Sweet Notions: Rethink • Restore • Reclaim

Start Small, Dream Big: Q & A with Upcycled Apparel Designer and Small-Business Owner Cassie Ridgway

Mag-Big is a small business with big ambitions. The art and fashion boutique in Portland, Oregon, features handmade work by local artists and designers. It also serves as an educational resource, hosting regular classes in its adjacent gallery and workshop space. I caught up with designer and owner Cassie Ridgway to find out how small business owners can help create big change in the movement to transform the fashion industry.

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As an artist and small business owner in one of the United States’ hubs for sustainability, DIY fashion, and crafts, what is your overall outlook for the future of upcycled art and repurposed fashions?

I am an upcycled apparel designer, and I think there is a serious future for this type of design. It is clearly sustainable because it is affordable to produce and purchase, it lessens waste, and it creates one-of-a-kind garments that are very desirable. One of my tasks as a seamstress is to teach others about re-design, and enable them to get creative with materials that otherwise may never see the light of day again. Let's reclaim and repurpose!
 

What role can small business-owners and artisans play in the broader movement toward sustainable, non-toxic fashion? What role can they play in the social justice movement?

We, as a community, are making the decision to stabilize our economy by directly supporting its producers, which, in turn, has a multitude of positive effects on the environment and our immediate economic climate. By turning our economy inwards to small production, we are paying less for transported merchandise and lessening the primary consequences of imported material. We are also protecting our community from homogenization by ensuring that the community defines itself. In short, we are making a decisive measure to sustain the growth, impact, and quality made possible by our community. I see these values lending to social justice because they are proof that a community can represent itself, produce and protect its core values, and turn its production towards causes that enable forward thinking. Our work as a community of artisans has thus far been deeply founded in the act of working together and when this energy is applied, whatever the cause may be, it has sheer magnitude. 

Who or what are your current inspirations?

I am deeply inspired by Portland seamstresses. Groups such as the Stitch Collective are working together to share patterns, materials, resources, vending opportunities, contracting work, etc. Stitch Collective houses its meetings at Mag-Big, and they are so wonderful, informative, and above all, supportive. I have been so inspired by my fellow designers that my big project this year is a fashion show for local designers on Hawthorne, wherein we will be building a huge run-way down the historical alley of 33rd (with the mural of literary figures). Information about the fashion show can be found on our blog: http://hawthornefashionshow.wordpress.com/

Sweet Notions guest blogger Melissa Reeser is a poet and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. She works part-time at Saint David of Wales Episcopal Church, and is managing editor of  Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac

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