Emma Constant Clothing

The Story Behind the Brand and Sustainable Slow Fashion

by Courtney Ramos

Eemmalee is a local self-made clothing designer and a mother of a beautiful daughter. Involved in the community with dance and different organizations in Humboldt County for thirteen years. She has had her business Emma Constant Clothing and Goods advocating slow fashion full-time for two years. She grew up sewing and was around women who loved to sew. Celebrating her black-owned clothing line, here is her story. Tell us how you started sewing.

My grandmother and my mother both taught me how to sew. My mother always had a sewing and art room full of drawings, pens, notions, photographs and I would sneak in there and play with everything. There was always that magical sense of creating in my childhood because of the artistic abilities of the women in my family. My Grandmother opened an alteration shop in downtown Chicago in the late 50s. For a Black woman to own her own shop during that time was a really big deal and her story of bravery, style, class, work ethic and resourcefulness has been passed through the generations.

Now as I sit at my own little studio shop I think of my mother and Grandmother often and of times in my childhood when we would sit together and dream of one day owning our own shop together. I made my first sewing project in high school with my grandmother’s help. I designed and sketched three skirts, and my grandmother helped me put them together. When I was able to envision a piece and take something and be able to manipulate it to create something beautiful and useful, that’s when I really fell in love with the process. To me it is my own form of alchemy to continually learn from.

How did you create your brand? What are your values behind the brand?

Originally, my brand was named Ginger Luv, after my Grandmother’s creative business. I hadn’t sewn much since high school but I inherited my mothers sewing machine when she passed away five years ago. My daughter was three months old and it was a really hard time to lose my mother. I didn’t have much time or drive since I was a new Mom and I was busy trying to find ways that I could help to support my family. At that time I was able to be a stay at home mother and sewing was also something I could do fairly easily at home and it also made me feel connected to my mother.

As I began to create more and establish myself as a maker I realized that there was a movement happening with the online sewing world. A lot of women were empowering themselves by creating their own clothing and having conversations about the environmental issues around the fashion industry. Once I started researching I knew I wanted to create a fashion brand that would be about sustainability, about craftsmanship, about generational knowledge and craft, and about a celebration of culture. I strive to show the importance of quality over quantity and to help educate people about slow fashion and everything it encompasses. continued on next page

What was Ginger Love initially?

Ginger love was my Grandmother’s creative business after retiring from her alteration and dressmaking shop in Chicago and moving to a small town in Kentucky. Ginger Luv was her first time for her to express herself through her textile art however she wanted. Many of the quilts were the traditional nine block quilts with lil’ brown children in the eight surrounding blocks and a big heart in the middle. One day I asked her why she called it Ginger Luv, she said “because the color of each child’s skin on the quilt was like a cinnamon stick” but Grannny I said it’s GINGER Luv ‘’ she just laughed and so did I.

I grew up under these quilts with lil children who looked just like me smiling up at me.

My daughter has 4 of her Great Grandmother’s quilts, and a couple dolls. They are so precious to me and a constant reminder of the spark that started a generational dream. That is what Ginger Luv is, it’s that spark.

What does your brand stand for? What is the culture behind your business?

So when I started sewing after I had Alma, I asked my grandma “ Can I continue the family business of ginger love?” And it was actually funny because I was making clothes and adding African indigo and just had my own vibe and my own style. When she saw what I was doing, she was like, “This is not ginger love!”

That was when I was first getting started and I kept the name Ginger Luv even though I had been denied it by my grandmother. HA. But one day I was talking to a mentor about my brand and what I wanted to create and how far I had already come. She suggested changing the brand name to my name and I thought of what my Grandmother had said. I changed my name this past year, to Emma Constant. It really felt in line with my brand, my business and with what I want to create. A brand that represents my story, my mothers and my grandma’s story of a black woman making a way to support their family and feed their creativity through art. I embodied everything about my ancestors’ story and my Grandmother’s legacy. And so me having this brand is like my own homage to her and continuing our lineage of women’s seamstresses. It’s really important to me, my brand is really about slow fashion and craftsmanship and the importance of mastering a skill and having the creations from that skill last a long time and really be cherished. The idea of creating heirlooms and breaking the cycle of fast fashion, investing in creations that people can cherish.

