Super last minute but worth it. Just heard from Courtney at Souchi (807 NW 23rd) that those of you who can fit in a trip to NW 23rd today will find an extra 25% off all the items in their sale bin like winter coats (it ain’t spring yet…just feels that way today) from Ports 1961 and Mel en Stel, a few funnel coats, hoodies and cowls and other goods from fall and holiday collections.
It’s a sale on top of a sale at Olio United (1028 SE Water). Today, Thursday February 28 through the weekend, Olio United is throwing a Spring Cleaning Sale to get ready for spring shipments. You’ll find 40% off plenty of goods including women’s dresses by Black Label SF, IVANAhelkinki, and Myth & Ritual, women’s organic cotton denim by Del Forte and Loomstate, and men’s repurposed and organic cotton jackets by Preloved, Loomstate and Covet. The best bit is that if you spend $100 on sale items, you’ll get an additional 25% off entire purchase (including non-sale items).
One day only, Nolita (923 NW 10th Ave) marks everything in the store down 20% for their Leap Year Sale, this Friday from 10-6. Good news is, the discount applies to new arrivals as well including Charlotte Ronson, Loomstate, and Helmut Lang.
The show formerly known as Doom Town returns with DT5 Rock n’ Roll Fashion Show at the Fez Ballroom (318 SW 11th Ave) on February 29 with the show beginning at 8 PM and the fashion show at 9:30 PM. Rock n’ roll here not only means big hair, zebra print, tight skirts, and eyeliner, it means that the fashion show is juxtaposed with bands The Soda Pop Kids and The Family Gun. More than a dozen Portland-based designers show on the runway including Revolver Revolver Clothing, Disorder Clothing, Flood Clothing, Carolyn Hart, Clair, Owl, Diana Pingul, Cano, Band of Purple, Amy Elizabeth Couture, Erhart, Dress to Kill, and Detox Designs.
Au revoir Artemisia. Ran past Artemisia (300 SW Stark) yesterday to see big 70% off signs in the windows. Their last day in business is imminent, but there are still cute hats and tops to check out.
And away they go. In the hive of independent commerce that is 811 E Burnside, the March 1 shuffle goes like this. Denwave closes up shop. Jewelry designer Hazel Cox, one-half of Denwave, moves into the Moshi Moshi space. Grass Hut moves to Denwave. Stand Up Comedy moves into the Grass Hut space (to open March 7). And…Holly Stalder is taking the Stand Up Comedy space. Where’s Moshi Moshi going? 916 W Burnside with a Grand Opening on March 6, the opening of I Heart Mr T. art show.
You spin me right round baby right round …
Where? Xtabay, of course. On Liz Gross’ Xtabay blog, she writes about the oft-photographed designer Fetherston on a spree at her boutique (one of Portland’s consistently excellent vintage shops). Gross reports that Fetherston said, “Portland has the best vintage shopping in the country.”
It wasn’t the first time Fetherston had shopped at Xtabay. She said that she bought a 1950s tulle prom dress at Xtabay a few years ago. She cut the dress shorter, then sponged it with fabric dye to give it a Monet-esque, watercolor look. She said the dress was a big hit, and that she lent it to Lindsay Lohan, who loved it.
What did Fetherston buy? “Roehm 1980s dress, Dior lingerie, a Lilli Ann coat, a Diane von Furstenberg nightgown, a 1970s wide-brimmed hat.”
Just a little note on appreciating what we have here, especially buyers with a great eye like Gross.
Ladies aren’t the only ones to benefit from end of season sales. Through February 18th, men can score an additional 30% off sale items at Mario’s (833 SW Broadway).
Sure, it looks like we’re nearly done with winter doesn’t it? Temperature on the upswing, sun in the forecast. Don’t be fooled. You’ll be wearing boots into the next few months and you know it. Lucky it’s Boot Month at Olive Shoes (404 NW 10th Avenue #100) with 30-60% off boots high and low, like Esther here. Hello Esther! Our kind of heel.
The leather doctor’s bag on the top shelf of the Entermodal design studio in Portland’s Pearl District is richly aged but remarkably intact. That doctor’s bag speaks volumes about the principles of sustainability at the core of the company. Arguably Portland’s only luxury goods company, Entermodal makes modern handcrafted leather bags, wallets, and accessories carried at Fred Segal and All Purpose in LA, Japan’s luxury emporium, Takashimaya, and Odin in New York, among others and featured in magazines like Details and Good. “I set a standard that I wanted to make something that would last for 50 years,” says designer Larry Olmstead. As he considered materials choices for the men’s and womens’ bag he wanted to make, “We had been thinking about working with different fabrics, but we knew they would degrade. When I saw this doctor’s bag, I realized, that’s it. It was much more than fifty years old and it still held up, was still usable. And it was made of leather, a byproduct.”
On a recent Portland panel, designer Michael DiTullo said he wanted to design heirloom products, products you wouldn’t want to get rid of but would pass down to your children. He is Design Director for Converse. Is this possible with shoes? Maybe. But we already have a models for this in the realm of luxury leather goods from the likes of Hermes, whose Birkin bag in practice puts the lie to the necessity for the new in all things fashion, passed down as it is from mother to daughter with reverence. That’s more sustainable, surely, than discarding last year’s It bag in favor of the new.
