When you think of Maine style, visions of plaid flannel shirts, Carhartt overalls, long underwear and iconic L.L. Bean boots may come to mind.
We are, after all, a people who must contend with several months of winter and who often dress for warmth and comfort rather than what is trending on Madison Avenue. But one Mainer who is taking a different approach to the clothes she wears is Jolene Bryant of the Waldo County town of Knox. Bryant, who works as the produce manager and a cook at Chase’s Daily in Belfast, is known locally for the high-fashion outfits she sews herself. She rings up customer’s baskets of potatoes and cabbages and unloads the produce truck while wearing anything from bolero tops to leather corsets, from a silvery, sequined tank top to slip dresses made with leather panel insets.
Bryant is finding that making her own clothes is a way to express her creativity, and a way to make choices that are more ethical and sustainable than just buying clothes at the store would be.
“It’s indescribable,” she said of the feeling she gets from sewing. “For me, it’s like a meditation. It’s something that I do early in the morning that just starts my day off right. And when it’s done, I get to wear it. It’s something that’s useful. And fashion is the ultimate art. It’s architecture, and you wear it. It expresses who you are in a way that fine art and paintings don’t. I find it an extension of myself.”
Bryant is, of course, not the only Mainer who is working to sew at least some of his or her own clothes. Home economics classes, where students once were taught to use a sewing machine among other skills, may be disappearing from Maine classrooms.
Fast fashion, fashionable clothes that are manufactured quickly and sold to consumers at prices so low they are considered to be almost disposable, is not going out of style any time soon. But those facts are not the whole story, according to experts such as Denise Slazas, who helps people learn to sew and quilt at Fiddlehead Artisan Supply in Belfast.
“There’s something about creating that’s not like anything else,” Slazas, who got her first sewing machine when she was 10 and made all her own clothes during high school, said. “Sewing can’t be everyone’s favorite thing, but I can’t imagine living in a world without sewing.”
Bryant’s interest in sewing has not been a lifelong passion. She said she used to have a love-hate relationship with her sewing machine after making some “horrible” clothes. For years, she focused some of her creative energies on weaving, knitting and quilt-making. But not long ago, she was at a friend’s house and saw a book on her kitchen table about a new type of sewing on her kitchen table. The book, by Natalie Chanin of southern lifestyle company Alabama Chanin, focused on slow design — hand-sewn clothes made of cotton jersey fabric that were built to last.
“I pored over that book,” Bryant said. “I said, ‘I’ve got to try it.’ The first thing I made, I thought, ‘this looks really nice, I can do this!’”
As quickly as that, she was hooked. She found that after knitting so long, hand-sewing came naturally to her, and that the jersey fabric was forgiving. It wasn’t long before Bryant was stepping up her sewing game, working on her own patterns and incorporating different materials she likes. She started a fashion blog to share photos and stories from the line she is calling “2 a.m. by jg bryant.”
“I really like creating pieces to then write about and describe the process and the inspiration behind it,” she said, adding that she has no plans to go into business as a custom seamstress. “Where this is going to take me, I don’t know. I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing and go from there. I don’t want to get caught up in manufacturing clothes for other people.”
But she’s really appreciating the opportunity to sidestep some of the problems she sees with industrial fashion, which includes bad conditions for garment industry workers and a major sustainability issue. In fact, she watched a documentary about fashion called “The True Cost,” which asks who really pays the price for clothing, and was affected by what she learned about a garment factory fire in Bangladesh that killed more than 100 people.
“That really struck a chord with me,” she said. “I’m kind of weaning myself away from store-bought fabric.”
Instead of buying new clothes or fabric, she has largely been making things out of what she finds at yard sales and thrift sales. One of her favorite garments, a bolero, is made from a beige flannel bedsheet she found at a yard sale and then dyed black, And she loves it when customers at Chase’s Daily and elsewhere ask her where she bought her clothes.
“That’s the ultimate compliment, when someone asks me where did I buy it,” Bryant said. “And the open, slack-jawed shock when I tell them I made it. It’s a great feeling.”