Evie Lou still carries the iconic cloak hoodie that started it all.

Evie Lou traces its love for Prairie Underground back to a chilly summer day in Chicago, long before the boutique even opened.  

“I was in Chicago at a conference,” says Evie Lou owner Kim Crow. “It was freezing cold — I don’t know why, it was the middle of summer! — and I had only brought summery things to wear.”

During a break from judging a news contest at the heavily air-conditioned conference, Kim ran into a few stores in the city for a warm cover-up.

“I tried on this hoodie, and I absolutely loved it,” she says. “But it was $250. I’d never spent that much on an item of clothing before in my life. Since then, all hell’s broke loose, but at that point I was like, ‘I have to have this hoodie! The car payment can wait a couple weeks!’ ”

She split the purchase between two credit cards and returned to the conference.

Three days later, she went back and bought another one in a different color — the piece had resulted in countless “have you lost weight?”’ comments at the conference. Kim was hooked, and Prairie Underground became one of the brands the Evie Lou boutique opened with.

“In fact, one of the reasons I wanted to have the store was to carry as much of their line as I could,” Kim adds.

The Clothes

There’s no denying the luxurious feel of Prairie’s pieces. Super-soft and cozy knits are coupled with silhouettes and cuts flattering for all figures. It’s utilitarian, but still stylish. Comfy outfits still look feminine. “Everything feels great,” says Kim, adding that the fabrics that brand uses are what women respond to most. “That’s what keeps you coming back [to the brand],” she says. “Yes, it’s a cute style, but it just feels so good when you’re wearing it.”

And the clothes fit. The skinny denim girdles that suck you in in all the right places. Organic cotton tanks that stay tucked in because the length allows for it. Extra long cuffs that ensure tall women can cover their wrists, which are also easy to roll up and adjust on the run for those who are more petite. Pant inseams run the gamut, so no woman’s left behind. Regardless of height, width or even age, Prairie works.

 

These zip-front pants are a chic addition for a comfy outfit: dressier than a hosiery-style, more comfortable than a jegging.

 The Ethos

It’s easy to literally and figuratively feel good when you’re wearing Prairie because of the brand’s values. The designer-founders behind Seattle-born Prairie Underground place the highest standard on the textiles they source, favoring renewable crops like organic cotton and hemp, as well as a proprietary, plant-based material harvest from wood pulp called TENCEL, and REPREVE, a recycled fiber produced from salvaged materials that’s been melted into yard. Here, recycled plastic bottles find a home in fashion.

From the environmentally-friendly textiles they use to their manufacturing policies — the label’s ethos is based on the idea that ”creation itself should be a sustainable practice” —  sustainability is paramount.

Read more about the brand’s sustainable fashion in our Q&A with the founder.

“They’re very environmentally conscious and they manufacture in the US, which I really respect,” says Kim. Since the brand’s beginnings in 2005, all of their clothing has been produced within fifteen minutes of their Seattle warehouse.

 

Prairie Underground’s Davora Lindner and Camilla Eckersley. Photo via SeattleMet.

Prairie’s efforts to manufacture ethically and reduce waste in the fashion industry extend to consumption — they support integrating secondhand clothing into your wardrobe, provide suggestions on how to do so with Prairie pieces, and recently introduced vintage clothing into their collection, hoping to “tell a greater story about apparel design and manufacturing.”

In addition, the brand supports numerous women’s causes, donating a portion of proceeds yearly and collaborating with female artists on special prints for pieces.

Last chance! Our super-skinny, super-stretchy and very, very soft Slim Cords are almost sold out. Made from “deadstock,” the unused material leftover from other garment manufacturers and mills, it’s part of Prairie’s continued efforts to reduce waste in the fashion industry.

Our Picks

Besides clothes that do good, and the iconic cloak hoodie that started it all, check out some of our Prairie favorites made exclusively for Evie Lou (“because some things we can’t get enough of, and want more colors!”). Or, shop the rest of our Prairie Underground collection.

Power Lines Legging

Long Organic Tank

Naples Dress

In her early days as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Denise Allen Robinson thought she wanted to be a sculptor.

But a perceptive teacher encouraged her to shift her focus. “I was working in the foundry with metals and welding and torches, and I was always trying to pleat or gather the metal,” she says, laughing. “My teacher suggested that maybe I should try a softer medium.”