What is Slow Fashion, and how do you incorporate that?

Slow fashion is about getting back to a sense of pride in the clothing we wear. It’s about a shared story that you can feel good about investing your money into. It’s about using less, making less, buying less and finding the truth worth of the phrase less is more. I know it might seem silly to create a clothing business around buying less clothes! Worldwide, people consume about 80 billion items of clothing per year. Americans consume more clothing than any other country on Earth. All of this contributes to the clothing industry being one of the world’s largest polluters, second only to the oil industry. It’s about the choice to limit scale and by doing so, limit impact. It’s about sustainable practices in all aspects of our lives but especially what we interact with on a daily basis. The slow fashion is a movement that is not only happening in fashion but in many different areas in life i.e. all the people leaving corporate america to buy land and reconnect with a simpler way of life, a slower way of life. To connect deeper with the Earth that is suffering right now and moves through a complex network of natural recycling processes, and these processes are slow.

What is Sustainable Fashion?

Sustainable fashion is a big topic and there are entire books on it so it’s hard to know what exactly to say here. I guess my main point to press is if you’re reading this and you never considered sustainable fashion please do a quick google search on environmental impact on the fast fashion industry. I promise it won’t take long to jump on this bandwagon! I guess another thing to think about is once you decide to shop more sustainably, what next? There are a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon just to make sales so before you shop from a place ask them where they get their fabrics from? Do they pay their employees a decent living wage? Find out who exactly is making your clothes! It’s really important to know. And if you are shopping from a company that is truly sustainable and takes pride in what they are creating, asking questions will probably be a really enjoyable experience. I love telling my clients about the fabrics I create with, each one has a story and I get excited to share it.

What inspires you?

I get a lot of inspiration from my story, from thinking of my mother and my grandmother who have both passed.

I have a distinct memory of me as a child, driving around Old Colorado City with my grandma and my mom. Old Colorado City is older than downtown and filled with quaint brick buildings and lil shops everywhere. Whenever we would see little buildings for rent or for sale my mom would be like, Oh, let’s start Ginger Luv in there and we’ll make quilts and dolls and sew together. And, you know, it was just kind of a dream that they would joke about. But for me as a little girl it sounded like heaven to me. I would imagine all of us just sewing and creating in a beautiful lil shop. I think of that story a lot and sometimes when I’m sitting there alone sewing, I think about them and I wish they were here. They are my inspiration and planted a seed which I am now nourishing and growing.

My daughter also is a huge inspiration for how I choose to create and live. She’s really proud of me for what I do, and I wanted her to see me working hard towards something I love, and something I am passionate about. Even though she sees me working ridiculously hard and sometimes not having enough or sometimes upset, it’s ok! I wanted her to see all the facets of someone who really fights for what they believe in and fights for their art. It’s really important to me.

What would you like to see with small business owners/designers in the local community?

I’m super inspired by small business owners and I know how hard it is and I’m in awe and I love learning from people. I love learning different methods. I love how open, and this is just from my experience, I’ve had really good experiences with other small business owners and people just being open to share and see each other succeed. It’s like a very supportive community and everyone’s trying to uplift each other, locally, especially here in the Humboldt community. I’ve had so many people wanna bounce ideas around or will just sit with me and help me try to figure out where I’m stuck.

I feel everyone is real down to support each other through this journey because it is a lot to have a small business and most people are doing all facets of the business.The accounting, the scheduling, the plan like is just so much the, the financing, the marketing, the Instagram, like, it’s just so many different facets. And so when people create small communities and help each other figure all this out, which is what I’ve experienced, it’s really amazing and makes you feel not so alone. I’m really happy that I’m a part of the small business community and I use Instagram and I follow so many small businesses throughout the country and it just makes me feel proud to be a part of this movement. I love seeing all these different kinds of people finding their art and their passions and following it. It inspires me also. So yeah, that’s another thing that inspires me.

What’s your website? Where do you sell? How can people contact you?

Instagram has been working well for me @emmaconstant I do small batch collections and you can follow me there and DM me if you wanna buy. And keeping it pretty simple and it’s working out really well. You can also check out my website emmaconstant.com.