Upcycled Clothing Maker Kate Marr
My name is Kate Marr, and I repurpose fabric to make wearable forms of art.
Though I have always been creative, I never thought my pursuit of art would turn to clothing. I come from a very creative family: my dad started as a model maker, my grandfather is a photographer, my uncle is a cartoonist and digital artist, and my mom is so witty that we say it is her own artform. This environment nurtured my own creativity throughout my childhood and teenage years. I took art classes throughout middle school and high school and always practiced it as my favorite hobby.
I never, however, considered it as the sort of thing I could pursue as a career. I did mostly watercolor and pen and ink portraits: the sort of thing you have to be amazing at to stand out from everyone else. I loved doing it, but I did not have the momentum or the sense of purpose I would later discover in my clothing design brand; it made sense to pursue other things. So, at Merrimack College, I decided to study marketing, which I found to be the perfect intersection of a reliable business field and the creativity I had grown up with.
I did not take a single art class in college, but I continued it in my free time along with doodling extravagant cartoons in the margins of my class notes. In fact, I ended up incorporating my art into clothing quite randomly. In my junior year of college, a friend had accumulated several pairs of old jeans that she was not wearing anymore. On a whim, I asked to keep them and began painting the back pockets with our university colors and emblem. My friends modeled the jeans for my photoshoots, and we started wearing them to games and around campus. Then, in an attempt to spend more time with my Nana—an extraordinary needleworker—I asked her to teach me how to sew, which ultimately became a useful skill in my design projects.
At first, it was small and simple: just something fun I did for myself, my friends, and my family. But, then, it began to pick up traction, and I started accumulating so much material that I decided to open an Instagram page and try to sell some of it. From there, the business began to come to life. I put my marketing skills in practice as I developed my brand and color schemes (my last name is hidden in the design of my logo!).
I realized how much I despised fast fashion, recognizing that it is a waste of both material and money. I found the purpose that was missing from my earlier traditional art: to recycle fabrics by making quality staple pieces that can be adapted to different trends just like a canvas. Think of how much cleaner the earth would be if everyone recycled just one article of clothing each. I came up with the name “Awear Apparel” as a union of art-wear and being aware of the positive impact of repurposed fabric.
I graduated from Merrimack in 2019 and continued Awear Apparel on the side when I got hired as an assistant director of marketing at MIT Recreation. I saved up and purchased a sewing machine, so I did not have to continue sewing by hand. My father—a man that I am convinced knows just about everything—helped me set it up and even taught me how to use it by helping me practice straight stitches and learn about thread tension.
Since Awear Apparel has expanded, I have stopped relying on my friends’ old clothing and now actively look for fabric to repurpose. I often thrift shop and also order bulk materials from stocks of clothing that are about to be sent to the landfill. You never know what you might get in these boxes, which can be anywhere from five to twenty-five pounds, but oftentimes I am pleasantly surprised. I love the idea that I am giving them a second chance at the very last moment.
People ask me how I come up with my designs, and while sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a crazy idea, a lot of my items are created in the moment. I find that too much structure eliminates my creativity, and my favorite pieces have been the product of my scissors and gut instinct. My favorite material to work with is denim, especially the thicker and sturdier kind used in men’s jeans. I try to select the fabric by feel rather than brand in order to make products that can be truly lived in without slowing you down and thrown in the wash without a second thought. In the beginning, however, a lot of it came down to trial and error. The human form is just difficult to decorate, and clothes on a body look much different than clothes laid out on the floor.
I have greatly enjoyed being able to experiment with different ways of being environmentally conscious. It has always been a concern of mine; as a kid, I participated in a lot of trash-pick-up recycling programs with my youth groups. Now I am looking into incorporating fabric made from recyclable matter, like plastic water bottles or fish nets, into more of my staple designs. Another goal of mine is to eventually commit full time to Awear Apparel and expand the company, because running a one-woman business is hard and, sometimes, there is more demand than I have time to fulfill.
Another difficulty I have faced throughout my pursuit of Awear Apparel is justifying it as a worthy business endeavor in the face of other more traditional careers. Sometimes it is just hard to explain to people and to make them understand. What I am doing does not have a set path and there is certainly no safety net, but it still has purpose, and grit, and teeth. Society undervalues artists, and I have been working hard to defend not only my creative expression but also other small businesses. At the end of the day, small businesses are the ones with the most heart and the most meaning behind the products we provide.
Thank you so much for reading about my little business. Go out and use your creativity today!
Kate Marr