Robinson took that advice and today, “Neeshies”—her biggest fans—return season after season for the whisper-soft fabrics, the beautiful vintage details and yes, the pleated and gathered elements that grace her feminine designs for her label, Neesh by D.A.R.

“We make clothes for the grown-up girl,” Robinson says from her Chicago studio and warehouse. “You can skip and jump and dance in our clothes.”

That’s just as true for Neesh favorites like the sheer layering tees, gauzy skirts and flowing, empire-waisted, long camis as it is for Robinson’s newest Neesh line, the menswear-inspired Formidable (from the French for “wonderful”). Robinson calls Formidable “almost bespoke” and says that the line is, indeed, very special, thanks to its handmade construction and vintage touches. With a nod to couture, each Formidable garment is just as lovely inside as it is on the outside. The designs are also remarkably versatile: For example, a button-down shirt can be worn as is or gently gathered to one side with a hidden tab.

“I love to marry a lot of different textures and details,” Robinson explains. “But I make them modern and I try to relate them to how we dress today, so that we don’t look like we’re dressed in costume.”

Neesh’s most successful marriage (and perhaps its biggest power couple) is the fusion of style and comfort. The line delivers what many women seek: forgiving designs blended with visually interesting textiles. That means Neesh skirts are typically pull-on, with French terry waistbands sewn to woven, layered fabrics. “We don’t make a lot of tight clothes and we’re not cut for a junior body,” Robinson says. (Her clothes are sized XSmall to XLarge.) “And all of our fabrics are shipped washed, so they have to be soft. The fabric has to look just as good crumpled as it does ironed.”

Robinson continues to find inspiration for Neesh by looking east. “Japanese designers so often create their textiles themselves before they even design their clothing. So they create the shape and the fabric,” she says.

She also keeps a close watch on couture designers. “Money is no object for them, so they can create at $10,000 gown. I could never dream to do that for my customers, but I can take one small element [of that design] and make it my own,” Robinson says.

Even after more than 25 years in the industry, the 62-year-old Robinson keeps Neesh fresh and current, thanks to her keen eye and her commitment to staying true to what appeals to her—texture, interesting textiles and vintage flair. “You know, I’m a feminist from way back,” Robinson says. “But I still want to feel pretty in my clothes.”

— Interview by Jennifer Kuhel
Special to showlowarizonafence.com

Photo borrowed with gratitude from Neesh’s blog, 
neeshbydar.com/blogs/news

You know springtime is in the air when ladies are shedding layers and wriggling into lighter dresses and tops — and cries of “But what am I going to wear on my arms?” rise from Evie Lou’s fitting rooms.

The issue of bare arms is probably the most common one we hear about sleeveless dresses and tops. When I’m buying for the stores and website, the No. 1 thing I’m looking for is flattering, easy dresses with a bit of edge and with sleeves — and these are as hard to find as a crooked smile at the Oscars.

That’s one of the reasons we treasure designers such as Aimee G, who offers the option of adding a sleeve to most of her dresses and tanks for a modest additional charge. But a funny thing happens on the way to the cash register: It’s our experience that people will still buy sleeveless dresses, even when we provide an alternative.

Over the past four springs, we’ve routinely brought in the same Aimee G dresses in sleeved and sleeveless versions. We might change the color options or bring the pieces in at different times of the season, but essentially, we’re selling the same styles. And almost all of the time, the sleeveless ones sell faster. The same holds true with our other popular brands that offer a sleeve vs. no-sleeve option, such as Rundholz, Veronique Miljkovitch and Cut Loose.

Customers’ reasons for this? Read on:

— Sleeveless looks “springier” and “dressier.”

— Fit can be compromised when sleeves are attached to a garment. There’s more likelihood of pulling across the bust and shoulders with a set-in sleeve. Also, it’s easier to size down in a dress when you remove the arm/shoulder factor.

— Sleeves tend to make a garment appear visually “heavier” and thus “too hot” for some of our gals to wear in the warmer months… even if we gently point out that adding a top layer to cover their arms will be warmer than wearing one layer that includes fabric on the arms.

It’s a conundrum, to be sure. So many women won’t even consider a dress without sleeves, at least at first, yet don’t like their options for those with sleeves, dismissing what we have as being too hot, too unseasonal and too matronly. (Keep in mind, it’s often the same dress being compared, one with sleeves, one without.)

