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S M A R T. S AV VY. E S S E N T I A L .
BEST OF 2020 READERS NAME THEIR FAV O R I T E P L A C E S , RESTAURANTS AND SHOPS OF THE YEAR
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FIVE STAR REAL ESTATE AGENT AWARD WINNERS (SEE PAGE 74)
CONTENTS VOL. 29 ISSUE 8
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148 BACKSTORY Think Whidbey and Camano islands this holiday season.
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56 12 TO WATCH IN 2021 Keep an eye on these business leaders.
48 BEST COMPANIES Total Merchant Concepts is the top company to work for in the entire state.
50 SPOTLIGHT Major projects are still happening in West Seattle despite a slew of challenges.
52 STATSHOT Prepped to Rebound.
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COCKTAIL CONNOISSEUR Relax with old-school craft cocktails.
SEATTLE’S MOST INFLUENTIAL 25 individuals who stood out during a tumultuous 2020.
AIA HOME OF DISTINCTION A trip to Germany influenced the design of this elegant Issaquah home.
36 HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Favorite independent retailers; giving the gift of experience; several ways to support local restaurants.
12 ESSENTIALS Smoothie sensation; helping our heroes; the stay sober club; vegetarian Chinese soul food; coffee king.
24 HOMELESS TO HOPEFUL Humble Design creates welcoming homes for those transitioning out of homelessness.
26 BACKYARD COTTAGES Several cities have eased restrictions, and MyKabin is taking full advantage.
29 DIGITAL DREAMS Real-estate agents use technology to combat the pandemic.
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68 COOKBOOK COMFORT Escape into the kitchen with Seattle’s top chefs.
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BEST OF 2020 As determined by Seattle magazine readers. SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION:
74 FIVE STAR REAL ESTATE AGENT AWARD WINNERS
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144 FASHION FORWARD How four designers are surviving the pandemic and planning for the future.
54 BIG PIVOT GM Nameplate shifted production to tackle the pandemic head-on.
62 DARING WOMEN Convoy’s Diankha Linear is a forceful advocate for women both inside and outside of her organization.
64 CEO ADVISER The pandemic has fundamentally changed how people think about their wealth.
66 VIRGIN ON BUSINESS Is Boeing going? Don’t rule it out.
Cover photograph by Dan Schlatter
DAN SC H LAT TE R
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F E AT U R E S
ON REFLECTION The state has adapted to remote work.
Arts&Culture FASHION FORWARD These fashion masterminds aren’t letting the pandemic slow them down B Y N AT R U B I O - L I C H T
ELEGANCE AND POWER Kate Mensah wants her designs to reflect women’s empowerment.
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Veronica lynn harper started creating face masks and donated hundreds of them to front-line workers. Kate Mensah sought new outlets to showcase her work. Devon Yan broadened his offering beyond custom-made garments in the absence of in-person events. And being stuck inside gave Jamen Lanogwa time to perfect his designs and launch an e-commerce site. We caught up with four Seattle-area fashion designers to discuss how they’ve been surviving during the pandemic and how they plan to emerge from it.
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ate mensah wanted to be in fashion before she even realized it. One day, a family member sent her a childhood photo. She was strutting down the hallway of her old home, creating a makeshift fashion show.
