ONE OF THE best days in the short history of Made X Hudson was the day our now-beloved friend Regina first walked into our Catskill shop — sent over by our neighbor Sister Salvage — and asked if we might be interested in her vast vintage fabric trove. What ensued was what we now call The Regina Collection: Made X Hudson garments, mostly one of a kind, sewn here in our Catskill factory from the mid-century fabrics Regina sells us.
Regina’s mother worked in the costume department at Radio City Music Hall in the 1930s. “In those days, that meant you sewed for the opera, the ballet, the chorus, the Rockettes, all of it,” she told us. There she met and soon married Regina’s father, who was the Costume Department Manager until the early ’80s. Mom stopped working to have Regina and her older sister, then went back to work in the ’50s at NBC, “when I was in about the 7th grade,” Regina said. At NBC, she sewed for the soap opera ‘Young Doctor Malone,’ later known as ‘The Doctors,’ and did alterations for Barbara Walters on ‘The Today Show,’ among other things.
But at no point was her mom not an avid sewer — and devout fabric collector. In addition to sewing the girls’ clothes, she would come home from sewing at work and sew for herself and the house. Regina lights up talking about the family’s friendship with Mr. Louis Gladstone, who owned Gladstone Fabrics and was the supplier to Radio City “and everyone else in town” in those days. She has fond memories of visiting his legendary fabric emporium (which was not open to the public) as a girl. So even the family’s social life revolved around textiles.
Over the course of her life, Regina’s mom managed to completely fill the basement of their Brooklyn home with rack after rack of fabrics — a few yards each of this, that and the other. And it was all left to Regina, who now has it in her Catskill Mountains home. When asked to describe the height of the stacks of fabric, referring to progress made through selling it gradually, Regina replied, “Now I can see over them.”
Regina sewed when she was younger, although never professionally — she was a social worker and now volunteers in her retirement. But she is a quilter and hangs onto the various cuts of fabric she wants to quilt with. The rest she brings to Made X, a few bags at a time, and she loves watching his face as she pulls out each piece and puts it on the table in front of him. She especially loves it when his eyes widen at a certain textile, and she is in awe of how he transforms each one into a beautiful garment. When asked how she thinks her mom would feel about her fabric stash being sewn up into Made X garments, she said, “I think she would be totally off the wall thrilled.”
We never know what Regina will bring us on any given visit. The trove includes everything from wide-wale corduroy to all sorts of lace, plaid taffetas, novelty prints. And a lot of them simply wouldn’t be made these days, especially the embroidered cottons her mom seems to have had a particular fondness for.
On the day we took these photos, the piles included a mind-blowing giant purple poppy print on a puckered white background, the likes of which none of us had ever seen before (which became a matching Chore Jacket and Shorts, pictured above), and a clear plastic bag stuffed full of the cut pieces of a mini-dress — pattern pieces still attached to each cut piece — along with the mid-century sewing pattern itself. “This was a dress for me,” Regina said. We all marveled at the vintage pattern (Simplicity 7250) and the time capsule of these pieces in their baggie, still ready and waiting.
Back in January, we asked Regina which of the pieces we’ve made from the trove is her personal favorite, and she immediately pointed to the Chore Jacket pictured below, sewn from a hard-to-photograph, watercolor-y, gold-laced brocade, and one of the earliest garments to come out of this arrangement.
But as we like to say around here, every one-of-a-kind item is Cinderella’s slipper, just waiting for its Cinderella to come along. In the case of this jacket, Cinderella arrived on Monday, and we know she and the jacket will be very happy together.
To see the clothes made from Regina’s fabrics, click here. And we also sell some of the fabrics in our Catskill shop — stop by to see what’s available at any given time!
See also:
• The Made X Hudson Mix: New, Vintage and Reworked
• What is Slow Fashion?
• What is Deadstock Fabric?
• What is Zero-Waste Design: A Chat with Kati Lovasz of Kate & Rose