We’ve built up a decent collection of cover-up alternatives, from mesh boleros to lightweight cotton cardies to Sleevey Wonders (these are sleeved underpinnings that snap in front, right over the bra, sort of like a dickey for the arms), but every dress has different demands, and it can be really challenging to find the right piece for every look.  Often, the cover-up covers up what one actually likes about a dress!

I’m encouraged that more and more designers are beginning to offer cardies and cover-ups designed to go with their sleeveless pieces. And in the meantime, we’ll continue our little sleeve-vs.-no-sleeve experiment with the same dresses, the results of which play out in the next season’s buy.

Several customers have emailed us to ask how to figure out which body type they are. It inspired us to summarize some information about the basic body shapes and how best to dress them. (We’re also putting together a visual graphic that explains our thinking. We’ll let you know when we roll that out.)

Apple: This is a common shape indeed! These are women who carry their weight primarily in their midsection, mostly in the tummy, but they are often busty as well. Their arms and legs are slender in comparison, and they often have very slim hips and a flatter bottom. Brands such as Cut Loose, Fenini and Comfy USA are often go-to’s for women with this shape, but most brands have something in the right silhouette — easy in the midsection, but not so much fabric that pretty arms and legs are hidden.

Hourglass: Gals sporting this body type have full busts and hips, with proportionally smaller waistlines, and they look their most lusciously curvaceous when the waistline is emphasized. Prairie Underground, Aimee G, Babette and Rundholz clothing routinely do this well, but most of our brands offer silhouettes that do the trick — Skif’s Vertical sweaters, for instance, are often a must-have.

Inverted Triangle: In my opinion, this is the trickiest shape to dress. Women with this figure often have broad, powerful shoulders and arms, are often very busty and square through the midsection, and have slim hips and a small bottom. For this body type, we look for silhouettes that are roomy in the shoulder/bust and taper at the hem. For special occasions, slim pants with an interesting jacket often are more appealing than a basic dress. Niche does a good job with clothes for this shape, as do Prairie Underground and Veronique Miljkovitch. Equestrian pants, with their discreet elastic waistbands and slim legs, are often a go-to for this body type.

Longer & Leaner: While most of us sigh longingly at the thought of having this figure, it presents certain challenges — sleeves  and pants are often too short, and long-waisted women have a harder time with bias-cut garments and set-in waistbands. We love Prairie Underground for gals with this body type, as well as pas de calais, Porto’s stretch-twill collections and plenty of Rundholz pieces.

Pear: I’d estimate that fully 50 percent of our clientele falls into this category. This shape has narrow shoulders, a smaller bustline and carries weight more through the hips, rear and thighs. A-line silhouettes are the best friends of women with this figure. Comfy USA, Porto, Alembika, CP Shades and many other brands work well for it.

Petite: In our stores, we differentiate this body type more by slimness than by height. These are finely boned women who are small-busted, with slim hips and narrow shoulders. We find that Neesh by D.A.R. is often a terrific fit, as are Aimee G and gr.dano. Porto’s new size 00 in their stretch-twill fabric has been a blessing!

Short and Round: Well, this one is fairly obvious. Women whose figures fall into this category are under 5’2″ and carry their weight through the middle. This body type is an offshoot of the more well-known Apple shape, because these women’s short stature adds a layer to their wardrobe challenges. Successfully dressing this group is all about proportion. Our top brand for this shape is Niche, but many pieces from other lines, such as Sun Kim and Moyuru, routinely work well.

As time goes on, our shapes ebb and flow. I started out a petite hourglass, then have gradually morphed into something that defies easy categorization — a summer squash? Something thick through the middle, but also saddled with a giant ass, thunder thighs and beefy upper arms? Is that a cantaloupe? Hmmm…

Our beloved model, Skylar, is back in action! She was missing from our pages for several months last fall because she was planning her wedding.

Our photo shoots almost always happen on late Sunday afternoons, after the store closes — and as Skylar’s one day off a week is Sunday, she needed to spend it on far more important matters than the latest dress or tunic we wanted to photograph on her.

We have a modest little photo studio tucked way in the back of our Tremont store. The quarters are tight, and we move at a fast pace, so it’s important that we all get along.  Skylar is one of our all-time favorite people — as Tim-the-Photog says about her work, “She’s always at a party in her head.” Always upbeat, always positive, humming under her breath, utterly at ease in her own skin… yep, dammit, she’s the veritable cliche: As beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. Sigh.