“I said, ‘Oh, my god. It was already in my blood. I know it,’” Mensah notes. “I love fashion. It was always there.” Mensah is a Seattle-based designer creating elegant and edgy bags. Ranging from petite clutches to large totes, Mensah’s designs are all made with her signature soft leather. Rather than relying on color to make her bags interesting, Mensah uses embossment to create her eye-catching designs. Fashion has been a part of Mensah’s life since she was young. Born in Paris, she has always been surrounded by the arts, but didn’t feel confident enough to start her career in France. She said her confidence increased after she had her son. “Something shifted in me at that time,” Mensah says. “I felt more strong and more powerful.” Mensah moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2000. After seeing her designs, a friend urged her to go in to fashion. Mensah joined the New York Fashion Academy — since renamed the Seattle Fashion Academy — in 2008. Mensah won Best Evening and Cocktail design in the Seamless in Seattle competition in 2011 for her collection of elegant looks primarily made with silk fabrics. In 2012, she launched a collection with Seattle’s Metropolitan Fashion Week, where she was nominated as one of the best designers. Following this, she sold her designs in boutiques across the globe. “The message was going through about empowering mostly women, which is very important for me,” Mensah says. “When I was young, I was raised by my mom. She was doing everything on her own. The strength of being independent and able to build myself up, I think I get this kind of strength from her.” In 2013, Mensah discovered boxing, which helped her blow off steam and feel powerful. She took a break from her work in fashion and turned her focus to the fitness industry, becoming a fitness coach and yoga instructor. Mensah then ventured into designing bags in 2015. She had been doing a few custom-made works for her clients when one of them complimented her on a bag
Mensah had made for herself. The client then asked to order four more of her bags. Mensah designs with women’s empowerment in mind. She says the fabric she uses reminds her of women — soft, but tough. Each of Mensah’s bags is named after a woman in her life, she notes. “I give them the names to show how I help them and support them, and see them in a different way than they see themselves.” The coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on Mensah’s work. She relies on pop-up shops to connect with her clients so they can “know who the designer and the story” is behind her products. However, she has made strides to continue to showcase her work. Mensah took part in The Bellevue Collection’s Independent Designer Showcase for fashion week in September. In the future, Mensah hopes to combine her love of fitness and fashion. She wants to show the importance of connecting inner health and outer beauty with her styling and designs, she says.
CUSTOM CLOTHING Devon Yan’s designs are often created specifically for the person wearing them.
“I think for me it’s just about combining both together and understanding who are the clients, what they want, what they like, what they feel and what is their day-to-day life,” Mensah says. “This is my future … connecting those three elements — fitness, fashion styling and design — to connect deeply with the customer.”
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round nine years ago, Devon Yan applied to be a part of The Bellevue Collection’s first Independent Designer Showcase for fashion week.
He was rejected. But that didn’t stop him from trying again. “At that time, I kind of just used the Independent Designer [Showcase] as kind of my motivation,” Yan said. “I was telling myself: ‘They haven’t picked you; you’re
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creating new designs and “improving my vision,” he says. In 2016, he was selected for the Showcase and won the Independent Designer Runway Show. Yan considers his biggest accomplishment to be his confidence. Though Yan’s father was an opera singer in Southern China, his parents were not supportive of him wanting to pursue the arts as a career. Yan studied public administration in college, but spent his free time learning about design and honing his art skills. It took him a long time to believe in himself as an artist, he says. “I try to tell people who want to be designers ... just keep that in mind it’s not going to be easy. But the reality [is], nothing is easy,” Yan says. “You just need to believe in your passion. You just need to believe in yourself.” The pandemic has shut down most of Yan’s work. Demand dropped for his custom-made designs due to restrictions on in-person events. However, he’s been focusing his work on creating accessories rather than custom-made garments. Yan doesn’t like to talk about the future. He prefers to take things one design at a time, always making sure he’s improving from before. However, he hopes to stay current and consistently release collections through Devonation. “As an independent designer, completing collections is not easy,” he says. “If you’re able to see Devonation constantly having new collections, that means people are still liking it.”
NEW IDEAS Jamen Lanogwa has spent time in quarantine building on his luxury aesthetic of classic and edgy designs.
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not good enough. So I had to figure out a way to somehow make it better.’” This year, Yan celebrates a decade of creating designs under his label, Devonation, and his second time appearing in The Bellevue Collection’s Showcase. His “fashion forward” designs are one of a kind, ranging from the bright colors of his Wild Garden collection to the intricate and elegant patterns of his Super Natural looks. Many of his designs are custom made and specifically created for the needs of the person wearing them.
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“I’m really into pulling out people’s personality,” Yan says. Yan’s first step into the world of fashion was in 2009 when he launched his first collection at Portland Fashion Week, filled with black-and-white, high-contrast looks. Yan then started Devonation, and he and his husband moved to Seattle a year later. After not being chosen to be a part of the Independent Designer Showcase the first time, Yan buckled down. He spent years
“From then on, I realized that I didn’t have to settle for what was on the racks,” Lanogwa says. “I could actually do it myself, and make it fit me how I wanted it to.” Lanogwa has come a long way from redesigning gym clothes. He is the owner of Saziru, a Seattle-based luxury fashion brand serving looks that are both classic and edgy. Inspired by the aesthetics of Audrey Hepburn, Yohji Yamamoto and Shaka Zulu, Lanogwa combines elegance, modernity and his African roots to create his pieces. Lanogwa first conceived Saziru when he
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amen lanogwa was in the 10th grade when he first got a taste for design. He disliked the baggy fit of his high school track uniform and transformed it into something more form fitting and comfortable.
