We’re beyond excited about our collaboration with Pacific Northwest based sustainable fashion brand, Prairie Underground.
One of the most wonderful revelations along our entrepreneurial journey has been the relationships we’ve built and the love and support we’ve received from other women-founded businesses.
There is a whole community of women out there challenging the status quo, marching to the beat of their own drum, lifting each other up and doing everything they can to deliver beautiful products in more sustainable and ethical ways. We thought you’d like to hear the story behind Prairie Underground’s fabulous brand so we asked co-founder Camilla Eckersley to share her story with you. We hope you find it as inspirational as we do.
- Vermouth Beauty
I launched Prairie Underground with my lifelong friend, Davora Lindner, in 2004. We became friends in high school where we connected over fashion magazines, thrift shopping, new wave music, and our shared outsider perspective. We were activists, growing up in the 80’s under the threat of a nuclear cloud and Reagan’s attack on Working People, POC, Womxn and the LGBTQIA community. When we started dreaming about a clothing line years later, activism and creativity were at its foundation.
At Prairie Underground, our goal is to make populist clothing for serious, daily wear.
We want more from our garments than most designers, each piece must be multipurpose, durable, and unique. We draw inspiration from hand-made clothing, uniforms, vintage garments, and meeting the needs of modern life. We try to blend utility and seduction, to find ways clothing can be both useful and ornamental. We want to empower the wearer with a uniform that is powerful, protects, and expresses self.
We are a tiny business of eleven dedicated people, most of whom have been with us from the beginning. We sew everything here in our workshop or with small businesses in the Seattle area. We use organic, recycled, and deadstock fabrics, and we obsessively work to reduce waste.
Our workshop is in Georgetown, where we have a small storefront in front of our factory. We host artists in our gallery space and invite the community in on tours, brainstorming sessions, and collaborations.
Clothing design and sewing in the US is such a tiny, unique project that we are committed to supporting other local independent businesses, students, and makers by sharing resources and knowledge.
We want to be part of a new, circular, American manufacturing model that isn’t based on theft of resources but supports and empowers us all.
