Reduce. Reuse. Repurpose Clothing!

When Jennifer Tadlock’s grandmother died in 2009, her mother was going through her grandmother’s belongings and was going to throw out her antique linens.

Tadlock says she was overcome with emotion and told her mother she couldn’t throw away the linens.

“What’re you gonna do with it?” her mother asked.

Tadlock went into the next room and cut out two circles and a neckline, stitched it together and made her first pillowcase dress — a creation that would lead to a summer of weekend pop-ups throughout Georgia, where she sold her new line of hand-painted pillowcase apparel.

Originally, Tadlock made upcycled clothing for girls and women and then got feedback from customers who wanted her to sell more adult sizes.

So Tadlock added the “drop dress” to her clothing line, a current front-runner among her products, which incorporates a vintage chenille fabric into the bottom of the design.

To continue to connect with her customers, Tadlock says she has to keep adding to her collection.

“Every year, I come out with something new — something that drives me, something I like, something I want to create, something I want to make and something I want to wear,” she says. “And when I hit all of those things, then they hit the rack.” Tadlock’s clothing line, Gorgeous

CHAOS Designs, has been going for 15 years and has had a presence at the Chattanooga Market for over a decade.

In 2019, Tadlock traveled to Oregon to learn how to Shibori dye, a Japanese color-dyeing technique. She says dyeing clothes was a way for her to process that her mother, for whom she was the caretaker at the time, was dying.

To Tadlock, vending at the market means supporting her peers and providing a space for women to “smile and laugh and twirl around” in her clothes — whether it’s a dyed oversized romper or an upcycled bedspread — and feel youthful.

“The market vendors are not just vendors; they’ve become like market family,” Tadlock says. “We take care of each other; we laugh with each other; we cry with each other. And that’s why I drive from Woodstock, Georgia, on Sundays, 101 miles from my door to their door.”

Check out Gorgeous CHAOS Designs, LLC, on Facebook.