Liesl Alice Gatcheco | Opera Opulence

In this episode of Inspired Design, Liesl Alice Gatcheco, Director of Costumes, Hair and Makeup at Seattle Opera reveals what it takes to bring a performance to life. Learn how Playboy altered her career path and how she is now paying tribute to traditional opera while developing modern performances that culturally represent our world today.

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Seattle Opera is a cultural icon of a major world city that speaks to all communities of, and visitors to, the Puget Sound region.

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By drawing our community together and by offering opera’s unique fusion of music and drama, we create life-enhancing experiences that speak deeply to people’s hearts and minds.

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Episode Transcript

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Something in my mind I can have made by professionals in the costume shop is such an incredible opportunity. I don’t know, I can’t even tell you the feeling that you get when you see something that was just an idea and then suddenly there’s this singer wearing it, breathing life into it. And you see a story being told and people affected by it, I love being part of that.

Gina Colucci:
I’m Gina Colucci with the Seattle Design Center. Every week on Inspired Design, we sit down with an iconic creator in a space that inspires them. This time on Inspired Design, Liesl Alice Gatcheco, Director of Costumes, Hair and Makeup, gives us a backstage tour of the Seattle Opera.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I came here thinking I was going to work for one year. I was a stitcher in the costume shop in 03, kind of when they first opened McCaw Hall and I just kept coming back. I was a stitcher, then I was assistant wardrobe head. I heard they needed someone in the hair and makeup department, that job was going to last a year and that lasted 11, because of all the changes over the pandemic, I became the Costume, Hair and Makeup director. So here I am.

Gina Colucci:
I was so excited to dive in to the creative process that, I wanted to start the tour right away. When you enter, you’re taking aback by how big this collaborative space is. They’ve got working stations and sewing machines the size of sofas and ironing boards the size of VW Bugs and racks of mannequins. And they’ve got everything they need in one place to bring stories alive. I feel like I’m on the set of Project Runway.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. So this is the shop. All our sewing machines. We have nine big huge cutting tables, our huge ironing boards, all this fabric and lining. If we go over here, this is our wig and makeup room. Then we get to see the space needle from here.

Gina Colucci:
Wow. After you get over how large the main space is, you realize there are these little rooms off to the side and one of them, it’s not so little is where they make the wigs. It reminds you of a hair salon with the different stations, but then you realize they aren’t cutting people’s hair. They are creating wigs.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
We have all different stations and Ashley and her team come in here and ventilate wigs, which is the act of tying hair into the wig lace just like what you can see right here. So we do a tracing of each singer’s hairline.

Gina Colucci:
I was a little curious at the process and the attention to detail that went into the creation of the wigs. And Liesl is showing me how the wig makers sew in each strand, and how they will take a model of the actor’s head and even draw where their hairline is for reference. So they can make it as realistic as possible. And what kind of hair is this?

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
It’s human hair.

Gina Colucci:
It is? Cool.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
It is sourced from all sorts of places.

Gina Colucci:
Like finding my hair. You have a basket of rats in here.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yes.

Gina Colucci:
I bet.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
So rats are these nylon sponges that you put inside wigs to give height to the wigs. If you need like a bouffant or a bigger bun or something like that, you put it inside the hair. Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
The volumizer.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
The volumizer right?

Gina Colucci:
I like what they called it.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. And they actually have a rat photo.

Gina Colucci:
Can you tell someone you have a sense of humor

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
It’s pretty funny.

Gina Colucci:
Yes.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. Oh gosh. We all do.

Gina Colucci:
One of the wigs that was finished and was up in the corner on display was this ornate long woman’s hair in an updo. But in the middle of the updo, there was a whole model ship in it.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
This is a big wig dryer. So Ashley will roller set wigs before styling them. And then we put them in this dryer to bake. Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
It can take up to 40 hours to create one wig. If you think about it, that’s our average work week to make one piece of a performer’s costume. And each strand of hair is sewn in by hand into the netting that will create the whole wig.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
How things have changed trends and opera, lots of new young directors don’t like wigs, because they look too wiggy, fake and they’ll want natural hair, but they don’t understand that the singer has to sit there to get their hair done. Also McCaw Hall is huge, right? So that’s fine for TV, but on a huge stage where the closest person is a hundred feet away, a costume is big. And if you have your own hair, you look like a pinhead. So the wig really helps to balance out the whole look.

