.com/How-you-can-recycle-our-clothing http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/How-you-can-recycle-our-clothing Fri, 01 Mar 2013 06:40:36 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5088385 <img src="http://payload139.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5088385/earth-month-ad_766.jpg" width="766" height="1082" width_o="766" height_o="1082" src_o="http://payload139.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5088385/earth-month-ad_o.jpg" data-mid="27294901" border="0" align="left"/> In honor of Earth Month, EILEEN FISHER is proud to announce the start of our GREEN EILEEN Collection Program, a recycled clothing initiative of the EILEEN FISHER Community Foundation whose proceeds will support women and girls. Starting on April 19, all of our retail locations and Company Stores will take back your gently worn EILEEN FISHER clothing. For each item donated, you will receive a tax receipt and $5 in Recycling Rewards that you can spend at any EILEEN FISHER retail store, Company Store or at eileenfisher.com. Learn more at greeneileen.org. In honor of Earth Month, EILEEN FISHER is proud to announce the start of our GREEN EILEEN Collection Program, a recycled clothing initiative of the EILEEN FISHER... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/Jax-sews-on-a-button http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/Jax-sews-on-a-button Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:06:56 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022113 Buy, wear, repair. Sewing a button is an art. Jacqui Bennett, who tailors the clothes for EILEEN FISHER photo shoots, studied fashion and pattern making at FIT and learned old-fashioned, bespoke tailoring while working for Broadway shows. She’s a master at hiding all traces of her work. Try her tips and say goodbye to balled-up threads, visible knots and loose ends. Buy, wear, repair. Sewing a button is an art. Jacqui Bennett, who tailors the clothes for EILEEN FISHER photo shoots, studied fashion and pattern making at FIT... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/What-does-Made-in-the-USA-mean http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/What-does-Made-in-the-USA-mean Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:17:54 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022115 by Claire Whitcomb <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022115/usa2_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022115/usa2_o.jpg" data-mid="26913245" border="0" align="left"/> Today, 98 percent of all clothing sold in the US is made elsewhere—in China, Southeast Asia, India and Mexico in particular. We’re trying to shift that statistic with an initiative to increase local production. Our latest venture: partnering with a jeans manufacturer in California. But what does a “Made in USA” label really mean in a global marketplace? Consider our colored jeans. They’re manufactured in Los Angeles. The organic cotton is grown in Turkey, where the fabric is woven. The dyes are European. And the little black tag that says Made in USA? It’s made in China. When Eileen started her company in 1984, she manufactured all of her clothing within a subway ride of her New York loft. Fast forward to 2013. The apparel industry has shifted overseas and New York’s garment center has been infiltrated by offices and condos. “We used to source tags from an American manufacturer,” says trim specialist, Jennifer Drapala, “but it went out of business. Every product we make in the USA is actually a global commodity.” Another little known fact: Many of the entrepreneurs behind US garment factories—along with the vast majority of the workers—are newly minted Americans, immigrants following in the footsteps of the garment workers of generations past. Fortunately, the US garment industry has changed considerably since the days of tenements and child labor. But even with regulations on wages and safe working conditions, domestic production is not necessarily a cause for flag waving. “People tend to think made in USA is always a good thing. In many cases it is,” says Marsha Ann Dickson, chair of the Fashion and Apparel Studies department at the University of Delaware. “But I’ve been to lots of factories all over the world and the worst I’ve ever seen were in Los Angeles.” According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 26 percent of textile and garment workers in the US are undocumented. The Department of Labor estimates that more than half of the 22,000 sewing shops in the US violate minimum wage and overtime laws. “Brands still have to do due diligence and find reputable factories to work with,” says Marsha. When EILEEN FISHER started looking for a Los Angeles jeans factory to expand our local production, “we did extensive research,” says Susan Young, VP of Manufacturing. “We visited eight different factories and chose New Fashion Products because we thought we could forge a lasting relationship based on shared environmental and social values.” New Fashion Products is extensively audited for safety and working conditions by the brands it partners with; our own audits will start as our production begins this spring. As our manufacturing in the US increases, we are expanding our idea of what “due diligence” involves, according to Luna Lee, Human Rights Specialist. “In China, we go beyond simply auditing a factory to make sure it is safe. We do worker training to help people understand their rights,” she says. “In the US, workers are often immigrants and they have a unique set of struggles. A cousin or an aunt may be undocumented. What can we do to help them understand the legal system and help create a better future for their families?” In coming seasons, we will be digging deeper into our US supply chain and sharing stories about other factories. To see this month’s Made in USA product, visit eileenfisher.com. And visit us on Facebook to tell us what you think. by Claire Whitcomb Today, 98 percent of all clothing sold in the US is made elsewhere—in China, Southeast Asia, India and Mexico in particular. We’re trying... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/An-intersection-of-timeless-trend http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/An-intersection-of-timeless-trend Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:44:45 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022096 by Dylan Landis <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022096/intersection1_766.jpg" width="766" height="471" width_o="766" height_o="471" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022096/intersection1_o.jpg" data-mid="26911707" border="0" align="left"/> For Eileen, timelessness is the embodiment of simplicity. Over the past twenty-nine years, the collection has been built on this conviction. In 1984, she began with four easy and elemental pieces and a concept of getting dressed. Where, then, does trend fit in? One of Eileen’s first designs, which appeared so clearly in her mind, was the box-top, a square-cut, free-flowing style. “Draw a box,” instructs Rebecca Perrin, one of three members on Eileen’s Core Concept Team. “Extend the top line—those are the arms. Make a little cutout in front for a neck. And that’s it. The simplicity is very graphic, and it’s extremely beautiful as a shape.” The box-top hasn’t left the line since that first year. Both timeless and timely, it’s highly adaptable to whatever aesthetic excitement may be in the air. Among its dozens of permutations, the enduring box-top has been cropped, dropped to dress-length, dolman-sleeved, graced with pockets, given a little stretch, striped, asymmetrically hemmed, back-pleated, embellished with tiny