FIBER ARTISAN

Serendipity and a summer trip to Shaniko, Oregon is how the whole thing started. It wasn’t even clothing design that brought Alice and Jeanne together originally. Alice and her husband Mark met Jeanne and Dan Carver
when they called up to ask for a visitor’s tour of the Imperial Stock Ranch in 2004. “We were fascinated by farms and ranches doing any kind of sustainable agriculture. The tour was so inspiring, to see what smart people could do to live economically well and still practice excellent stewardship of the land and their animals. Then I discovered that this stewardship had evolved even to using the Columbia sheep’s beautiful wool in yarn and garments as well as the lamb skins in clothing and accessories. Somehow I just felt that I had to work with Jeanne and her incredible products.”

Alice has always been fascinated by design and especially design with textiles. “For me, clothing design is three-dimensional problem solving with beautiful materials.” Alice grew up and went to college on the East Coast. She studied Art and Architecture as an undergraduate at Smith College and received a Jean Parr Scholarship from Smith to study Apparel Design at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Since then, Alice’s experiences as a clothing designer have been broad and interesting, involving design in both large and small volume production as well as design and fabric inspiration trips and factory production trips to both Europe and Hong Kong.

Alice came to the West Coast from New York City in 1990 where she had been working as a Design Associate for the clothing company, Episode Inc., a small manufacturer and retailer of high-quality clothing for career women. She moved to Portland to work as a Sportswear Designer for Jantzen, Inc., designing coordinated active sportswear silhouettes. She has also owned and designed for her own custom clothing business, designing special occasion and non-traditional wedding dresses. She has also worked as an assistant buyer for a small Portland-based retailer of fine imported European women’s attire which involved an annual buying trip to Paris.

“Working with Jeanne and the other talented artisans of the Imperial Stock Ranch has been a wonderful new chapter in my career as a designer. I feel so lucky to be working with such a creative and inspired group who in turn all feel inspired by the kind of important and exemplary work that Jeanne and Dan and their staff do on the ranch. It’s an incredible cycle that sustains both heart and soul.”