Gina Colucci:
The wig is like the cherry on top for the costume and in the opera, traditionally things are bigger and more elaborate. And to create these worlds, it’s obvious they needed a lot of space. So this building was built in 2018.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yes.

Gina Colucci:
What did your wig shop look like before you moved in here?

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Oh, we were like in a crappy utility closet outside of a elevator. So over here, laundry and then our thread, and specialty machines and every color you could ever think of, this is our shoe storage.

Gina Colucci:
And we got to see some other rooms that are critical in the creation of the costumes and the hair and the makeup, everything down to boxes for accessories and then racks and racks of shoes and all different sizes and colors and make.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
There’s even more than that. Leather belts, any sort of accessory you might need over here.

Gina Colucci:
They have a whole wall of yarn in every color, a whole wall of different undergarments, cufflinks, glasses, jewelry, hair pieces. Do you need a garter.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. Or arm bounds. Cummer buns, Henleys.

Gina Colucci:
And the shoe racket. It’s two levels.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yes.

Gina Colucci:
So beneath there’s like boots and bins full of shoes and then a staircase up where it’s almost like you’re in a department store.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Exactly. That’s true. So this is the crafts area. So our Craft Supervisor, Miriam works here. So she works on all the non clothing, things like making hats, shoes leather work, any kind of embellishment that you might see on a costume. Feathers on a pat or anything crazy that we need to make happen. Miriam can just magically do it. This is the dye room.

Gina Colucci:
The dye room almost looked like really nice laundry room in somebody’s home, except for the fact that they have this giant vac in the room that is used to dye garments and fabric. And by giant, I mean like a big, hot tub.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Washing machines, sinks, ventilator, basically any color of fabric or shade or texture pattern that you want dyed, Miriam can make that happen. For Orpheus, which we’re producing in January, I wanted a lot of Japanese shibori prints on the dancers. So I’m going to ask Miriam to dye some unitards for the dancers like that and some kimono top kind of thing. So we’ll see how that plays out. And then this is the painting rooms. And we also have a big, huge spray booth.

Gina Colucci:
The spray booth looked like a large service elevator. It was all made out of metal. It had a big vacuum coming out of the top to keep the air clean when in use. And doors that you could close. And then it had some hanging rods inside. So you could hang up whatever you were painting.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
You can hang up costumes in here. Or sometimes the props people come in here and use it just so that, we don’t have to smell any of those fumes.

Gina Colucci:
You even have a fume [inaudible 00:09:28].

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
So, and then is our fitting room. It’s split into two sides.

Gina Colucci:
We quickly walked past the fitting rooms, which were larger department store fitting rooms. But you would have to be able to fit three, four or five people in there. Because you have the performer and then the seamstresses and an art director, all having to fit in one room to, to make sure everything is perfect.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
For one person on stage. Like MiMi, for example in bohème, probably like 10 people worked to make her look how she does full-time. Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
Wow.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. So you think about people who fit the costume, those of us who decided who was wearing what? The wardrobe department, the wig department, the hair and makeup crew. So this is our costume collection.

Gina Colucci:
Oh my God.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
So this room is probably-

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
It’s like Costco.

Gina Colucci:
It is, I feel like I’m in Costco costumes.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
There’s 10 rows racks.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
More than three levels each.

Gina Colucci:
Yeah.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
All our petticoats and corsets night gowns, contemporary costumes. And it starts getting older and then to fantasy toward the back, 19th century gowns for coats-

Gina Colucci:
It’s the Bridgerton row.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah, exactly. The Bridgerton row.