crystals, bateau-necked, V-necked, funnel-necked and cowled. It’s been sliced down the front to become a jacket, and made into a tunic. It’s been fashioned from alpaca, velvet, lace and linen. And therein lies a tension—between timeless and trendy—that the company increasingly embraces. At the heart of EILEEN FISHER’s reach for timelessness—ageless, dateless, perennial—lies The System, created by Eileen as both a principle and the crux of a wardrobe. As a principle, it’s her personal commitment to making it easy for a woman to get dressed. As a core group of garments, The System is abiding. It does not hew to fast-paced fashion. It does not come in colors, only neutrals. It is a foundation of shapes at their purest: tops, skirts, pants that become building blocks for outfit after outfit. “The System is the key that unlocks everything else,” says Candice Reffe, also on the Core Concept Team. A woman who slips into pieces from The System can then layer on other elements of the collection. “We build on our fabrics,” says Eileen. “We even use colors, especially our neutral colors, over and over again, so people can really create wardrobes that work over the years.” That’s why Rebecca can still wear her beloved ten-year-old Stretch Silk Jersey top with the slightly belled sleeve with pieces made today. The line as a whole shifts gradually. “We don’t have a completely different concept every season,” says Kira Denison-Cole, the third member of the Core Concept team. “We’re slower-moving than that. We probably move faster now in terms of trends than we ever have, but it has to be rooted in the classic way that we got dressed in 1984. We thread things through from past seasons. It’s never out with the old and in with the new: it’s layered.” Timelessness is reinterpreted as each team steps into the design process. The company’s archives are a rich source of inspiration for the design team. “A designer’s role is to challenge, to come up with new things,” says Helen Oji. “But a lot of times I reference an earlier style, because I know that it works—it has a classic simplicity.” A shape from the past might reappear in a new fabric and color, perhaps slightly slimmed from the company’s early one-size-fits-all days. Even before a garment is conceived, color designer Chris Costan thinks about a spectrum, balancing what feels fresh and modern with palettes that came before. “If the design is simple enough, the color may reflect a trend, but the style will remain relevant,” says Chris. The fabric team looks for materials that will endure, that are sustainable, that will befriend those the company uses nearly every season—and that the hand and eye cannot resist. “There’s some way in which materials speak,” says Candice. “They have their own voice. And we’re trying to listen for the fabric that feels like it’s part of a song we’re already singing, or part of a new harmony.” When a new collection launches, key teams spend two intensive days test-driving the clothes. They think carefully about how the clothes work together, as well as how each piece works. Fit matters because a woman only keeps a piece of clothing that fits and makes her feel the way she wants to look. “What’s timeless about our clothes is how they feel on,” says Rebecca. “They’re always functional. You can move in them. You’re so much more able to be in the moment, be with whomever you’re talking to, or do what you’re doing.” Yet Spring, with its sense of alchemy (a metallic skirt, tees that shimmer) and of-the-moment harem pants may seem, at first, to rattle the definition of timelessness. Consider, however, that it took three years of deliberation before the harem pants were admitted to the collection. It changed when Eileen wore them. Lean and architectural, they’re a variation on a form that’s been in the collection since 1984—the maxi skirt, the wide-leg pant. Simplicity with an edge might be one way to put it. “Our customer doesn’t need change for the sake of change,” says Laura Mikell, who works on bringing value to the line and has been with EILEEN FISHER for twenty-one years. “She needs change to delight her. If we take a trend but filter it for us and our customer, we’re really taking it down to its essence—and then, in a way, it’s not so trendy.” Candice describes the balance this way: “It’s an argument we’re constantly having with ourselves. We’re asking, What feels true to who we are?” by Dylan Landis For Eileen, timelessness is the embodiment of simplicity. Over the past twenty-nine years, the collection has been built on this conviction. In... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/Our-secret-repair-program http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/Our-secret-repair-program Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:19 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022137 by Alyssa Benjamin Snaps break, moths attack. Living with clothing for a long time involves wear and, sometimes, tear. If the unexpected happens, we’re at the ready with needle and thread. The EILEEN FISHER Repair Program, started in 2005, has been something of a secret. As part of our commitment to timeless design, we’re letting the word out. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022137/repair1_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022137/repair1_o.jpg" data-mid="26911949" border="0" align="left"/> Kaeo Valentine at our Distribution Center in Secaucus, NJ, where EILEEN FISHER’s repair program is managed by Tess de Mesa and Christina Reyes. It’s simple. If you have an EILEEN FISHER garment that is missing a button or has a broken zipper, bring it to one of our retail stores and fill out a form. Wait four to six weeks. Pick up your item. Wear it out to dinner. “Our customers are completely taken aback that we don’t charge for this service,” says Gaetan Benson-Karr, Customer Service Associate. “I think in the beginning we did it on such a small scale we didn’t realize what kind of precedent we were creating. Now, we’re starting to become known for it because other companies don’t do it.” When a customer brings in clothing that is missing a button or has small moth holes, many EILEEN FISHER stores partner with a local tailor or seamstress. If a customer chooses to go to her own expert, they’ll reimburse her for the cost. “A lot of our customers are scared to try repairs themselves,” said Joan Kauffman, manager at our Copley store. “We understand, because the clothes are expensive.” When a problem is beyond the scope of local talent, items are shipped to a quiet corner of EILEEN FISHER’s Distribution Center in Secaucus, NJ. There Tess De Mesa and Cristina Reyes of Quality Control complete most repairs. Sitting amid boxes of yarn, trim and buttons, Tess works the sewing machine, while Christina (“Golden Fingers”) is an expert with a needle and thread. In order to make sure they have the necessary materials on hand, they keep a stock of yarns from the past three or four years. When they don’t have the gauge or the color they need, they send an item back to our factories to be repaired, a process that can take up to six weeks to complete. Garments that need matching snaps, zippers or specialized trims are also sent to the factory that made them. That twelve-year-old turtleneck with a hole? “I was amazed that we could match the yarn and mend it,” says Ava Branch, Customer Service Manager. Repairing items rather than replacing them keeps clothing in customers’ closets and out of the landfills. “The ultimate expression of sustainability is to be able to continue to wear an existing garment as opposed to replacing it with a new one,” said Jim Gundell, Co-Chief Operating Officer & Facilitating Leader. Back in 2005 items that needed buttons or elastic waistbands arrived in groups of twos and threes. Now, they come by the bin-full. In 2012, over 800 repairs were completed, all at no cost to the customer. Once the word is out, will the program be inundated with repair requests? Jim Gundell isn’t worried. He says, “We are committed to doing whatever we can as a company to extend the life of our garments.” by Alyssa Benjamin Snaps break, moths attack. Living with clothing for a long time involves wear and, sometimes, tear. If the unexpected happens, we’re at the... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/Seeing-used-in-a-new-light http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/Seeing-used-in-a-new-light Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:10 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022159 by Kristi Cameron GREEN EILEEN. A seemingly simple idea—recycling EILEEN FISHER clothes—says something about how our designs stand the test of time. It also keeps clothing out of landfills and gives us a sustainable way to practice our values. In just three years, sales from our gently worn clothing have added up to $1.3 million in proceeds, all of which goes to nonprofit groups that work to empower women and girls. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022159/greeneileen1_766.jpg" width="766" height="1022" width_o="766" height_o="1022" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022159/greeneileen1_o.jpg" data-mid="26912010" border="0" align="left"/> We introduced this piece to our line in 1997. It’s not available today, although you might find one at GREEN EILEEN. There’s a shop in an unassuming strip mall in Yonkers, New York, where the selection of EILEEN FISHER clothes spans twenty-eight years. Among the discoveries in this living archive? A knit motorcycle jacket that sells for $80—and that’s on the high end. A citrine sweater and skinny jeans average $40, while a basic, cotton tee costs just $15. Welcome to GREEN EILEEN, where the clothes that line the walls with rainbow logic are recycled. The store sells the company’s gently worn clothing, donated by customers. It’s the only one of its kind, but not for long: a second location opens in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood this spring, proof that what began as an experiment in 2009 has produced very real results. GREEN EILEEN hatched as a new model for funding the company’s charitable giving when the sluggish economy took its toll. “We were in danger of not being able to support some of the organizations we love so much,” Eileen says. “So we thought, ‘Can we create a business idea that will ensure we always have money to fund the things we believe in?’ We needed a sustainable way to practice our values.” Cheryl Campbell, the managing director of the EILEEN FISHER Community Foundation, dedicated to positively impacting the lives of women and girls, had a theory she wanted to test. Inspired by William McDonough’s cradle-to-cradle philosophy, which argues that waste needn’t be the end result of manufacturing, she believed the brand could sell its clothes secondhand. “I thought EILEEN FISHER clothes would lend themselves to recycling, because they have longevity, both in terms of the styles and the quality,” she says. At the time, Eileen was developing the LAB Store—a concept shop in Irvington, New York, where the current collection rubs shoulders with pieces from recent seasons and one-of-a-kind sample designs. Eileen was willing to test secondhand clothes as part of the mix, but she wasn’t entirely without reservations. “When we started this recycling program, I was honestly a little nervous. I thought, ‘Oh no, I’m going to start seeing old designs I’m not sure I want to see,’” she recalls. “And of course, we’ve made mistakes, but it’s pretty stunning to see how much of it still works after twenty-eight years, especially since we live in a culture of planned obsolescence.” And therein lay the discovery for Sigi Ahl, who runs the LAB Store: the recycling program underscores the inherent value of EILEEN FISHER clothes. “At first, we thought the secondhand merchandise and the new product should not be put together,” she says. “We worried that customers might feel the secondhand clothes threw a bad light on the new clothing—selling them in the same store was a new idea. But then we realized they could feed into each other and show the quality of what we produce, both in terms of the material and the design.” <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022159/greeneileen3_766.jpg" width="766" height="1022" width_o="766" height_o="1022" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022159/greeneileen3_o.jpg" data-mid="26912088" border="0" align="left"/> Funnel-neck top, originally from 2002, still looking good ten years later. It’s paired here with a straight skirt that we introduced in 1997. When the LAB Store opened in September 2009, the recycling program began with a few racks and four hundred pieces of clothes from Eileen’s own archive, supplemented by donations from EILEEN FISHER employees. It took another eight months to map out the logistics for taking donations from customers, but there was still one important consideration. “The big worry was whether people would donate enough clothes to make the whole thing work,” Cheryl says. “It’s fairly insane to create a business plan when you don’t know anything about your supply chain, or even if there is one. But we were doing this in the New York area, where we had been selling clothes for such a long time—we just felt they had to be out there.” As it turned out, donations were brisk—for a while clothes came in faster than purchases were made, but sales weren’t the litmus for the program. “We started without any expectations, just curiosity,” Sigi says. “We had slow sales, but what mattered most is that the concept did really well, that people had no reservations about looking in the recycled section. It was amazing how well received the recycled clothes were.” Within a year, it became clear the program had physically outgrown the LAB Store and needed a home of its own. Yonkers, situated between the Bronx and the well-heeled towns of Westchester County, would serve existing customers while also reaching new ones. GREEN EILEEN opened its doors in November 2011. With more than ninety thousand donations to date, the program is now a complex enterprise orchestrated by Janet Goyzueta, who took a job as Eileen’s housekeeper when she moved to the US from Peru ten years ago. “Eileen’s closet was like a school,” she says. “While I was organizing it and washing the clothes, I looked at their condition. Now I can tell how the fabrics will hold up and which season pieces belong to. I use that knowledge to price the product for GREEN EILEEN.” Pricing is just one step in a process that begins when donations are collected from participating EILEEN FISHER stores and taken to the 1,100-square-foot warehouse space back in Irvington (acquired only this past summer, after donations stored at the company’s headquarters began spilling into aisles and workspaces). Janet assigns each garment one of three fates: the best pieces head for GREEN EILEEN. Anything else in wearable condition goes to a shelter, while badly damaged items are set aside for upcycling in craft workshops, where woven swatches combine to make patchwork pillows, stretchy scraps take shape in potholder-style rugs and felted knits find new life as “chop-shop” sweaters. Janet has the GREEN EILEEN selections professionally cleaned and, whenever necessary, repaired. She recently brought on a mending specialist, who de-pills knits, fixes snags in sweaters, closes up torn seams, replaces buttons and sews on missing labels to ensure that no garment that