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e-commerce availability at his fashion show next August. “I have elaborate ideas of how I want to design things and create and work with different people,” Lanogwa says. “Everything just seems to be snowballing for me. The future looks pretty good.”
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hen veronica lynn harper first started designing her own clothes four years ago, she often caught the attention of strangers. She and her friends have been stopped on the street by people asking to get a closer look at her designs. Once, a woman in her 80s stopped her in the airport and asked about a bag she had made.
THE BIG PICTURE Veronica Lynn Harper is exploring ways to grow her business post-pandemic.
“I see a lot of people attracted to certain patterns and certain colors, and I’ve never had that with any other type of artwork before,” Harper says. “I realized that I had something special, something that people could connect with.” Harper is the founder of Mother Earth Fine Art, an independent fashion brand selling clothing, bags and accessories, and
most recently, face masks. Her patterns are all individually hand painted, combining a traditional medium with modern, vibrant styles to create unique looks. Harper pulls inspiration from many sources. The natural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest inspire her vivid, watercolor-style patterns, which take her anywhere from one to 10 minutes each to create. She purposefully paints while listening to music to capture the energy of different genres in her designs. When people purchase items with certain patterns, she can often tell what kind of music they like, she notes. “It’s like they’re wearing themselves outwardly, versus just wearing a color,” Harper explains. “There’s so much more depth to what the designs truly mean.” When the pandemic started, Harper shifted her focus to creating face masks. Her mother and sister work in health care on the East Coast and struggled with the limited supply of personal protective equipment. Harper donated her first round of 300 face masks to health care workers in Pennsylvania. Interest in her face masks boomed when she put them on her website. In the first month, she says sales hit $25,000. She created a hashtag, #MatchTheMask, for people to match their makeup, hair, nails and looks to their Mother Earth Fine Art masks. “This is something that I have to wear on my face, and if it’s something that they can connect with and can match their outfits with, it’s more of a positive thing versus a negative thing,” Harper says. Harper’s next step is partnering with boutiques to sell her products and host pop-ups. She’s also working on bringing more of her digital background into her work, such as creating virtual runways and AR experiences that “bring the patterns to life.” “We can make art just to make art, or we can make art to create positive change,” Harper states. “But if I can create things that make people feel amazing, and if I can do that on a grand scale, it just brings that much more happiness into the world.” SEATTLEMAG.COM
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was in college at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He scribbled the logo on a napkin one day and a friend created a digital version of it. At that point, Lanogwa and his friends only got as far as making a few hats. After more than two years of running track professionally and working retail jobs, Lanogwa moved from Texas to Seattle in 2016 to pursue Saziru on his own. His retail work helped him become familiar with “the business side” of the fashion industry. “I decided I was going to pick it up from the back burner and put it on the front burner,” he says. “I feel like that was the best decision I ever made.” When he was first getting the brand started in Seattle, he met Amber Snyder, then an aspiring model. After Lanogwa was stood up on a date, he sat alone on a park bench wearing a sweatshirt he had made. Snyder saw and sat next to him, complimenting his design. They talked and exchanged numbers. A year and a half later, she got a text from Lanogwa offering her a modeling job. Now, Snyder is the model for many of Lanogwa’s pieces. “He’s a caring, kind and genuine person, and he and I feel like all of those different qualities really come out in all of this work,” Snyder adds. “Every time that I’ve gotten together and collaborated with him, it’s an amazing experience.” Snyder walked the runway in his first fashion show last year, True Colors, in a black-and-white, highlow plaid dress he made. The dress caught the attention of Clint Eastwood’s granddaughter, Graylen, who asked Lanogwa to remake it for her. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Lanogwa found a silver lining. Though he had to stop shopping at his go-to fabric store, Pacific Fabrics, and canceled his annual fashion show, being stuck inside has given him more time and inspiration to design. “I’ve been pumping out a lot of designs and working with a lot of different photographers and models that are willing to meet up during these times. I’ve been able to just hone in and do my thing,” Lanogwa says. The next step for Saziru is e-commerce, Lanogwa adds. He plans to launch Saziru’s