News

I hadn’t given much thought to that little apple tree in our backyard since we moved in 6 months ago.  I spent the summer dipping my toes into gardening and cherished my small harvests of tomatoes and peppers (when I say small, I think we only got three tiny peppers), but eating fruit that just happened to be growing on a tree that I could see from my kitchen window was entirely new to me.  So when my neighbor asked me if I was going to do anything with our apples, I shrugged and laughing told her to take them all! Not too long ago, in a podcast interview I did with Lindsay Krage, she said something that really took...

If you’ve been keeping up with the happenings around here, you know that last week we wrapped up pre-sales for our loungewear capsule (our campaign was 103% funded!)  If you missed out on funding our first round of production and receiving 30% off each of our six lounge-worthy pieces, we have some good news for you… Through the funds raised during our pre-sales campaign, not only are we able to fulfill our pre-sales orders.  We are also able to fund production of limited runs to carry on our online shop! And I have some even better news….. As of today, you can find our loungewear capsule on Market45.  Market45 is an ethical fashion marketplace featuring 20 independent brands that value...

As I write this post, we have ten days left to raise $7K.  We are well over halfway through our campaign and we are 51% funded.   So, it’s going to be close. I feel like the moments after I finished taking my drivers test, when the instructor and I were both sitting in the car.  Me, behind the wheel looking anxiously over at him.  Him, looking at his clipboard with a furrowed brow.  “Well,” he told me, as he calculated my score, “it’s close.”   I did pass that drivers test, after all, but that is neither here nor there, really.  And I am coming to realize that about this campaign as well.    Oprah says, there is no...

Our “factory” is really more of a studio space.  It is located in the heart of NorthEast Minneapolis in the city’s art district.  Every single garment is made by hand by women who have a lot of passion for making garments the right way.  We had a list of ethical factories in the US that we were gearing up to work with when we realized that wasn’t the right fit for us.  We wanted to have a more personal relationship with the women sewing our product. After all, we see clothing and its creation as a relationship of mutual respect between wearer, producer, and designer.  So we partnered with Abby, a Minneapolis gal who has amazing experience and immense passion...

I knew that our loungewear could be a lot better.  I wanted to challenge the idea that synthetic yoga pants, thin leggings, and bulky knits were the only way to do loungewear.  And although I do have an affinity for knits and they are used in this collection, I saw a lot of potential in woven fabrics to make loungewear that was both professional and also comfortable.    Finding the right fabrics for this collection was super important to me when I set out to create this loungewear capsule.  I definitely didn’t get it right on the first try.  It took a lot of sampling and performance testing before I found the four fabrics that would prove to the perfect...

For the past two and a half years I have been making small batch ethical women’s wear.  This passion project of mine started because I wanted to contribute to the movement that was using fashion for good.  I have always believed in the potential for our products to contribute to a better world.  But it wasn’t until a combination of events in my own life changed how I view my own purchases, that my eyes were opened to how much greater this potential was than I had ever realized. The three events that changed my perspective on my purchases were these: My dad’s cancer diagnosis that lead me to put a much greater emphasis on health and wellness.  I learned...

If you have been hanging around here, I hope you have heard me talk about our capsule collection that launched today! There are so many reasons why I wanted to create this collection and so many reasons why I am really proud of it.  It represents a pivot in the Nine56 label away from creating just pretty and sustainable clothing and towards creating pretty and sustainable clothing that can be a starting point for wellness and actually facilitates our work.  There is a lot more to come about this shift and why it’s so important to me.  But I wanted to focus this post on our pre-sales launch and how it will work.    Today we launched pre-sales for our...

I could give you a list of a million reasons how simplifying your lifestyle is the best thing you can do for yourself.  Let’s get real, I totally go on tangents about how this lifestyle change has done wonders for my mental, physical, and emotional health and all of the other ways that it has changed my life.  But here’s the thing, it is not something that happens all at once.  It is not a magical switch that you flip and suddenly your life is an easy, breezy simplicity haven.  Nope.  The work is hard and the changes are slow.  There are still so many changes that I want to make in my lifestyle.  But I am tackling them slowly,...

If you hear the words ethical and sustainable and roll your eyes, you are not the only one.  The sad truth is that these are becoming buzz words used by brands to market their products to be attractive to the increasingly more mindful consumer.  And here’s the thing, although these companies make pretty promises, they are far less clear about how sustainability is implemented into their supply chain.  So I made this list of things that I think you should know about a brand before you support them.    And you guys, let’s get real, you probably won’t know the answers to all of these questions.  That doesn’t make you a bad consumer.  This list is definitely not meant to...

It happens to us all.  At some point or another every single one of us is going to run into overwhelm and get plain tuckered out from trying to do too much.  This is a space that I am always trying to get away from.  Some days I am better at it than others.  But for the days that I am really feeling that I don’t have enough steam to keep going, here are 5 questions I ask myself: 1. What really needs to be on my plate? If you have been on my blog before at all, you have probably heard me talk about this.  It’s kinda my soapbox issue.  And here’s why: today there is so much pressure...