June 3, 2020
She's so much more than a patternmaker - Get to know the "Jill-of-all-trades"
One of Asiatica’s luckiest days was 30 years ago when a florist friend inquired whether we might have any work for his sister-in-law who just moved from San Francisco to Lawrence, Kansas. She had worked for Esprit. I responded that perhaps we might be able to offer a few irregular hours, but I was not hopeful that we would have the need to gainfully employ someone with such professional skills.
Before Angela, our patterns had been made by an irregular group, finally including a strict, part-time French dressmaker who taught us to use hard-paper instead of grocery bags for pattern making.
The day Angela arrived helped us leap toward professionalizing our whole business. It turned out that we had plenty of need for her skills. She became invaluable immediately and has remained so ever since. She is our trunk show mainstay, our technical consultant on rack assembly, electronic hookups, loading dock design, etc. Most importantly a wonderful friend and team member.
Q. What was your first sewing project? Who taught you to sew?
ANGELA: There is a long tradition of sewing on my mother's side. She made clothes for me, curtains and bedspreads, etc. At a young age I had a toy sewing machine. Trying to use it caused me no end of frustration! My mother couldn't take seeing me get so upset and mad. So she quietly got rid of the thing. When I got older and wanted to learn how to sew, she suggested that I should learn to sew by hand first. I did not have the patience for that, so did not actually use a sewing machine until Home Ec. in seventh grade, where I made a simple dirndl skirt and later used a commercial pattern to make a jumper. Neither were particularly successful, but it was a start. A couple of years later, I started sewing carefully following the instructions that came with the patterns and had a great deal of success making outfits for myself. During college summers, I worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Co. teaching sewing classes to teens and also to customers who had recently purchased new machines.
Above: A kimono style dress Angela made for an assignment while at Pratt.
Q. What inspired you to study fashion?
ANGELA: My mother was an artist, in particular a portrait painter, so I grew up drawing and painting. I loved making paper dolls and drawing different outfits. I must have been 10 or 11, when a neighbor commented that one could do this as a job. I had never heard this before, and from that time on, I pretty much focused on taking that route. In high school I wrote a fashion column for the school paper, and made costumes for plays.
Q. Tell us about your education in fashion and patternmaking.
ANGELA: I graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with a BA degree in Fashion Design.
Q. When did you start working at Asiatica?
ANGELA: I started working for Asiatica back in 1990 about six months after we moved to Lawrence, KS from the San Francisco bay area where I was a patternmaker for Esprit.
Q. Describe your role and responsibilities at Asiatica.
ANGELA: At Asiatica I develop patterns for new styles, working with our team from photographs, sketches, "fashion research," or modifying and updating existing styles. After we fine tune the new style, I grade the pattern into the sizes we will need, usually XS-XL. Often our customers need adjustments to solve fit issues or to suit their taste. In those cases, I work from their personal measurements to develop patterns for them, or what we call a "COP" (Customer's Own Pattern). We keep those patterns for many years so that the customer can reorder the style in different fabrics. This is much different from the patternmaking I had done previously. For my previous jobs, I worked only in a standard sample size and the grading was sent out to be done by a grading service. It was rare that I would see someone outside of the office wearing the styles I had worked on.
Q. What do you like best about your job? Least?
ANGELA: The best thing about my job is the variety of duties. In developing new styles, I do sketches, which is always fun. And working out a new pattern is satisfying as solving a puzzle. Making the COP's is always an adventure in problem solving. It is very rewarding when a customer is pleased with the result of my efforts. During trunk shows we are lucky to get a direct response from our clients, something not every designer or patternmaker gets very often. It is exciting to see our styles come alive on the body of each person who tries on a garment. My co-workers are a very congenial group, and fun to work with, so that is a plus! It is hard to say what I like least. There is so much variety that I stay interested and entertained most of the time.
Angela's Desk at Asiatica
Q: Where did you live before Kansas?
ANGELA: I was born in New York City and grew up in Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson River about 15 miles north of the city. It was and is a lovely small town, a great place to grow up, and a short train ride from Grand Central Station and the excitement of New York City. So, growing up I felt that I had the best of two worlds.
Q: Tell us about your family and life in Lawrence.
ANGELA: I live in the college town of Lawrence, KS with my husband, Michael Morley. We have a family business, Sipsmart Building Systems and also run an Air BnB. So we stay very busy. My children live on the coasts. My son is a metal fabricator and designer in Rhode Island and my daughter is a clothing designer for Bonobos menswear in NYC. My stepdaughter is an ICU nurse in San Francisco. Having my children so spread out, I have been very lucky to have been able to visit them while traveling on Asiatica trunk shows.
Q: What is your taste in music and books?
ANGELA: My taste in music definitely comes from my parents. My dad was very into music of the big band era. Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in particular. My mother's tastes ran more to classical and folk. Plus she played the piano. So I got exposed to many types of music. My father was a sheet metal worker who made patterns in sheet metal for HVAC ducting, using large tin snips to cut the metal, not so far from what I do cutting out a pattern. A neighbor who had been an English teacher exposed me to current fiction, such as Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
Q: What’s your favorite easy meal to cook?
ANGELA: Summer or Winter? In the summer I love to grab some basil from the garden to make pesto. One of my favorite things to do with it is combine it with white beans, pasta and chopped roasted broccoli. Come to think of it, it is a favorite winter meal, too, as I usually have some pesto in the freezer from the previous season. In winter, I love to make sausage and peppers with polenta. Quick, easy and delicious!
Q: How are you keeping busy these days?
ANGELA: During the pandemic, I have been learning some new skills...knitting a complicated cable sweater for my grandson from a chart, and after watching a YouTube video, giving my husband some pretty good haircuts. There has been lots of time for gardening and taking walks. I made a bunch of masks for family, friends and neighbors and I have sewn clothes for my grandchildren on the east coast. We have also been very excited to have a family of owls raising their babies in view of our kitchen window. It became something of a neighborhood attraction, and now that the owls have left their initial tree, we see them daily in our yard.