To open the door of the Entermodal studio in the Pearl District is to be engulfed by the rich scent of the vegetable-tanned Italian leather that the studio uses for its bags, wallets, and accessories. In the Entermodal studio, there are rolls of the most beautiful leather in colors of forest, bark, and cloud. And on the floor there are bins of leather scraps scaled by size to be reused, down to the tiniest spaghetti bits that will be sent off to be remade into recycled leather or boiled into glue. The behemoth sewing machine (that can stitch through multiple layers of thick leather) looks out the high windows, while the a hot press stands ready to imprint a serial number and “handmade in Portland, Oregon,” on each Entermodal bag. There’s an ancient looking stitching horse with its wooden vice to hold a piece of handstitching and a wicked machine called a skiver (mad combination of slicer and grinder that thins out a piece of leather). But most of the work here is done with the simplest tools, utility knives, awls and punches, needles and thread. Shelves house waxed thread, leather molds, mallets, and numerous prototypes and experiments.
Entermodal is formed around the core of Olmstead—who has for years designed for British mountaineering company, Karrimor—and his wife Holly Brunk. Portland designer Kari Merkl worked with Entermodal for several years. Olmstead has two apprentices (one is Patrick Powell, who has for years made leather goods including braces and spats for Adam Arnold) and a sales/marketing person.
When he settled on leather, Olmstead began deep research of traditional European (pre-Industrial Revolution) leatherworking techniques. They aren’t in any book. They are handed from one generation to the next through word and practice. A prime source of knowledge and tools has been 84-year-old Francis Burdett-Mills, master (and the title isn’t applied lightly by those in the know) of multiple leatherwork techniques and processes including turned edge goods, boxwork, saddlery and tack, and boots. Burdett-Mills was the second living storehouse of leatherworking knowledge to say to Olmstead, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Along the way Olmstead went to Italy to visit a factory that manufactures leather goods for houses like Gucci. There he chatted with one of the workers as the man did traditional two-needle handstitching without once glancing at his hands. Olmstead returned to the US with the goal of stitching with his eyes closed. The small network of living masters in the UK has embraced the 34-year-old’s commitment to the craft.
This is stealth luxury—taking the meaning of the word back a number of decades before it was conflated with ostentation—where quality and integrity replace bells, whistles, and shiny things. There is no Entermodal assembly line. One bag, one hide, cut and sewn by one craftsperson, most likely Olmstead himself. Many of the small Entermodal leather goods are completely handstitched. Each of the bags in the Creative collection requires more than an entire workday of handstitching. Even the bags in the Thoughtful collection take about 10 hours to create.
So what about sustainability? Each decision the Entermodal team has made on the way to production has hinged on the goal of making the company as sustainable as possible down to the minimal hardware on the bag made of one of the world’s most recyclable materials: aluminum. But Olmstead likens the problems of sustainability to a balloon, “If you push on it here, it bulges out over there,” you solve one problem, but it’s a give and take with another problem. For example, he readily admits that transporting the vegetable-tanned hides from Italy is not optimal. But try as they might, in spite of the number of cows in Oregon, Entermodal has been unable to find local leather that compares with the quality and environmental friendliness of the Italian vegetable-tanned leather (in the US, most leather is tanned with the toxic chromium). And so one of several trade-offs is made for the present with the long-term goal of making fewer and fewer of them.
Importantly for both the health of the makers and future owners as well as the recyclability of the leather, rather than glueing pieces together to place them for stitching—Olmstead calls the most common leather glue, “cancer in a can,”—he had the brainstorm of using industrial double-sided tape. At the end of the life of the bag, the adhesive can easily be removed, leaving a piece of leather ready to be used again.
Olmstead’s designs involved a sometimes complex (if secret) origami and stark minimalism driven, yes, by aesthetics, but also by considerations of sustainability, specifically constructing bags of large pieces of leather unmarred by gratuitous decorative stitching that have the potential to be re-used at the end of the long, long life of the bag. Entermodal plans to take bags back from customers who are through using them with the offer to make smaller leather accessories, notebook cover, travel wallet, from the same leather.
Each piece is a discovery for Olmstead whose constantly growing arsenal of traditional leatherworking techniques and tricks makes more and more possible. He is rigorous about ergonomics and the fit of the bag on the body (going so far as to reject the recent oversized bag phenomenon because, “you shouldn’t be carrying that much weight like that.”) He delights in design geekery like the beautiful pleated folds that accordion on a wallet.
This means an ever-expanding product line now comprising the Creative, Thoughtful, Trig, and Grace collections with Travel (an incredibly cool, updated take on that leather doctor bag. And Olmstead plans to continue doing custom work for clients.
And Olmstead is happy to share his technical discoveries and obvious love of the material. He has two apprentices and welcomes laypeople into his studio one night a week to introduce them to working with leather. He’d like to see a community of leatherworkers embracing, practicing, and passing on traditional techniques in Portland. “It’s already happening,” he says.
Posted on February 14, 2008 | Filed under designer | Permalink
