School House Ethical Fashion -- a small start-up that makes university-licensed apparel that tries to mix high fashion with high ethics -- is hosting a fashion show/shopping event at downtown's Golden Belt complex tonight at 9pm to show off the North Carolina-based company's wares.
During a time of recession, it's positive news any time a company is able to bring new products to market and find success, particularly when they're looking to carve out a little-explored niche.
But there's even more to like in the case of School House, an entrepreneurial venture with a range of connections to Durham.
It's the brainchild of a 2007 Duke alumna -- a young woman who credits an unusual range of Duke affiliates, from tenured professors to senior administrators with helping her fashion the business idea and get the business off the ground.
And after an initial stint of being based in Greensboro, the business will move on January 2010 back to the Bull City.
I first got to know Rachel Weeks when she was a Duke student, working to get off the ground Duke Plays, a very positive campus-culture effort initiated to try to create social activities and options outside the typical dorm room/frat party/off-campus space axis. From a party in Duke's campus library to a range of other activities around campus, Weeks got students engaged in thinking about a new way to have fun at Duke.
But Duke Plays pales in relative comparison to her interests and passion in the nexus between fashion and feminism, two considerations she had long had, but which came to the forefront at a Duke Plays event.
Weeks had had a dress made out of seventeen recycled Duke t-shirts, a fashion statement and play on the idea of college apparel -- and was floored by the reaction.
"I had these alumni trying to buy it off my back, and people just really going crazy," Weeks told BCR in an interview earlier this year.
It got Weeks thinking about the collegiate market, and ways in which she could create university apparel in ways that would allow her "to improve design, and also to cater more towards female shoppers."
Weeks thought on her experiences shopping at stores like Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and J. Crew. "It's like night and day from being in a university bookstore. It's a very masculine experience, a very athletics-oriented experience," Weeks said.
Having approached the issue from a different angle -- her senior thesis on the intersection between fashion and feminism as seen through the brassiere, specifically the internal debates of feminism reflected in the garment -- Weeks applied for and was named a Fulbright Scholar, and it was on a trip to Sri Lanka that the possibilities of marrying her passions came to light.
When I was over there, it was that eureka moment. This is it, this is my path," said Weeks.
Her idea: a collegiate apparel line that could bring a more fashionable sensibility to apparel, but which could also provide a human-rights experience for workers that exceeded that typically found in developing nation manufacturing.
"I've always been interested in fashion, and design and style, but I've always been a self-proclaimed feminist since I was about 13," she said, saying that the idea gave her a chance to marry the two, "to effect real change and get involved in an industry that affects women from the level of production where garment factories are usually 85% female workforce, to consumption, because women are obviously a huge fashion market."
She toured factories on the ground in South Asia, met with production experts, and worked with a New York-based designer to craft the fashions.
And for this Duke alumna, it was the Blue Devil connection -- specifically with Duke Stores head Jim Wilkerson -- that helped make the business' viability a reality.
Wilkerson and Duke's stores, long part of a university on the forefront of workers' rights and anti-sweatshop issues around collegiate apparel, signed on for the deal that made the venture a go.
"They placed a huge first order with me. And it was unprecedented for them," Weeks told BCR. "They did it, I think not only because they believed in the product and the brand, but I know because Jim also believes very much in fair labor initiatives, and what I was trying to do with this factory project. So he has been supportive since day one."
"Their order made the launch possible," Weeks said -- School House launched with a fashion show at Duke's library earlier this year -- "and it opened doors at UNC, at NC State, and since then at Harvard, Yale and Boston University."
Weeks struck a deal with Barnes & Noble's college bookstore operation, which runs apparel shops for a range of campuses. And she had to make sure the pitch was pitch-perfect beyond a feel-good story on human rights.
"When we go into these buyer meetins, they're interested in what you're doing at the factory level with living wage, but they're not going to purchase anything from you that they don't believe is going to sell. The product has to stand out quality-wise and design-wise," Weeks said.
School House clothes cost $1 more than those neighboring on the shelf, which Weeks says creates a better-quality product -- and something the target student market is willing to pay for. "The extra dollar that you pay goes directly to fifty to sixty people in Sri Lanka who are making these clothes."
And it's a business whose Duke ties made all the difference.
"When I was at Duke, everybody who was there has fostered this project in some way," Weeks said.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Weeks launched the company out of Greensboro, staying close to her parents' home (a North Carolina resident, she attended Duke on a Trinity Scholarship state-based merit ride.)
Hers is a business launched on a shoestring after all -- heck, her first $20,000 investment came from money she received in an insurance settlement after being hit by a car as a pedestrian visiting New York City a few years back.
But even in the spring of 2009, Weeks said that she would have liked to be in the Bull City.
"I was actually really wanting to open an office in Durham rather than Greensboro, but I have been hoping to stay around home to keep my costs down for a little while. I love Durham, I think it's a wonderful place to start a company," she said then.
And as of January, it's a reality.
Weeks is moving to downtown Durham's Addison Building on Chapel Hill St. and bringing the business with her.
She notes she's still "hunting the perfect spot for the combination office/retail storefront I've been dreaming about... there are just so many dreamy options in downtown."
Durham Magazine notes in their coverage yesterday that she's considering both Brightleaf and Golden Belt for her business' home -- and that she's now expanded to over seventy-five schools, and shipped 15,000 pieces reflecting eight schools' brands.
For more on the business, check out this month's issue of Durham Magazine.
Comments