Before I tell you a bit about me, I would like to thank you for visiting and exploring my website. Your interest and all your comments and emails are most warmly welcomed, appreciated and a pleasure. Sharing thoughts is inspiring and builds appreciation of cultural diversity. Thank you!

I was born in Portland, Oregon and involved with art from an early age. In a dreamy way, I would find myself absentmindedly sketching on whatever crossed my path ... including sheets, walls and even telephone books. In grade school I felt proudly designated (though as I write this I realize that my teachers were probably just relieved to have an enthusiastic volunteer) as the bulletin board maverick. And in high school, whenever the potter's wheel was free, I could be found, spinning away, even if it meant skipping the lunch break or slipping out of ... .

Growing up I studied whatever art classes were intriguing, varying from - calligraphy, pottery, watercolor, Chinese painting - and more - at the School for Arts and Crafts (now the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts.) Portland has always had a strong craft community perhaps due to the powerful natural surrounding and materials drawn from nature and this was an exciting, hands-on environment. All my teachers, each and every one of them, were sincere about their work and dedicated to sharing it with their students. I wish I could mention each one by name, but one example that comes to mind is the painter who introduced me to water color, Henk Pender. He would squiggle globs of cadmium yellow or cobalt blue on the table, and talk about the meaning and nuances of the colors, as he blended them with his hands. The experience of going from a child's box of tempera paints into the richness of tubes of fine watercolors through his knowledgeable enthusiasm remains today a breathtaking event. All the teachers brought their materials and love of their crafts to the students, finding ways to take us deeply into the techniques in an atmosphere fostering freedom of expression rather than structure or critic of the final results.

Enrolled in Foundation Art at Pratt Institute, I headed to New York. Again, the teachers were amazing artists who explored with us colors, shape, drawing, painting, patterns, history and thoughts and ideas. Dormitory rooms were imaginatively reinvented by the students. It was numbing to me, thrust into a place so different from the woods of Portland. Being in New York also opened me to the possibility of fashion as a métier which drew me to transfer to Parsons School of Design and it's affiliate school, the progressive New School where I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts. Parson's fostered an atmosphere of competitiveness and goals, with the top designers pulled from the city as our critics. At the New School we had a broad diversity of New York City professionals who would drop in to teach a course dealing with the hot political and social topics of the moment. All three schools revealed a broad world of possibilities and people, the creative process and how to develop ones skills and interests. I learned from my studies, that one can acquire the professional skills of drawing, painting, and fashion designing with guidance and practice. At Parsons I was awarded the Norman Norell Merit Scholarship, a few Gold Thimbles, volunteered at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the legendary Diana Vreeland, worked at Barney's and practically lived in New York's museums and galleries.

Tapped by Calvin Klein to be an assistant on his designer collection even before graduating, I am grateful to have been under his influence during formative years as well as the Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, Francis Stein, Zack Carr and John Calcagno.

While briefly teaching Fashion Illustration at Parsons, I met Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel, who sent me to Fenn, Wright and Manson, which was followed by Paul Alexander, the high-end women's collection that I initiated and designed for several years.

Family called and I enjoyed a time-out from fashion.

Instigated by my love of how global culture and beauty inspire fashion, how our lifestyle is changing and being shaped by the internet and awareness of our shared environmental priorities, I am active again, and recently wrote Denim Revolution. Filled with DIY designs from recycled denim it was released in May by Potter Craft of Random House. The book is like looking through a catalog of a denim wardrobe, except that everything can be yours for just the fun of making it yourself from old jeans. I adored making the projects, sewing, sketching and writing and hope it captures your imagination to recycle creatively.

Visit my blog, 21centurydressmakers where I open my sketch book. You will find DIY projects, fashion finds, what inspires my lifestyle as well as a free monthly calender formatted as a screensaver.

AND, visit JeanRepair, a brand new home for everything you need to muse and wonder about as you plan to mend, repair and refashion your old jeans with some tender loving care!

Best wishes,

Nancy