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May / June / July 2007 |
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Linda Loudermilk |
Art and design often find inspiration in unexpected places. How fitting, then, that Linda Loudermilk arrived in the world of eco-friendly high fashion through theater production and costuming. A sense of drama is palpable in Linda’s unconventional textures and bold silhouettes. More importantly, the philosophy behind Linda’s green-minded designs itself revolves around self-expression, storytelling and performance. |
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It was while studying costume design and theater in Oxford, England that Linda’s passion for clothes blossomed. Linda’s talent soon shone through and she found a benefactor in Isabelle Stevens (an early supporter of Olivier Theyskens) who brought her to Italy to continue her design education. But even as she was drawn towards couture, her fascination with creating narrative and stories through design never abated.
Asked who among her contemporaries she most admires, Linda praises Alexander McQueen – not for his vertiginous cuts or iconoclasm, but for his “masterful execution and storytelling technique.” For Linda, clothes are a natural extension of personal expression: a costume for acting out our own identities in a theater of real life. As she puts it, the sustainable ethos of her clothing is about “bringing out the character in each individual and giving people a vehicle to bring out their own character.”
By her own admission, Linda first began designing without a steadfast allegiance to the environmental movement. But a subsequent serious illness became a kind of epiphany; after recovering with the help of alternative medicine, she felt a nascent belief in spiritual and sustainable issues. Now for more than six years, she has been an exponent of what she calls “luxury eco.” Linda sees it as essential to “reframe the environmental movement in a way that people haven’t seen before, or else we will fall by the wayside of trends.”
Militant environmentalism is conspicuously absent from the Linda Loudermilk brand. At her Los Angeles atelier, Linda makes eminently refined clothes “for the design first.” Like a poet, Linda is inspired by “the oddities of nature: a crack in the road, a weathered building, a knot on a tree.” She translates these organic motifs using Öko-Tex-certified fibers and other innovative materials: reclaimed textiles, bamboo wool, linen-like sasawashi from Japan, and lyocell derived from wood pulp.
With the weft and warp of these sustainable fabrics, Linda spins out a design for environmental living. You might call each of her pieces a roman à terre, a work of love that tells a story of earthly origins and beliefs. And if that sounds overly dramatic – well, that would only be fair.