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to send us feedback about Evie Lou’s recent website update! It’s a project that’s been long in the works.

For our first few years, our site was on the HipCommerce platform, which is quite basic and was developed with small retailers like us in mind. But that software was created 15 years ago, which is a lifetime in cyber years. Thus, it’s going the way of the steam engine (or the landline phone, the print newspaper, taxicabs, whatever the modern equivalent may be) and won’t continue to be supported by our hosts. Because we had to change anyway, we thought to make the shift a positive one, by adding features that customers had requested over the years.

So I sent a wish list of things I wanted to see on the revamped site to our developers, the patient folks at Modern Retail. Along the way, our “eight-week project” turned into an eight-month project, which was as frustrating as it sounds. But we wanted to get it right, and a lot of the features we wanted are those found on the big boys’ sites, such as Nordstrom.com or Anthropologie.com — chains with a lot more money and manpower at their disposal. But our development team did their absolute best to find or create enhancements for us that would work similarly to features on more lavish sites, but within our budget. This was an approach I could relate to — after all, it’s what we do all day in our stores for our customers. Not everyone has a Rundholz budget, but many have Rundholz taste.

While we had to give up some of our wish-list items, I’m very happy with the end result, and relieved that so many of the people who really matter (you know, actual customers!) are, too.

Inevitably, however, we’re all discovering various glitches as we work with the new site. Our developers and I are working to resolve them, but in the meantime, if you’ve encountered any of these issues, be assured that they’re real, and you’re not crazy:

• Internet Explorer: Brainy developer types don’t like this browser, and after this process, I see why. To borrow a phrase, it’s so glitchy.  Customers who are accessing the site on IE and trying to add a product to their shopping carts are finding that all sizes auto-default to a size XS.  We’re working on a fix, but in the meantime, the problem can be solved simply by using another browser, such as Google Chrome or Firefox. Or, just give us a call, and we can do the order over the phone!
• Overlapping features: When using the site on mobile phones and some laptops, folks are sometimes having trouble selecting the last size in the pull-down menu, as it sometimes overlaps the Cross-Sell feature below the menu. This is a CSS coding issue (I feel so smart when I throw around phrases like this, but honestly, I have no idea what that means!), which I’m told is a bit involved. Again, a fix is in the works.
• Filtering by size: I really wanted to have this useful feature on every collections catalog page, including clearance item pages, and it was a challenge for the developers to make happen. The good news is, that feature is now in place. The bad news is, it doesn’t work in real time, meaning that if a size Medium is sold out in a particular style, the item in that size will still show up in the filtered view because we did have it at one time. I’m pushing for a solution to this glitch, but for now, if we want the ability to filter at all — which we most certainly do — it’s something we have to live with. I’m sorry about it, and I’m really bummed, too. But nagging is a key component in my skill set, so I’ll stay on this like a bride at a Kleinfeld’s sample sale.

Again, thanks for your patience with us as we navigate the choppy waters of change. I’m going to get back to rowing.

XO, Kim

There’s something so exotic about Shana Gulati’s work, an air of ancient Middle Eastern mysticism that hovers over her totally modern designs. Shana, a former lawyer, says she is inspired by the beauty, lifestyle and culture of both her native India and her hometown of New York City. But what inspires us about Shana’s work is her technique.

Using tiny tweezers and a steady hand, Shana and her collective of artisans painstakingly lay diamond shards much like mosaic tile, in a base of resin, that can be dyed any color. These shards are often ringed with pave diamonds in white or black, adding a more in-your-face sparkle to the subtly shimmering shards. The metals here are generally 14k gold vermeil over brass, rose-gold vermeil over brass or sterling silver. While we tend to prefer neutral design bases — um, no surprise there! — in shades such as silver, charcoal and off-white, Shana offers a dizzying array of choices, from light pink to dark green. (So, if you see a piece you love, but would prefer a different resin color or metal choice, feel free to ask — Team Gulati is amazingly receptive to special orders, especially if you’re patient. )

Prices range from $128 for simple stud earrings to $328-ish for her best-selling silk-cord bracelets to the high hundreds for some of her specialized, limited-edition pieces. Contact us for details. Please note that we get way more jewelry in the store than we’re able to show on our website. (We’re a very small staff with limited resources. Most of the time, we have only one or two each of a given piece of jewelry, and by the time we shoot it, tone it and post it, the item is gone!)