could possibly find new life in Yonkers gets left behind. Shopping at GREEN EILEEN differs from the experience at an EILEEN FISHER retail store in more than the obvious respect. Because the merchandise is unplanned, a customer may fall in love with a piece that’s not her size. But what the store lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in other ways. If, for example, you don’t see what you’re looking for, it pays to ask. “We do our best to hunt things down,” says Jennifer Beato, who manages the store. An associate takes down a description of the desired item and lets the customer know if something similar comes in. Earlier this year, the GREEN EILEEN team tracked down a red cardigan for a man who called from Texas after his wife left her beloved sweater in a cab. “We emailed him a picture, and it was almost identical to what she originally had,” Jennifer says. “She was thrilled.” While some customers seek out the store in hopes of replacing a favorite style, most simply come for the deals. Charlotte Aden, a passionate EILEEN FISHER customer, now shops regularly at GREEN EILEEN because she’s over 65 and on a fixed income. “I can’t afford what I used to,” she says. She’s gotten to know the staff well enough that she bakes chocolate chip cookies and banana bread to bring on her regular visits; likewise, the staff has learned her style and sets aside pieces she’ll like. Rima Vesely-Flad was unfamiliar with the brand until a friend who knew she needed affordable professional clothes told her about GREEN EILEEN. On her first visit last fall, Rima, a doctoral student in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, walked out with four pairs of pants, five cardigans, and a shirt. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much on clothes before,” she says. “I’ve never had money or nice clothes, and now I feel like I do. That’s really significant to me, since I’m about to go out into the job market.” But price is only part of the reason Susan Rubin, an environmental activist working on a short film about garbage, makes the thirty-minute “pilgrimage” from her home in Chappaqua, New York. “We waste so much here in America,” Susan says. “We’re mindless about our consumption, and when we’re done with all those things we buy, we just throw them out." "I feel good about the fact that I’m buying pre-owned clothing at GREEN EILEEN, and I feel good about the fact that the money is going to the foundation.” The EILEEN FISHER Community Foundation is poised to see a significant bump in revenue this year. When the Seattle GREEN EILEEN opens this spring, it will collect clothes from stores up and down the West Coast. More donations and more shoppers means more money for the Women’s Funding Network, Women for Women International, Girls Inc., Planned Parenthood, Sadie Nash Leadership Project and the other programs GREEN EILEEN exists to support. And beginning April 19, in honor of Earth Day, every EILEEN FISHER store and Company Store in the US and Canada will contribute to GREEN EILEEN by accepting donations of gently used clothes. Those replenishments will be especially meaningful this year: All the clothes in the LAB Store—thousands of secondhand, sample and new garments—were destroyed when the Hudson River overflowed its banks during Hurricane Sandy, flooding both the store and the company headquarters. The LAB Store, closed since the storm, is expected to reopen in February. In hindsight, there’s an air of the inevitable about GREEN EILEEN—how could it not work? But it’s worth remembering this was new territory. “A designer who sells her clothes twice, the second time to support nonprofit organizations—I haven’t heard of anyone doing that,” Sigi says. It’s a perfect example of what Eileen calls “business as a movement,” using the power of industry as a tool to effect positive change in the world. “That’s my real passion,” Eileen says, “and GREEN EILEEN is one of the things I’m most proud of.” by Kristi Cameron GREEN EILEEN. A seemingly simple idea—recycling EILEEN FISHER clothes—says something about how our designs stand the test of time. It also... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/Chasing-timelessness http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/Chasing-timelessness Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:09 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022033 by Kristi Cameron Fashion changes with the times: miniskirts one moment, maxis the next. It feeds our fleeting tastes and mirrors cultural shifts. Timeless design, on the other hand, lasts year after year—be it a chair or a trench coat—because people continue to want it. The public ultimately decides what has staying power. So how does a clothing designer, working in the uneasy space between fashion and timelessness, set out to achieve what she can’t possibly control? <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022033/timelessness1_766.jpg" width="766" height="613" width_o="766" height_o="613" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022033/timelessness1_o.jpg" data-mid="26911365" border="0" align="left"/> Above, Eames Molded Plastic Side Chair with an Eiffel base, originally designed in 1950. Just what is timeless design? Is it a Louis XV chair, circa 1740, still desirable for its baroque curves and carvings? Or Herman Miller’s Molded Plastic Side Chair from 1950, designed by Charles and Ray Eames without a single frill? It’s both, of course, for the simple reason that they’ve stood the test of time. Today, the originals are collectible and knockoffs abundant. CB2 currently sells a version of each. Its cheekily named Stick Around Chair is a contemporary echo of Rococo style, while the Petite Chair makes a blocky alternative to the Eames design for those who don’t want to spring for the real deal. But if timelessness is, by definition, “not restricted to a particular time or date” (so says Merriam-Webster), then does either chair fit the bill? You can’t mistake a Louis XV: the handcrafted techniques and romantic motifs are dead giveaways. It’s a bit harder to pinpoint when the Eames chair was created. Granted, we’re a few centuries closer to the article in question, but Modernism specifically sought to strip design of its chronological cues. Design historian Jonathan M. Woodham describes the movement as “a radical shift away from the prevalent climate of historicism and the ephemerality of fashion styling.” In other words, it skips the telltale decorations. The Modernists wanted to erase the traces of history from design: Timelessness was merely the happy outcome. When Eileen Fisher started her company (in the heyday of the eighties excess, no less), timelessness was her objective, and she aimed squarely at it by designing clothes pared down to their “simple, pure essence.” In the end, all design is of its time. Take the shell of those Eames chairs: they were originally stamped in metal for a Low-Cost Furniture Design competition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948. The switch to fiberglass came two years later, when the Eameses sourced a material never before used in furniture. “We’ve never designed with the idea of fitting into fashion,” Charles said during a 1956 interview on NBC. “In the case of the plastic chairs, the object was to take a high-performance material developed during the war and try to make it available to households at non-military prices.” If the Eameses were to make the chair today, they might opt for another material altogether. In fact, Herman Miller swapped to polypropylene around 1990: It has the matte finish Charles is said to have wanted, is less brittle than fiberglass, gets molded entirely by machine and can be recycled. By embracing the