“I feel like locally we [designers] can get away with things that
you can’t when you’re just another name,” says Gretchen Jones of
her push to bring her womenswear line, MothLove, to the national
playing field.
A designer who’s exhibited leaps of maturity in the past few years’
collections, it’s clear that Jones means serious business. She’s
squared with herself, recognizing that her talent is draping, and her
newest work reflects that with a concentration on silhouettes that
flutter along a woman’s frame in crêpe de Chine, hovering at the
borderland between lingerie and outerwear. Likewise her business plan
is a focused attack, bombarding a list of carefully vetted retail
targets with several rounds of unforgettable art cards and posters.
If you’re familiar with only one item from Jones’ past repertoire,
it might well be the feather-embellished headbands that reached a pitch
of near ubiquity last year, and which she now recalls, laughing, that
she eventually “hated making.” But they sold, and selling her work is
what Jones is determined to do, striving to produce locally and
sustainably (a term she identifies with over “green” or “eco,” which
refer more to fabric choice than to the bigger-picture implications of
energy use and longevity) without letting those parameters preclude
reaching a clientele that exceeds the bounds of Portland local-fashion
enthusiasts. This not only means cleaning up common oversights like
crummy zippers or neglecting to include the legally required laundering
tags, but also takes more than just the “time and fabric” into account
in her pricing, requiring an objective evaluation of whether the
quality justifies the price.
This Saturday, August 15, Emily Baker of Sword + Fern will host a trunk show of the MothLove fall collection, called Stone
Carved Daydream, including some of Baker’s own jewelry pieces
designed to complement Jones’ work. Among the pieces (priced at 30
percent off—including custom orders—and starting at $70)
are lingerie rompers in sheer black, some subtly ruffled. These rompers
are the closest in direction to Jones’ upcoming work for spring, for
which she is making the trek to Las Vegas’ POOL trade show at the end
of this month—the trunk show is meant, in part, to help get her
there.
Once she does, it will be up to buyers to pick up on the subtle
thoughtfulness in her designs, which she has limited to three neutral
color options: iron, coal, and bone. It’s a testament to her philosophy
that to be a responsible designer is to create pieces that will fold
seamlessly into existing wardrobes and translate from season to
season—and, one hopes, from state to state. MothLove trunk
show, Sword + Fern, 811 E Burnside, #114, Sat Aug 15, 5-9 pm