TIMELESS ELEGANCE
Designer embraces the slow clothing movement
Imagine clothing as fresh as a summer morning, that pulls in the blue of the sky and demonstrates the beauty of simplicity.
As the guest designer featured in this year’s StarPhoenix Fashion Road Show, Kathleen O’Grady brings a unique and refreshing approach to fashion design. O’Grady learned to love fashion as a girl watching her mother make beautiful clothing on a farm near Allan, Saskatchewan.
From that early beginning grew a lifelong passion which took O’Grady to design school and then to some far-flung locations for inspiration. “My travels have given me an appreciation for clothing traditions from around the world,” she says. “I lived in Greece for a year and in Japan for two years during the 1980s, and have traveled a number of times to Southeast Asia, India and Africa.”
Her travels also gave O’Grady an appreciation for the slow clothing movement which places great importance on quality and how clothes are made. It’s not about trends or disposable clothing. She learned about slow fabric and slow processes in Japan and India and those lessons have informed her clothing lines. “When you learn about clothing you learn about a culture and what that culture values.”
Her grady bleu® fashion line was inspired by long and rich traditions of fabric dying using the indigo plant. “Blue, with its roots in indigo, dates back centuries and represents for me antiquity, history and a certain quality of endurance,” O’Grady says. While the line features blue, she uses a broader colour palette of browns, whites, beiges, blacks and greys as well.
“I create small exclusive collections and often integrate specialty fabrics made by artisans from around the world.” O’Grady prefers woven fabrics of linen, cotton, wool and silk. Naturally dyed scarves are available for accessorizing.
New styles in 2017 include a couple of contemporary offerings. One is a button-down duster which is a long-sleeved linen dress that can be worn different ways – as a coat, layered over jeans, with a T-shirt underneath and so on. Another is a 1940s-style shawl-collar dropped shoulder dress with pockets, but no buttons or zippers. Both of these are made with linen and are relatively ‘seasonless.’
“My goal is to make beautiful, wearable clothing for women who appreciate quality and authentic simplicity in their dress. My designs don’t follow trends. They are classic and timeless as well as fun, and I think that is what people love about them,” O’Grady says. Her fashions are not age-specific either, but designed to appeal to women of all ages. She makes all her own patterns. Her designs are contemporary but encompass old world cultures.
O’Grady believes that with globalization and mass production, we have lost any sense of a relationship with our clothes. “We have lost the knowledge and appreciation of good fabrics and quality design. I would like people to understand the origins of their clothing and have clothing they love and that serves them well over many years.”
She compares mass-produced clothing to buying a loaf of bread. You could either buy mass-made Wonder-style bread or you could spend better money on an artisan loaf of bread. “I know which one I’m buying. It’s the process. I care about how that was made.”
O’Grady is planning a trip back to India to establish relationships with artisans in rural villages and cottage craft industries who practice age-old textile traditions. She says proper indigo dying is a skill that takes a while to master. “I hope to employ their skills in producing my products while giving them increased opportunities for livelihood.”
Other skills, such as the technical skills involved in creating a pattern and then bringing a garment into being, are being lost, she adds. “It’s more than drawing a nice picture. You actually have to make that garment.”
O’Grady’s clothing is available online at gradybleu.com.
She does regular pop-up shows and open house studio sales events. Her next pop-up event is on May 27 and 28 at the venue called Storefront at 325 – 21 Street West. She will also be at BAZAART in Regina on June 17.