materials and technologies at hand, Modernism, like any other style, reflects its era. It’s just that simplicity has a better poker face. Ask yourself which feels more current, the Eames chair or one designed more than thirty years later by Memphis, which took a shot at kicking Modernism to the curb? (Picture the cover of Duran Duran’s Rio album or the set of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. You get the gist.) Memphis reacted to what they saw as the tyranny of good taste, but an eighties affection for gaudy tones, kitschy pattern and geometric assemblages means Memphis designs now feel like exactly what they are—relics of days gone by. Compare that untimely fate to the legacy of one particularly persistent typeface, Helvetica, designed in 1957. It’s the clear, friendly sans serif font that shows up everywhere from New York City subway signage and IRS tax forms to the logos for Crate & Barrel, Greyhound, Sears, Muji and The North Face. Massimo Vignelli used it in 1966 for his half-red-half-blue American Airlines logo. “It’s the only airline in the last 40 years that has not changed their identity,” he said in the 2007 documentary Helvetica. Michael C. Place, creative director of the London-based communications design firm Build, sang the simple typeface’s praises in the same film: “It’s been around 50 years, coming up. It’s just as fresh as it was then.” That’s a pretty good working definition of timeless design. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022033/timelessness2_766.jpg" width="766" height="613" width_o="766" height_o="613" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022033/timelessness2_o.jpg" data-mid="26911366" border="0" align="left"/> When I see the words “simplicity” and “design” side by side, my mind goes straight to Dieter Rams, the German industrial designer revered for the lucid forms he created at Braun. (Many an Apple product is just a Braun design with a fresh coat of titanium.) Browsing Rams’s portfolio, I was floored to find the Braun Citromatic juicer I’d bought myself some fifteen years ago—didn’t know it was by Rams. I also didn’t know it was designed in 1972. And I’ll bet the person who buys one tomorrow won’t have a clue they’re getting a Nixon-era appliance either. All that’s changed over the past forty years are the Citromatic’s electrical components. Outside, it looks exactly the same—like the classic hand juicer (shallow dish, reamer perched in the center) atop a spouted pedestal. Take a moment to process that: a design released the same year the VW Beetle became the world’s best-selling car looks every bit as contemporary today as it did then. Turns out, the Citromatic was also Apple designer Jonathan Ives’s first encounter with Rams, discovered in his parents’ kitchen. “No part appeared to be hidden or celebrated, just perfectly considered and completely appropriate,” he writes in the monograph Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible. That’s all well and good for a juicer, but what does it mean in the context of fashion, the very definition of which is “the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time?” Eileen began her company with an idea straight from the pages of the Modernist playbook—one that pushes back against fashion’s fickle nature. “I started EILEEN FISHER for a very personal reason: I was having trouble getting dressed,” she says. “At the time I was working as an interior and graphic designer. In my mind I kept seeing these simple shapes for clothes. I knew they had to be beautiful colors, great fabrics and have certain shapes and proportions that worked together.” She felt styles that transcended the fashions would make it easier for women to get on with their lives. Trend is surprisingly easy to master. Zara has it down to a science: The company is a model of agile production, able to design and deliver a garment to the store racks in just two weeks. Its sales staff doubles as a data feed, sleuthing out what catches customers’ fancy and reporting back to headquarters in real time, so the craveable is always available. Zara is the race leader in a highly competitive warp-speed fashion cycle that “changes the rules of what we’re supposed to wear constantly,” says Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. EILEEN FISHER aims to create clothes people will wear more than a few months from now. But how does a clothing designer go about making a style that will last years, perhaps decades—definitely longer than the next fad? Especially when the company is more open to passing influences than ever before, so long as the results remain true to its design values. Sweater designer Julie Rubiner takes her cues from the archives. Knowing what works for EILEEN FISHER gives her the freedom to experiment. “The past doesn’t sound like inspiration, but it is—especially when I’m playing with new yarns and new stitches,” she says. It’s her job to push the brand forward, just not too far. “If I’m working with something dimensional and sparkly, I’ll use a shape we know our customer has always gravitated to. Mixing a crazy new yarn and a crazy new shape would just be too much—we pull it back until it’s right for us. The end result is so simple and clean, but it’s much more complex to do than just mimicking a trend for the season.” Likewise, there’s an MVP roster of fabrics to pull from. For years EILEEN FISHER used only natural fabrics like linen, cotton, silk and wool. Consider the serious hang time (we’re talking centuries) of these four fibers. But along with 21st century technology came properties natural fibers just can’t offer, and the line took a functional turn. Hello viscose, with its singular talent for drape, stretch and weightlessness. The basic building blocks for EILEEN FISHER are always the same: shapes, fabrics and neutral colors that appear on the line again and again. It’s what’s done with them that changes. “Young designers come into the company and reinterpret things,” Eileen says. “Maybe the proportions are a little different, maybe the shapes are a little different. Their work has a freshness, but it still has the inherent values of the original designs.” The touch of trend—a sequin here, an uneven hemline there—doesn’t define the clothes, which also dare to be unfashionable. Eileen’s beloved box-top is voguish now but not so in the nineties, yet it never left the line. It’s essential to her modular way of thinking about fashion: a series of beautiful shapes that drop onto a simple foundation—much like the plastic shell of the Eames chair and its range of bases (dowel, stacking, Eiffel, rocker). That’s just plain Modernism, written in cloth and stitches. Turns out, there is a method to transcending fashion’s maddening pace. It’s really quite simple. by Kristi Cameron Fashion changes with the times: miniskirts one moment, maxis the next. It feeds our fleeting tastes and mirrors cultural shifts. Timeless design,... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/The-story-of-silk http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/The-story-of-silk Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:07 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5021992 HOW ONE TRIP TO CHINA TOOK ME TO THE MOON AND BACK: INSECTS & DYNASTIES, LEGEND & LORE, THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE SILKWORM by Candice Reffe <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk1_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk1_o.jpg" data-mid="26911194" border="0" align="left"/> Late May, about 5,000 years ago In the royal garden, a warm breeze spun the veined undersides of leaves. The Empress, Lei Zu, the fourteen-year-old wife of the cosmic Yellow Emperor, was drinking tea. A cocoon splashed into her cup. In three blinks the single strand of silk loosened by hot tea became an Empire’s destiny. She wound and wound and wound it round her finger. Then a warm sensation, the pupa in her palm. Above, the tree it fell from—a White Mulberry. Across five thousand years, in Mandarin, Lei Zu whispers, “Eureka!” So the taming of the moth Bombyx mori begins. Its offspring: the silkworm. Its class: Insecta. Its order: Lepidoptera. The silkworm metamorphoses, undergoes revision on revision of itself. Its life composed of changed identities, like its fellow shape-shifters: nymph to dragonfly, planulae to jellyfish, royal egg to bumblebee. Bred so it cannot fly and cannot see, the moth’s sole purpose here on earth is to mate, lay eggs, transform into a spinning silk cocoon. It’s final stage: your red silk scarf, my blue-lagoon shirt. During his brief stay—two or three days at best—the male moth spreads wide his creamy wings, dances a flutter dance before a female. They mate. Within hours, the male dies: checkmate. The female survives another four to six days, long enough to lay three to five hundred tiny lemon-yellow eggs in rows. One ounce, give or take, becomes 35,000 worms or six pure silk kimonos. As they mature, the eggs turn black, each barely a speck, a pencil point. Hatched, the point becomes a dash scrawled on blank paper—first draft of life. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk5_766.jpg" width="766" height="1149" width_o="766" height_o="1149" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk5_o.jpg" data-mid="26911198" border="0" align="left"/> In past centuries, families tended fires through the night—the eggs require heat to hatch. Sometimes women kept eggs warm against their skin, between their breasts. We trail a silkworm farmer across the courtyard. Stacked on tiered wood racks, bamboo baskets shelter the newborns. In one round basket the worms are concentrated like a bull’s-eye. Discarded at the outer edge: black-framed reading glasses, two long white feathers. Goose feathers, used to brush and separate hatched larvae from their egg remains. When they’re a little larger, the farmer feathers hungry worms from one basket into another, ferries them atop a new layer of tender, finely chopped leaves. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk8_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk8_o.jpg" data-mid="26911201" border="0" align="left"/> Decreed: death by torture if you divulged the secret of how silk was made. Thirty centuries pass—someone was bound to slip. Legend says it was the Chinese princess betrothed to the Khotan prince. Her hushed promise to him, her private dowry: silkworms, seeds of the mulberry. Inside her regal headdress, a coiffure crafted with cinnamon leaves, the silkworms safely crossed the border to the prince’s kingdom, three thousand years of silence broken. In its first stage, or instar, the silkworm, technically a caterpillar, is black and very hairy, the size of an ordinary brown ant. For days it does nothing but eat. Then it stops eating altogether and falls into its first twenty-four hour sleep. The metronome that ticks and tocks the silkworm’s tempo: Voracious feeding followed by equally voracious sleep. When it wakes into the next instar, it casts off its hairy skin. Applause please for the silkworm’s second act. It emerges center stage, naked and white as milk. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk10_766.jpg" width="766" height="1149" width_o="766" height_o="1149" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk10_o.jpg" data-mid="26911203" border="0" align="left"/> Silk’s secret was still 400 years from Europe’s reach when Pliny the Elder, the Roman Empire’s scientific darling, claimed in his encyclopedic Natural History, that silk was a thin fleece found on trees and combed from leaves. The farmer leads me to a room that’s windowless, concrete. Across its floor, the width of a small stream, mulberry leaves poured like water. Flowing from no river to no sea, existing only here, a rush of running green. Like a sculpture I once saw of stitched leaves riding a river’s current, except this is not art but life, farm life. Thousands of silkworms raft each green stream. Moored by six pairs of stubby legs with tiny Velcro hairs on the bottom of their feet. Thus attached they eat and eat and eat. There are four rooms exactly like this one, where the silkworms live into their next three molts. A stack of wooden stools akimbo in a corner. A straw hat on a hook. Otherwise no sign of human life, not even the hands that picked and chopped and slid in place fresh leaves. The room’s quiet as the swoosh of a silk kimono on a moonless night, the dining silkworms’ murmurings. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk3_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk3_o.jpg" data-mid="26911196" border="0" align="left"/> A Buddhist belief: a silk thread unraveled, marked the trail between this life and rebirth in a Buddhist heaven. Silk had a more earthly role in the Han dynasty, at the intersection of BC and AD, when silk became a form of currency. Government salaries were paid in bolts of silk. Farmers were taxed in silk. Looking for horses, camels, slaves? Ante up their silk equivalent. Dueling powers paid tributes in silk, exchanging war for peace. Like a hothouse flower, far from its wild past, the cultivated silkworm is entirely dependent on human care. It cannot abide loud noises or strong smells. A wet mulberry leaf can kill a silk worm. After a rain, farmers arrange fresh-picked leaves in rows across a sunlit courtyard and turn them continuously until they dry. Other times, with the care one might use to prepare food for a human infant, they wipe each leaf dry by hand, then chop them into little pieces. “We feed them,” the farmer says, “‘wholeheartedly.’ By which I mean with our whole hearts.” His wife comes toward us across a mosaic landscape: rice paddies seamed with groves of glossy, pollarded mulberry trees. From a basket slung across her shoulder, a cascade of just-picked leaves. She tells us that raising silkworms requires strict attention: You have to focus solely on the silkworms, nothing else. You need to be dongxin, she says in local dialect, which translates as observant, eyes open as in a walking prayer. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk9_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk9_o.jpg" data-mid="26911202" border="0" align="left"/> According to rank, Zhao Gongming, god of wealth and prosperity, was draped in silk when he crossed the border from mortal to deity. Basins brimful with silver and gold ingots, pearls, coral at his feet. His four divine assistants robed in gold, span the four directions, attracting wealth from every corner. Multiple Zhao’s live in the farmer’s kitchen. Zhao’s image is frescoed on the curved wall of the clay fire pit, hung opposite he’s red and gold in poster form. In the adjacent room, the farmer tracks finances in a ruled ledger. Above his desk, ceramic Zhao peers from a concrete niche, a crack zigzagging in the wall beside it like cartoon lightning. The rooster I met earlier, as he pecked the spindled base of a mulberry tree, wanders into the house, settles under a bike cart, his crested comb red as electric Zhao’s lit candles. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk6_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk6_o.jpg" data-mid="26911199" border="0" align="left"/> Once worn solely by the emperor, over the centuries silk climbed down from the royal rung. One glance distinguished the civilized from the un: generals, aristocrats, the literati (the Chinese revered their writers), the dancer who performed in royal court. Another rung descended to a seventh century civil servant’s uniform—its color told his rank. Peasants claim silk’s final rung, accorded the legal right to wear it during the Qing Dynasty. By 1912 silk took a western turn among the chic: a riding suit, a skirt, a trench coat. Nowadays, a patchwork tee, a miniskirt cross Beijing’s busy streets. Silk democratized. With each molt the silkworm splits its skin like a working superhero splits his street clothes. With each molt, the silkworm enlarges. Think of the hatchling as a six-pound human infant, weighed at its fifth and final instar 60,000 pounds. At this stage the silkworm’s skin is nearly translucent, a window you can see its beating heart through. Its sleep is deepest before its final molt—nicknamed the Big Sleep. Thirty-six to forty-eight hours. By the time it wakes, the silkworm’s tinged with yellow, tightened, a harbinger of the cocoon it will become. During this stage, the farmer’s work is most intensive. Mulberry leaves must be supplied perpetually. No longer eating to grow, the silk worm eats to produce proteins for spinning silk and stores them in its thorax. Tick tock: its eating ends entirely. When the silkworm begins to fidget, toss its head, it’s ready for its last majestic step. In the wild, it would climb a tree. Here its ancient instincts coax it up plastic webs to wooden rafters, like trails to a summit’s base. The silkworm ascends, attaches, claims its bivouac. With a twist of its head, it starts excreting liquid silk through its two spinnerets. Two strands become one, stuck together with gummy, sticky seracin, which hardens when exposed to air. For three days, the silkworm continuously nods its head in figure eights, ejecting silk it loops and loops around itself, about a foot a minute, until the minutes equal half a mile. The silkworm is enveloped in a creamy-white cocoon. Along the laddered webs, a universe of tiny clouds in profuse bloom. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk7_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021992/silk7_o.jpg" data-mid="26911200" border="0" align="left"/> After its final dream state, left to its own wild devices, the pupa would fly out a moth. But to do so, it must make a tiny exit hole, cutting the continuous silk thread into thousands of short ones—goodbye silk shirt. There are other farms whose purpose is to ensure the Bombyx mori’s pedigree. Engineered over millennia to produce the finest silk, moth breeding is its own art and science. But here, it’s moth interruptus, its cocoon predestined to be woven into cloth. Before farm gives way to factory, the cocoons, with the pupae still alive, are oven-baked. As poet Wallace Stevens puts it: “Death is the mother of beauty.” Packed and bagged in burlap sacks, cocoons by the thousands are piled against a factory wall. When I pluck one out, hold it to my ear and shake it, the pupa rattles. Music of the afterlife, a reminder of the living thing the cloth is wrung from. I put one in my pocket to bring home with me. HOW ONE TRIP TO CHINA TOOK ME TO THE MOON AND BACK: INSECTS & DYNASTIES, LEGEND & LORE, THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE SILKWORM by Candice Reffe Late May, about 5,000... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/Bobby-Ahn-making-your-jeans http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/Bobby-Ahn-making-your-jeans Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:05 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5021965 by Claire Whitcomb Meet Bobby Ahn. If you’re wearing our colored denim, they’re made at his factory in Los Angeles, along with 80 percent of our jeans (the rest are made in New York City). Bobby drives a plug-in Prius, eats organic food and has a family story that mirrors the ups and downs of the US garment industry. Your parents are from South Korea. How did they end up in the Los Angeles sewing business? My parents have the classic immigrant story. My dad worked at a small gas station, which he eventually purchased. When I was four years old, he sold it and bought a sewing contract business. It was 1974 and friends told him that contract sewing was good to get into. A lot of Korean Americans were starting to get into apparel at the time. Did you ever think you’d grow up to make jeans? No, I’m a dentist. My parents really stressed education. I practiced until 2000 when their business hit hard times. I took a year off, thinking I had a profession I could always fall back on. That was thirteen years ago. You’ve said that one of the first things you did in the family business was prepare bankruptcy papers. My parents were in a situation I never want to repeat. In 2000 they were doing chinos, and Polo accounted for 90 percent of their business. They had a big factory and one major client. Then Polo decided to take its production offshore. I negotiated a twelve-month wind-down so we never had to file the bankruptcy papers. But if we had, there would have been nothing left after thirty years of hard work. My parents sold their house to keep the business going. It was not a fun time. How did you reinvent the business? My father’s strategy was to just work hard, even when people were getting out of the business because labor costs were high—it’s still our biggest cost. We moved the company into full packaging. Instead of just sewing hundreds of jeans, you do everything for the client: source the fabric, make the patterns, handle the washes, do the quality audits and essentially deliver a finished product to the client’s warehouse. This business model is very successful in China. We had to learn it from scratch and hire a lot of people. Fortunately, it worked. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021965/bobby1_766.jpg" width="766" height="511" width_o="766" height_o="511" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5021965/bobby1_o.jpg" data-mid="26911091" border="0" align="left"/> Where are your best customers? Japan and Europe, where jeans are considered Americana. They will pay a premium for jeans that are made in the USA. But most Americans think jeans should be cheap, which often means they can’t be made in the USA. EILEEN FISHER doesn’t sandblast or bleach jeans. What do you think of the current trend of distressing denim? It’s strange that you’re beating the product up and shortening its life. You’re subtracting from the garment to add value to it. It’s backwards. I have a hard time with the logic. One of our requirements for jeans manufacturing was avoiding chemicals like formaldehyde and potassium permanganate. Was this hard to do? Not at all. We’d like to go further and comply with the Bluesign Restricted Substance List (BRSL) that you gave us. We’ve sent it to our dyehouse and are trying to see how our formulations compare. Ultimately, we’d like to use the BRSL as a firm guideline. We hear you’re going solar. A system on our factory roof could generate more energy than we need, enough to power 1500 homes. We want to be energy self-sufficient by the end of the year. Where’s the competition? When we started in full packaging, our competition was in China. To this day it still is. We did a look back at the last ten years. We’ve had forty different customers. We still have six of those original customers. Of the thirty-four who left us, only two still manufacture in the US. And they aren’t with us for reasons of culture and price. We haven’t lost any customers to a competitor within the United States. What kind of jeans do you wear? Jeans are new for me. Growing up in California, I wore cutoffs or sweatpants. When I worked as a dentist, I wore dress pants. Now, I wear the classics. Nothing distressed or beat up. I know where the value is. by Claire Whitcomb