Gina Colucci:
After the initial shock of what walking into that room, you realize that everything was organized and that’s no easy task.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
One of the first things that I kind of took on was trying to figure out how to best organize this. So we’re working on a whole bar coding and digitizing program. For us, so that we can get the shows together faster instead of running around, trying to find things. So other people can rent from us, even local theaters and stuff like that. I just like to be more active in the community and let people use our resources because there’s a lot of amazing things that haven’t been touched for 20 years. And to me, that’s really sad.

Gina Colucci:
Every piece though, is handmade.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Absolutely.

Gina Colucci:
From scratch.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
From scratch. Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
And these are beautiful gowns.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. And, they have boning and lining. I mean, they’re really made to last 30 years for sure. That’s why I’m like, “There is actually crypto in Seattle and nobody knows about it.”

Gina Colucci:
I was struck by how you could tell the quality of each piece just by a quick glance.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
You wonder why couture gowns can be $45,000. I can tell you why, because there’s 10 people working on it and hand making it and sewing it on little details. Lace speeding. I mean down to the corsets they made from scratch.

Gina Colucci:
Oh my gosh.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Every single thing was handmade.

Gina Colucci:
I couldn’t believe it, but we stumbled upon the first dress that Liesl had ever made for the Seattle Opera. And it was Carmen’s cigarette factory dress.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
So when she’s working in the cigarette factory I believe.

Gina Colucci:
And it’s heavy.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
It’s heavy. It’s probably 20 pounds.

Gina Colucci:
And you have another, almost very similar version.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
Here.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I mean, we have several versions of Carmen depending on the person or the singer, their size. If we need to build a new one for somebody new coming in, goes all the way back here. I mean, we have crazy armor. More boots fabric, we’re going to do a build for Santa Fe opera.

Gina Colucci:
What’s that?

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Do you need an Anubis head? And the fact that just something in my mind I can have made by professionals in the costume shop is such an incredible opportunity. It took like three or four people to build this double face duchess satin. First I did a sketch obviously, and this pleading part was not on the sketch, but once we threw it on the dress farm, I knew something else had to be there. I love the singer Lexi LoBianco who actually wore this dress. She cried, she was so happy that something was built for her to actually flatter her size. So that was really special to me. I don’t know. I can’t even tell you the feeling that you get when you see something that was just an idea. And then suddenly there’s this singer wearing it, breathing life into it. And you see a story being told and people affected by it. I love being part of that. Hopefully she’ll be back and will do it again or get a chance to design something new.

Speaker 4:
Seattle Design Center is the premier marketplace for fine home furnishings, designer, textiles, bespoke lighting, curated art and custom kitchen and bath solutions. We are located in the heart of Georgetown, open to the public Monday through Friday with complimentary parking. Our showroom associates are industry experts known for their customer service. We are celebrating new showrooms and added onsite amenities. Visit seattledesigncenter.com for more information about our showrooms and our Find a Designer program.

Gina Colucci:
I wanted to know how Liesl became the director of costumes, hair, and makeup.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I’m very good at change. I think because I’m really good with change. It kind of helped through the pandemic and all those things. I actually, I think deep down my ability to be flexible and be able to deal with change is because I’m the child of immigrants for sure. And I can understand where different people come from and it’s not hard for me interpreting things is like so natural for me.

Gina Colucci:
Do you think that helps your creative process as well? The flexibility?

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Absolutely. Before I went into opera or theater, I was in fashion and I had big dreams to be a fashion designer. I was born and raised in Seattle and moved to New York when I was 18 and went to FIT and had these dreams to become a fashion designer. And I was a fashion editor for a short time at Esquire magazine, Mary Claire magazine. It’s a hard business. It’s not to say that I didn’t meet some wonderful people, but it’s a numbers game. It’s about making money. And when you’re designing… Any piece of clothing you buy in a store is driven by a merchandiser. They work closely with you to tell you what was great last season. I need this many styles, and then you’re kind of designing for this customer. You don’t really know, but you’re just make all these assumptions.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
And what I love so much about designing in theater and opera is you have these crazy constraints. Which like a certain genre you have to design within, a certain director wants these elements, a set designer wants these elements. The lighting tells you, your budget tells you how much you can spend and build. So I don’t know, that’s more exciting to me. And what I do is so dependent on these other people in our creative team and you get to be there from beginning to end. So it’s really a satisfying creative process. You see a mockup, you see something built and tweaked and then on stage, and then it’s done. I always thought that because I’m more of a generalist that, that was a problem. It’s you see all these successful people, I’m doing air quotes who are specialists, but in reality have really served me to have done so many different things.

