As Eileen Fisher’s Social Innovators Teslin Doud, Carmen Gama and Lucy Jones approach the end of their year-long residency, they are heading into the official unveiling of their  upcycling project. Throughout the past month, the trio put the final touches on the Remade In The USA collection while preparing for the Pop-up shop opening at the end of July.

Teslin Doud: “Finally coming up for air, the weight of what we have created in the past year at Eileen Fisher is finally sinking in. Our garments are finished, being sewn, and are being returned from the factory, and we are starting to prepare for the debut of our Remade In The USA upcycled collection. From the start of our residency at EF, we had discussed our desire to have a pop-up shop as the culmination of our time as Social Innovators. As we went through our rotations and got to know the true soul of the company, we expanded our idea to an inclusive pop-up experience that would tell the story of everything we have gotten to learn during our residency. Eileen Fisher is known as a leader in sustainability in the fashion industry, but what might not be as well known is that the company is true to what it preaches; every individual we have gotten to know is as passionate and genuine as the EF message. Sustainability is truly part of the EF DNA, and this is what we wanted to showcase at our pop-up shop.  To show this, wWe decided to give the customer the 360 degree experience of the ecosystem of Eileen Fisher by selling Main Line responsibly made product, Green Eileen recycled product, and our own upcycled product. In addition, our pop-up shop will be an educational and spiritual place with mending workshops and even a yoga class. When you walk into our pop-up shop, you will be experiencing a little slice of the soul of Eileen Fisher.”

Carmen Gama: “This month has been the last stretch to our presentation in July. Important final details needed to be decided, including the branding of our collection, and the location of our pop-up shop; both of which we wanted to be true to the core of Eileen Fisher, but attractive to a new audience. For our pop-up store venue, we had a team doing some scouting around neighborhoods in Brooklyn. They found a perfect place that aligns with our target customer, a glass greenhouse that is a very small venue with an organic feeling. This venue will create an intimate relationship between the garments and the customer and will be very intriguing to people walking by. We wanted to brand our Remade collection in a way that resonates with a woman that appreciates the value of artisanally-made clothing. We started with the core EF aesthetic and added a hand touch including handwriting on hang tags and hand embroidery on the labels to differentiate them from the Main Line and Green Eileen product. The garments in our collection are targeted to a new customer, but still have a little something for everyone. We have garments that look brand new, with all the same fabrication you would never know they were created from recycled material. We also have more unique pieces that are a mixture of textures and colors and are more obviously upcycled from garments. And we have our artisanal pieces that resemble art. We can’t wait to introduce women to this new side of the Eileen Fisher brand!”

Lucy Jones: “This month has been a whirlwind roller coaster ride since we have been knee-deep in production.” We have been focused upon prioritizing tasks and managing our time efficiently, and yet somehow we are now counting down the days until our pop-up event!  Our initial goal of attracting a new demographic to Eileen Fisher is reflected directly in our pricing. One of our firm objectives was to speak to the millennials and younger customers who are aware and engaged in sustainability, but are also the ones who cannot necessarily afford a higher price range. In our experience, lowering prices cannot always be a truthful reflection of the amount labor involved in the making of a garment, whether it be complexity of design, choice of fabric, technique used or a combination of all the above.. So what we wanted to offer was a tier of prices within our product range that was honest and transparent. Within our upcycled collection, we start with a readily affordable introduction price to the Eileen Fisher brand which consists of simplistic styles and basics, a mid-range pricing for our designs with more individualized handwork or seaming and therefore more labor, and lastly a high-end price for our artisanal and more limited pieces that required a lot of labor, craft and design. We believe our capsule collection exhibits a transparent price range based on technique and perceived value, in order to educate our consumer about the craft and labor of making clothing.”