Meet Bobby Ahn. If you’re wearing our colored denim, they’re made at his factory in Los Angeles, along with 80 percent of our jeans (the... http://eileenfisherampersand.com/In-India-family-and-factory http://eileenfisherampersand.com/following/eileenfisherampersand.com/In-India-family-and-factory Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:01 +0000 Ampersand | EILEEN FISHER 5022174 by Jenny VanAlstine <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india1_766.jpg" width="766" height="575" width_o="766" height_o="575" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india1_o.jpg" data-mid="26912186" border="0" align="left"/> India is a jumble of contradictions, a crash of sights and sensations, a raucous mix of smells and sounds. This was never more vivid than when we made our way to the train station in Delhi, to journey four hours north. The station is a crush of people. They move around us in a rush of color carrying suitcases, briefcases and babies. On the train we chug past slums, past endless people engaged in the simple tasks of morning life, the outdoors their bathroom and cooking area. Mothers dress small children and hang pieces of clothing on makeshift lines. Delhi behind us, we pick up speed, pass open fields with kilns for brick making, and then expanses thick with grain, and finally, people again, as we pull into our destination. We’ve made our way to Ludhiana to visit the Shingora factory. Ludhiana is an industrial city that produces bicycles, motorcycles, car and tractor parts and textiles in the middle of a vast agricultural region. Though I never saw the modern part of Ludhiana I know there is one, filled with beautiful homes and twenty (the sign said) shopping malls. The industrial section is dusty and dirty. Scrawny cows roam next to the highway looking for food. The beeping from the cars and trucks is deafening. Driving from the train to the factory is a major undertaking. People hawk wares everywhere. Small shops are gradually replaced by larger factory buildings. The dust remains. In this industrial section of Ludhiana is Shingora, a business owned and operated by the Jain family. Three decades ago, Ashok Jain, whose family was in the wool business, married a young woman named Mridala. He continued in the family business, providing uniforms for the military, while she taught school. By the time they were raising two young sons, the business was losing money, and they knew something had to change. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india5_766.jpg" width="766" height="509" width_o="766" height_o="509" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india5_o.jpg" data-mid="26912190" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india6_766.jpg" width="766" height="509" width_o="766" height_o="509" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india6_o.jpg" data-mid="26912233" border="0" align="left"/> Modern traditionalists: weaving by hand and by machine under one roof. Mridala thought about what she wanted for herself, and her answer was beautiful, handloomed shawls. The word pashmina, the fine cashmere wool and the shawls that are made from it, was just coming into every woman’s vocabulary. Mridala went to her family and begged them for their two handlooms. With these came the first major transformation of their business. The Jains began to produce pashmina, styled with Mridala’s fashion eye, her own twist on an ancient craft. When her older son Amit was ready to go off to college in America, the business was taking off but it wasn’t yet capable of covering that kind of expense. Deeply ingrained in the culture, it is tradition in India for a family’s wealth to be held in the gold jewelry it buys over the years. Gold jewelry, worn at weddings and other special occasions, is a symbol of both wealth and status. (India remains the world’s largest consumer of gold.) To put her son through college, Mridala sold her only real wealth, her gold bangles. Amit went to Kentucky, to study engineering and business, and when he finished, he got on a plane to return to India, the only one of his friends who didn’t stay in the United States. On the plane home the man sitting next to him told him he was crazy to go back. “Don’t even get off the plane,” he said. Amit responded, “ I have to go back. My mother sold her bangles.” And so, Amit returned. He was full of new ideas about modernizing and improving the business and talked his parents into taking out a loan. It was a giant leap of faith for all of them. They bought computerized weaving machines and invested in a high-tech dyeing process for the yarn. They hired and trained more workers. Over twenty years later, the business is thriving. The facilities are state of the art. There are rooms full of computerized knitting machines buzzing and clicking and churning out gorgeous fabrics, and upstairs from these, a quieter room of ancient looms where hand weaving is still done, the treadles worked by the bare feet of older workers who still practice this ancient craft. The young prefer the modern mechanized machines where craft is reinvented by technology. Dye makes its way through long tubes into vats in another room, where it’s mixed through a computerized process, without ever being touched by human hands. Wastewater travels out of the factory to an adjacent water treatment plant where it is cleaned and processed. The reusable water travels by small canals to water a plantation of trees planted nearby, now about twenty feet tall. What can’t be recycled from the process is dried and stored instead of allowed to return to the local environment. Mridala Jain still presides over the factory as Managing Director. When she strides into the room to greet us she is a wash of pink silk. She has the countenance of a woman who knows both her mind and her business. Widely recognized as a business leader, Mridala speaks at events and conferences where she is an inspiration to a new generation of Indian women. At her own factory, she has taken on the role of supporting women workers and has instituted programs to protect their safety and encourage their personal growth. Her philosophy guides her practice. “You have to be honest to yourself. Honesty comes from your kindness and attitude towards life.” Shingora is a modern factory born out of the ancient art of weaving and the Jain family’s vision. (And, of course, the gold bangles.) The Jain family lives and works together as their business continues to change and grow and prosper. All three families live in the same compound in Ludhiana. Though each family has its own style of house, they share a large communal yard. Mridala’s husband and both her sons are very present at the factory. Amit is now the President. Her younger son, Anuj, is the CEO. Shingora is dedicated to social responsibility, meets SA8000 accountability standards and stays true to the original idea of producing beautiful textiles—a synergy mirrored at EILEEN FISHER. A weave of the past and present, these scarves start with our designers in New York, travel to a city north of Delhi and return. It’s a cycle that starts with a timeless concept and an ancient craft, and returns modern and new. A cycle that feels a little like India itself. <img src="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india3_766.jpg" width="766" height="509" width_o="766" height_o="509" src_o="http://payload136.cargocollective.com/1/7/245575/5022174/india3_o.jpg" data-mid="26912188" border="0" align="left"/> Our team, outfitted to visit a mosque. The author is in pink with sunglasses. by Jenny VanAlstine India is a jumble of contradictions, a crash of sights and sensations, a raucous mix of smells and sounds. This was never more vivid than...