Gina Colucci:
I knew Liesl had a great story to tell us, she designed and manufactured the classic Playboy bunny costume.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
So that’s funny. I was a designer in LA. So in the late nineties, a friend of mine came to me and was like, “You know how to sew, right? I was like, “Yes.” I think I was a designer at GUESS at the time or something. Which when you’re designing for companies like that, you’re not actually making anything it’s all on the computer and communicating with factories. And I was like, “Yes, I do.” He goes, “Well, a friend of mine is having fit problems for Playboy, they’re trying to relaunch the bunny costume, can you help with that?” I was like, “Okay.” Didn’t think it was anything. Because I had been doing a lot of costing jobs all over LA, and so I brought my sewing machine over to the offices in Beverly Hills.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
And the bunny costume is a work of engineering. It is a seven piece boned costume that is like a bulletproof vest. That’s how you get that shape on the women that you see, because it’s really tight. Sometimes it takes two or three people to zip them into it. Because I had gone to FIT and I had mad sewing skills, it wasn’t a big deal for me to help figure it out. And, I mean, it took a while, but I was into it. And so they eventually got rid of the stylist who was trying to develop it and gave the job to me. And it became this 12 year relationship where I started making the bunny costumes worldwide, it was a good run. It was an amazing account to have, I remember when I told my parents, they were kind of silent. But then, they were like, “Oh, it’s very technical.” The girl’s really professional nice. So it was a fun experience, I would take my friends to parties there and all that stuff. And it was a great run, a great experience.

Gina Colucci:
A lot of industries were hit hard during the pandemic and one was live performances. And you realize how many people it takes to put on a production. They’re just starting to come back, they’re just starting to get back to their new normal. And you could tell that the building was just starting to come alive again.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I’m trying to figure out ways to train young people, get them more excited. And also for me being a person of color, that’s really important too. I grew up in North Seattle, Shoreline, mostly white people. I was never exposed to the opera, I had never heard of it. I knew musicals, but opera never touched me somehow. So our education department is trying to do things to reach out to other people because, we will not to keep this art form going unless we do. Not only hiring people to be on stage and backstage to create the art, but telling new stories. A lot of the classics that we do are a hundred years old, told by white men and sadly there’s perspective of a white man on another culture. You see that Orientalism in it and that’s okay, no one here living today was trying to do that, it just happened and history is convoluted and a really hard thing. But, what we need to do is tell new stories about different people, different cultures, different age groups, different experiences. Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
Do you have any operas that you’re producing that kind of tell a different perspective?

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
We have an exciting one next season. This is why I love my job. We are producing an opera based on that novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, our General Director, Christina Scheppelmann went out and found a female filmmaker from Afghanistan and invited her to direct it. So she came here for meetings during the time that the US was pulling out of Afghanistan. I loved just talking to her and hearing her stories and learning things like burqa styles changed to depending on how close you are to certain borders, India, Iran, all these different things. But just, it was such an education and such an opportunity for me to actually be touched by somebody whose experience sadly was difficult, because she can’t go back right now and her family’s there. But the fact that I’m touched by something big that you see in the news and I can experience her story. So I love things like that.

Gina Colucci:
Yeah. And so, will her experience be able to kind of go into that show and…

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yes. Absolutely. I hopefully will take a trip somewhere that is safe, to go buy fabric and stuff and costumes and do my best to be culturally sensitive and produce the right thing to tell the story in the way that she wants. That is so exciting and inspiring for me.

