Line We Love: Ace & Jig
1
By Emily Kropp
in Line We Love
on August 30, 2011
Featuring beautiful, soft fabrics and wonderfully wearable designs, Ace & Jig is a line we can't get enough of. We sat down with designers Cary and Jenna to learn more about their process and their fall collection.
During a recent, spur-of-the-moment trip to the Of A Kind sample sale at the Ace Hotel, we fell in love with the beautiful creations of Cary Vaughan and Jenna Wilson, the ladies behind Ace & Jig. The hallmark of their laid-back, feminine designs is the soft, handloomed textiles they use, all of which they design themselves. Cary and Jenna have been friends for 10 years and previously worked together at LaROK before decided to branch out on their own together. We bought a few of their pieces for ourselves, and obsession took hold after just a few wears. We had to learn more about Ace & Jig and wondeful women that make it all happen.
StyledOn: The textiles you work with are so special – can you tell us how you pick and source them?
Cary and Jenna: We design them from scratch. We are textile enthusiasts, if you will - we both have vast personal collections of antique textiles and reference those a lot when creating a new fabric. We have taken apart so many old quilts to see how many ends of yarn were used in creating a specific texture. It’s a long technical process and we end up just playing around with different thread counts and textures until we get to a finished handloom that we like. We then wash all our fabrics so they are pre-shrunk and have a really soft hand feel.
SO: Your baja hoodie is one of our favorite Ace & Jig pieces. How would you style it?
C&J: It’s the perfect item to throw in your bag and hit the beach. Over your bikini with jean cut offs!
SO: What’s the best part about working together?
C&J: We have known each other and worked together for the past 10 years. We even lived together and we are our children’s godmothers. But this is the first time we have worked for ourselves! So, what’s not to like when you work with your best friend? Some days we burn the midnight oil and other days we break at 4:00 for a beer, but we always finish each other’s sentences!
SO: Do you have any advice for budding designers?
C&J: Focus on your product. Spend your energy there. If you make good clothes, sales and press should naturally follow.
SO: What were your inspirations for fall?
C&J: We never really have a specific narrative for each season. We do, however, really have fabric stories and our silhouettes change sort of depending on what we are feeling at the time. For Fall, we created this really cool grey doublegauze fabric - a version of a vintage grey jersey but in a woven, inspired by our favorite vintage grey sweatshirt. Although it was really hard to get that faded look , and the right shade of grey, we played around with a lot of textures and we were so happy with the end product. One side is this faded out grey stripe and the other is this darker deeper charcoal that is more like a solid. We used both sides as the face of our fabric in our collection. The best thing about having your own business - you really get to follow your intuition.
SO: What’s the most treasured item in your closet?
C&J: We both bought our antique lace wedding dresses from the same woman, Jana Starr. She has an amazing collection of 18th and 19th century lace dresses. She used to have a little shop packed full of treasures on the upper east side but it may be closed now. Oh gosh, we loved her shop. We wanted everything in there. You can still find some of her items here.
SO: Who are designers that you admire?
C&J: Zandra Rhodes, Tsumori Chisato, Kapital Japan.
SO: What can we expect from Ace & Jig next?
C&J: Our first fashion show presenting our Spring 2012 collection! We were selected to be a part of GENART’s Fresh Faces show being held on Sept 9th. Very honored and extremely excited!
To find out where you can shop Ace & Jig, see here.
How would you style an Ace & Jig baja hoodie?