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McKenna Gels will stage her first fashion showcase from her line, McKenna Made, 6-10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Vineyard at Evergreen Farm outside Coldwater.
COLDWATER - Designers Mugler can move aside and Comme des Garçons can call it quits.
"McKenna made" is the new fashion house to beat.
Well, maybe not quite. McKenna Gels, a 21-year-old self-taught seamstress and designer from Coldwater, said she's less high-fashion and more high-quality when it comes to her clothing.
Some of Gels' hard work will be displayed and up for sale at her first spring showcase 6-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Vineyard at Evergreen Farm just outside Coldwater.
Gels said she's been sewing seriously for the past five years, but technically got her start around fifth grade when she asked for a toy sewing machine. After working her way up to mom Becky's sewing machine, Gels started to branch out more, moving from simple cosmetic fixes to hemming pants and dresses.
Now, Gels works full-time at The Mr. Shoppe in Coldwater, tailoring suits and altering other types of clothing for all genders and hand-making clothing for herself and others.
As much of a cliche as it is to say, Gels said the skill of hand-making clothing is a dying art that she's proud to have learned largely by herself. Gels said she watched a lot of Youtube tutorials while learning the trade. She also picked up skills from her mother and coworkers at The Mr. Shoppe.
One of her first major creations was her own prom dress, a labor of love that took more than 40 hours to make. It's a far cry from the 15 hours it took her to make younger sister Madison's senior prom dress, a yellow, flowy tulle fantasy with a beaded belt they'd been planning for more than a year and a half.
Learning how to make clothes doesn't come to a person overnight, and neither does their sense of style. Gels said her first creations weren't couture, to say the least.
"I started making really bad clothes," she said with a laugh. "I made some bad design choices."
Gels said she's still developing her own aesthetic and doesn't tend to look toward luxury designers for inspiration. Rather, she pulls inspiration from whatever variety of patterns, textiles or shapes speak to her.
This fashion sketch by McKenna Gels is part of her design process. She will stage her first fashion showcase from her line, McKenna Made, 6-10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Vineyard at Evergreen Farm outside Coldwater.
"My style is all over the place," she said. "I do want to do more of the bohemian stuff. But I'm also the person who goes 'Oh! That old lady dress fabric is cute!'"
Refurbishing and repurposing fabric is a common theme in Gels' designs.
When she was first starting out, Gels said the 99 cent sales at Goodwill on Sundays were her favorite, because she could get her hands on affordable fabric, buttons and zippers.
If there are fabric scraps left over from a previous project, they can be transformed into scrunchies or woven together to create a patchwork handbag, she said. Part of the reason the Coldwater native began making her own clothes was because it's often more affordable, so she tries her best to use as much fabric as possible.
"It's a seamstresses job to hoard things," she said.
Another benefit to handmade clothing is the quality. It's easy to forget that clothing is not optional - everybody needs to have it to survive the elements and the office. That's why clothes need to be seen as an investment, she said.
The price of jeans, shoes and shirts can leave a person shell-shocked, so some people may opt for clothes from a fast fashion retailer instead of paying more for a name-brand designer. Fast fashion is a profitable business model that replicates mass-produced catwalk trends and high-fashion designs for a fraction of the cost.
The mass production comes at a cost, though. The trendy clothes are often marred with tell-tale signs of poor craftsmanship, such as hanging threads, thin fabric and disheveled seams, Gels said. As a result, the clothing tends to fall apart quickly.
"You want your clothes to last," she said. "If it feels cheap, it probably is. So sometimes price is quality."
McKenna Gels adjusts fabric on a mannequin.
Friday and Saturday's showcase will serve as a bit of a test for herself, Gels said.
She enjoys her current job and the stability that comes with it, but Gels said it would be nice to see if she could expand her handmade clothing career.
Gels is nervous but excited to present some of her clothing for the first time. She's dreamed of being a fashion designer since the age of 10, she said, but never thought she'd be able to make her dream a reality without moving to a big city.
Now, with a selection of rompers, custom kimonos, shirts and skirts for sale at the showcase, Gels said that dream is starting to become more of a reality.