Gina Colucci:
It’s really exciting. By this time we had made a full lap around the facility.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I’m just going to walk you back into the designer room.

Gina Colucci:
We came across the pin board.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
This is just my inspiration board kind of, and then photos of the performers who will actually be wearing the costumes.

Gina Colucci:
Where Liesl had put up images from newspapers or printed out from the internet. And you could tell that this was the beginning of her creative process.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
So basically during the kind of creative team development process, the set has gone through quite a few iterations. Our set designer, Carrie Wong from UDub did actual mockups. The conversation was mostly between starting with him, the Director of Production, my boss, Doug and the director developing this world. Orpheus is in love with his wife Eurydice. She dies and he goes to the underworld to go get her. And there’s… So this is kind of the world-

Gina Colucci:
Wow.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
These people will inhabit.

Gina Colucci:
And you’re showing us renders on paper of what it will look like.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Of the set. Right? So, and then the director, she actually put together some visuals of how she sees the singer’s costumes to be, or the visuals for them. One thing that was really important to her is that they’re young and modern, but for me I like going over this, most of the time I just listen. I listen for a long time and kind of let it marinate in the back of my head before I make any decisions.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
And sometimes that’s actually a good thing to do because the set went through three different transformations. I mean, same feeling, but three different transformations. So I decided to wait till they painted the floor, which is this pattern right here. And one thing that I kind of brought to the table is that she wanted modern costumes, but this isn’t a modern world really that we see it’s very ethereal.

Gina Colucci:
I mean they’re in the pattern that you pointed out.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. It’s very otherworldly.

Gina Colucci:
How would you describe it? Yeah, it’s…

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
They’re calling it, I believe chaos pattern. I needed to figure out a way to bring this kind of dark ethereal underworld into the modern world at the same time. And we’re presenting it in Tagney Jones Hall. So that is way more intimate than McCaw Hall. So that’s another thing I have to consider.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
People are going to be very close up and really examining the costumes. So for Orpheus, I didn’t think he could be like this modern as far as just a suit. So I’m going to bring in some textural elements in gold and a lot applique. And also some Japanese elements. So kind of bringing some of her ideas and some of my ideas and I present them to her to see how she feels if they’ll work in the world, and hopefully she’ll say yes. So I’m just at the point waiting for us to kind of finish what the look is like Amore is really Cupid, in our minds eye it’s a chubby little guy with a arrow, but-

Gina Colucci:
For the hair.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah. But her interpretation of Amore is that character is neither good or bad, and that character is androgynous. I wanted to bring some cool modern elements with a little bit of fantasy in there, but we’ll see how the costume develops. I think what I’m going to do is have a base costume of a red kind of tight suit and then add elements like feathers onto her. Cupid has feathers sometimes like an angel, but in a very modern dark way, totally different than what you imagine. And then I am in love with bull cuts. So instead of doing the obvious, like slicking a woman’s hair back to make her look like a man, I think I’m going to do this crazy androgynous bull cut with really big shoulder pads.

Gina Colucci:
That sounds amazing.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
Can’t wait for that wig. Yeah.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
These are the dancers. They have two parts. One is they are wedding guests at the beginning. So they’ll have that modern and ethereal look that like what Orpheus has. And then a really famous piece of music is Dance of the Furies in the opera and that’s interpreted so many different ways. So in this design I have to find out what kind of movement is required. The director mentioned how she likes Chinese water sleeves. It’s Chinese dancers who have sleeves that are 10 feet long or something like that. Which, is this tiny element here, so I’m going to try and figure out how to incorporate that into my design. I love all these different constraints of this person wants this. This person wants that they have to move this way. This fabric will work for that this or that kind of movement, this certain fabric will not.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
And then there’s a technical side. We are doing 18 performances, I think six every week. So I have to take into consideration the wardrobe department. So they’re going to have to wash and turn the wardrobe every night. So maybe for our phase jacket, I’ll have a snap-in lining, because I don’t know if we can turn dry cleaning that fast. So I think about those technical things as well. I mean there’s so many times I’ve been in the wardrobe department and when you get costumes where the dye has not been set. Yeah. And then as a wardrobe person, you’ll be washing something and it’ll bleed onto the other thing and then emergency call happens and then people try to remake a new one. There’s always some sort of drama. So I think because I’ve been in wardrobe, I understand those tiny details that might seem like nothing, but will make it easier for the crews to actually run the show.

