In the most recent venture of my enterprise, I have embarked on a journey back into menswear. I started my design career in the late 1970s in Chicago, and my talent and the publicity surrounding it gathered a couture clientele of all races and both sexes, but the focus was generally on women's custom-made day and eveningwear. At the time, I was still a teenager, and the fashionable passion I had was not enough; I needed the skill to accompany the creativity that I naturally possess as a fine artist. To add to this, I had no idea how to price such garments and was often underpaid for my designs. On the other side of the spectrum — my sewing was terrible, with many botched mistakes. After counsel from my mentor, ClaRissa Brown (a celebrated Ebony Fashion Fair designer), I was offered an opportunity to attend the Sa-Mer Sewing Center.
The school occupied two lots on Ogelsby Street and was completely closed to the public, with a façade painted in Wedgewood Blue. You had to ring a doorbell to enter Sa-Mer. Mrs. Brown would come to the heavy door, and through it you could hear her soft voice asking who was there. Sa-Mer got its title from Mrs. Brown's parents (Samuel and Marilyn) and was quietly tucked away on Ogelsby Street on Chicago's South Side. I began my instruction while I was just a sophomore in high school.
Sa-Mer Sewing Center had two large rooms. The first room was filled with a reception desk and shelves of sewing supplies, and a kitchen area in the back served as the lunchroom. An entrance connected the two rooms, and the studio was on the other side. It was where all the instruction took place. The studio was filled with both commercial and industrial sewing machines and three cutting tables. There was also a pressing station with an ironing board and table. The school was equipped with everything you needed to learn how to sew.
Evelyn Brown, who stood about 5'3", was at the time in her mid-fifties and, according to what I gleaned from others, had worked in the Paris couture studios and taught at local colleges. Her credentials and status entered a room before she did, and like many other educated, affluent African American Chicagoans, she was sophisticated.
The argument that began behind that Wedgewood Blue door is made in full in Atelier Quarterly Vol. II: Couture Reformation — 62 pages of menswear couture philosophy, craft, and the garments that carry the argument forward.
Explore the Magazine | Atelier Acádemics | stacystewartsmith.com
Atelier Quarterly is a menswear couture magazine written and designed by Stacy Stewart Smith. Published from New York.
Stacy Stewart Smith (he, him)