MASTERS OF MULTITASKING
Gr.dano team concentrates on slow but steady growth, and manufacturing locally
After 7 p.m. in the subterranean production space in back of SoMa retailer 440 Brannan Studio earlier this fall, Gr.dano’s Jill Giordano and Brian Scheyer were just starting with the evening ahead. It had already been a long day. Orders of the label’s 60-piece fall collection were boxed and shipped. And then there are the notyet-ready samples from the spring ’13 collection to contend with for a photo shoot just days away.
“We’re going insane,” says Giordano, who had earlier run — literally — to check progress on garments at a nearby factory and returned to find the studio’s sole buttonhole machine broken.
A search for a buttonhole machine repairperson ensued. Finally, after eight people were tried, one was found. By 5:30 p.m., the machine was fixed, though too late to meet the day’s shipping deadline. Luckily, cookies and remnants of a quiche brought over by friends at the restaurant next door were there for fuel.
Since Giordano created the earliest Gr.dano garments while still studying fashion design at Academy of Art University in 2004, she and Scheyer have handled everything from designing their label’s architectural womenswear to taping boxes sent to what is now a roster of more than 60 retailers spread from Berkeley to New York. The couple, who met as she exited an elevator on her way to a job interview at the ad agency where he worked, do this while balancing other jobs. Giordano teaches fashion construction at AAU, while Scheyer works as a creative director in advertising at Teak.
With Giordano’s technical skills in fashion, Scheyer’s flair for visual design and a hands-on approach, the two have grown their label slowly and purposefully.
“Knowing all the parts really helps us,” says Giordano, who saw the inner workings of the fashion business during stints at a Bay Area sample maker and a sportswear company.
And that stands out in an industry in which it’s notoriously difficult to get noticed, much less to build long-term loyalty. It’s one of the characteristics that captured the attention of former Women’s Wear Daily West Coast bureau chief Rose Apodaca, who selected the design duo for 2010’s prestigious California Design Biennial. Previous honorees have included Rodarte and Trina Turk.
“They weren’t selling their souls to make a buck,” Apodaca says. “What struck me about Brian and Jill was that they were more concerned with doing business their way. That meant doing manufacturing in San Francisco, where they could control the quality, that meant keeping an eye on the price point and that meant offering a lot of design value.”
But it’s the understatedly modern yet strikingly constructed clothes, known for unexpected drapes and artfully placed panels, that have won the label a loyal following.
Palo Alto teacher and college counselor Christina Buchman, owner of some 30 Gr.dano pieces, says the clothes often prompt inquiries — sometimes
“Knowing all the parts really helps us.”
Designer Jill Giordano
from unlikely sources. In a German airport, Buchman was alarmed to be pulled aside by “a very stern official woman in uniform.”
“She was not pulling me over to tell me to go through extra security, but she was pulling me over to tell me what a wonderful skirt I had on,” Buchman recalls.
While Buchman goes on to praise Gr.dano’s flattering cuts and European sensibilities, she reports being equally impressed by the designers themselves.
“I am so used to people who are creative and very good at something being so driven and self-promoting and self-absorbed. ( Jill) is as nice as if she weren’t talented,” she says.
They also possess the business savvy to see a label through 10 seasons.
The thing with both of them is that they’re not kids, Apodaca says. “They understand businesses, and they understand, more importantly, that this is not about being an overnight success. They are in it for the long haul.”