Gina Colucci:
And you know, along with the intensive labor and the work that goes into each piece, what do you hope viewers feel when they come and watch these shows?

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Yeah, so I mean there are definite opera fanatics out there who love it and understand it, the work that goes into it. But, there’s so much competition in entertainment these days. I think a lot of people don’t understand what’s involved. If you’re not exposed to opera, I can imagine some kid saying, “Oh, I’m just going to go there and fall asleep.” But you have to be there to receive it. The first thing that is considered in this art form is the music obviously. So we’re really lucky the symphony plays for us, we have these world class singers. The spectacle of grand opera is amazing and it’s hard to find that live experience. So I hope they take in not just the music, the orchestration, but the whole atmospheric experience. Even walking into McCaw Hall, even having a drink.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I’ve attended opening night, which I haven’t done for a long time. I got opening night tickets for my team so we can all kind of celebrate being back together. And it was a really nice to sit in there and feel the excitement of the audience, especially since kind of our homecoming back from the pandemic. But I hope that they see the grandeur of it and really appreciate that and just know that there were hundreds of people putting their blood, sweat, and tears into it to make incredible presentation, which you don’t get to see that much these days. I mean, how many months did we all spend watching Netflix, which I am very guilty of, but most of it is special effects on a computer. So there’s something really special about what you see visually, what you hear and then what you feel from the audience around you.

Gina Colucci:
Thank you, Liesl, for the fascinating tour. For more information on upcoming shows, head to seattleopera.org. Inspire Design is brought to you by the Seattle Design Center. The show is produced by Larj Media. You can find them at larjmedia.com. Special thanks to Michi Suzuki, Lisa Willis and Kimi Design for bringing this podcast to life for more head to seattledesigncenter.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. Is there an iconic Northwest creator that you want to hear from head to our website and leave a comment. Next time on Inspired Design, Braden Abraham, Artistic Director at the Seattle Rep takes us on an in depth tour of the theater.

Braden Abraham:
When I put a season together, I really think about the whole journey for the audience. And I’m really excited about what this year has to offer.

Louie Gong | Conscious Collaborations

In this episode of Inspired Design, we meet up with artist, activist, educator and founder of Eighth Generation, Louie Gong, at his landmark store in Pike Place Market. We discuss the significance of manufacturing goods right here in Seattle and what that means for Native artists and conscious consumers. Supporting local has reached new heights

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https://eighthgeneration.com/

Visit their store in Pike Place Market

93 Pike St #103, Seattle, WA 98101

Eighth Generation is a Seattle-based art and lifestyle brand owned by the Snoqualmie Tribe.  It was founded in 2008 when Louie Gong (Nooksack) — an artist, activist and educator widely known for merging traditional Coast Salish art with influences from his urban environment to make strong statements about identity — started customizing shoes in his living room. Now the first Native-owned company to ever produce wool blankets — with a flagship retail store in Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market — Eighth Generation is a proud participant in the global economy.

Eighth Generation provides a strong, ethical alternative to “Native-inspired” art and products through its artist-centric approach and 100% Native designed products. Our Inspired Natives™ Project, anchored by the tagline “Inspired Natives™, not Native-inspired,” builds business capacity among cultural artists while addressing the economic impact of cultural appropriation.

Episode Transcript

Louie Gong:
As a kid being raised by Grandma and Grandpa, I was first raised in a house with no running water, and we were very poor, but that doesn’t tell the whole story of how I grew up, because I always had a dad who was very good at a few different things. And one of them was the martial arts.

Gina Colucci:
I’m Gina Colucci, with the Seattle Design Center. Every week on Inspired Design, we sit down with an iconic creator, in a space that inspires them.

Gina Colucci:
Louie Gong is a native artist, educator and public speaker who was raised by his grandparents in the Nooksack tribal community. Louie is also Chinese, French and Scottish

Louie Gong:
Imagine five-year-old Louie sitting on a stool in the corner of a boxing ring, crying, and my dad putting his hand on my shoulder and saying, “If you want to be successful, you have to have the courage to try, over and over again,” and then sending me back out when the bell ring, to get beat up by a much bigger kid.

Gina Colucci:
A self-taught artist, Louie began making art in 2008. After working as an activist for several years, he picked up a pair of plain Van sneakers and started drawing Native designs on them.

Louie Gong:
Nothing reflected who I was. So when I sort of settled for a plain gray pair, I knew that I was going to grab a Sharpie and draw on them.

Gina Colucci:
He started a company, Eighth Generation, with the mission of making cultural art sustainable. As you’ll hear in our conversation, Louie has been wildly successful. Eighth Gen is the fastest growing Native company in North America.

Louie Gong:
Taking that leap of faith to invest in myself was a magical moment that I hope other people can experience, as well. But what I would share to the people who have made this move, and not been successful in their first try, is that my journey, which looks like instant success from a distance, if you look a little closer, is composed of a thousand failures.

Gina Colucci:
When I caught up with Louie, we talked art, identity, and how he’s breaking down old stereotypes of modern Native people.

Louie Gong:
Well, you guys are up here on a really good day, because today is, I think, the four-year anniversary of when me and a friend of Eighth Generation named Bob, and our intern, Sequoia, stayed up till 2:00 a.m., working on the point of sale.

Louie Gong:
I know that, because social media just told me that it was the anniversary. I looked at this video of a much younger-faced Louie, with a Shop-Vac, vacuum up all the sawdust, after putting the point of sale together.

Louie Gong:
Yeah, so we have this, a cash register point of sale, that is also a nice display at the store. What it embodies, I think, is the Eighth Generation spirit, because when we opened the store, we did not have a big budget.

Louie Gong:
The cabinets here are from IKEA, and the countertop is from Urban Reclamations, which is a local business, and a local artist did the geometric woodwork that’s on the front. But the installation happened the day before the store opened, with these two hands right here, with sweat on my brow.

Louie Gong:
Here at two o’clock in the morning with friends and family embodies, not just the Eighth Generation spirit, but my own journey as an artist. There’s been a lot of elbow grease.

Gina Colucci:
Yeah.

Louie Gong:
The name Eighth Generation is based on the inter-tribal value of seven generations. To describe it in a rudimentary way, it’s basically just a decision making framework that says that you should consider the consequences of your decisions, seven generations into the future.

Louie Gong:
By naming the business Eighth Generation, I’m paying respect to everybody that came before me. When I think about the possibilities of having a new phase of creative work that affects cultural change, in an even greater way than Eighth Generation has, I get really excited, because I know that’s the next collaboration with my grandma and grandpa, and my dad, and the other people that supported me along my journey.

Gina Colucci:
Why and what was it like deciding to open your storefront, here at Pike Place Market?

Louie Gong:
At Eighth Gen, we pursue multiple types of currencies. It’s not just all about making money. We also want to control the story about Native people, and we want to create opportunities for Native artists.

Louie Gong:
Being at Pike Place Market was really attractive to us, because we knew we could reach thousands of people a day, from all over the world, but also that it was a great place to do business. People were interested in experiencing Native art when they visit Pike Place Market.

Louie Gong:
So this was a space that sort of checked all the boxes for us. For me personally, I definitely have a strong activist streak, so I only get interested in the idea if it’s disrupting something. Being the only Native-owned store at Pike Place Market, and the only one downtown at that time was very attractive to me.

Louie Gong:
We wanted to shake things up, have a strong presence here. We have neon signs out here and also a sign on the front of our store, that’s 25 feet long.

Louie Gong:
To get any of those in place, it took years of work, that has totally happened, in a way that is invisible to most people who will visit the store. I mean, for me personally, I embraced that grind, but sometimes I need to tell the story into a mic, so people know.

Gina Colucci:
Yeah.

Louie Gong:
[crosstalk 00:06:09] Because people will say, people will think that the store was handed to you, or that the signs were handed to you. As a Native-owned business, we get a lot of weird ideas projected onto us, by people who walk in the store.

Louie Gong:
People think that we’re a nonprofit, because they look at the capacity that is represented by what they see in the store. And they think that Native people could never get to that space, unless they were sponsored in some way.

Louie Gong:
That, of course, is not the case. The business has never even had a business loan. Of course, we’re owned by the Snoqualmie tribe now, which is very exciting, and makes us feel super optimistic about the business’s ability to grow times a hundred into the future.

Louie Gong:
They’ll also come into the store, and assume that everything in the store is handmade, because Native people can’t work with manufacturers, like everybody else can. For it to be “Native,” I’m making air quotes, officially, it needs to be handmade by your aunties and grandmas in the back room.

Louie Gong:
Some people are really disappointed, when what we tell them doesn’t reinforce the stereotypes that they have when they walk into the store, and they turn around and walk out. But that’s okay with us, because even though they didn’t buy anything, they’re leaving with something which is really important. And that’s accurate information about contemporary Native people.

Gina Colucci:
One other question I kind of wanted to touch on, I know you have phone cases, you have socks, you have cards here, jewelry, but you see very modern items with your traditional art on it.

Louie Gong:
Yeah. People always come in here, and they say, “Where’s the flute music? And how come you don’t have any one-off carvings for sale?” They want that one-off art piece when they think of Indigenous art, because that’s what they associate with Indigenous art.

Louie Gong:
Here at Eighth Gen, we have exclusively created products, and a lot of them for very contemporary objects, like phone cases. We do that, because we actively try to push against stereotypes, and the resistance that we get to just exercise in our natural way of being.

Louie Gong:
As a Native person, I use a phone case and I wear socks. So the idea that our own artwork shouldn’t be on those objects is totally false. It is the internalization of these anthropological ideals that are frozen in time, like at first contact.

Louie Gong:
I started to recognize that, “Hey, our ancestors always put art on things that they use.” There’s absolutely nothing wrong with putting our art on utilitarian objects.

Louie Gong:
I started off, by the way, drawing on shoes, and moccasins were custom footwear. People were surprised and said that what I was doing was very contemporary, but it wasn’t at all. It was actually traditional.

Gina Colucci:
What was going through your mind when you were drawing your first pair of Vans?

Louie Gong:
It stemmed from frustration. I went to the Vans store, and I looked up on the shelf, and there was no designs up there that really reflected who I wad. There were skulls and checker boards, but nothing reflected who I was.

Louie Gong:
So when I sort of settled for a plain gray pair, I knew that I was going to grab a Sharpie and draw on them. And I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew it needed to reflect me.

Louie Gong:
And a few months later, I didn’t do it right away, I took at that Sharpie, and I drew a very simple Coast Salish paw pattern on the shoes. And it wasn’t very good.

Louie Gong:
I started wearing them when the design was half done, but when people saw them, they were like, “Man, those are sick. Where’d you get those? How can I get a pair?” That was the beginning of Eighth Generation.

Louie Gong:
I knew that they liked it, not because the art was spectacular, it was because the idea was resonating with their lived experience. And I think that you see me following that initial spark in almost everything that Eighth Generation does.

Gina Colucci:
That’s great. And why did you do the paw prints?

Louie Gong:
I did the paw prints on the shoes, because the shoes go in your feet. I thought having paws on a pair of classic slip on Vans made perfect sense, but also, the shape of the design matched the shape of the shoe.

Gina Colucci:
That makes me think, I was actually just on your Instagram page, and you created this box, and each corner is a different …

Speaker 3:
Yeah, it’s a guardian.

Speaker 4:
Guardian.

Louie Gong:
Yeah.

Gina Colucci:
That’s right, yeah. It was fascinating to see that it was perfectly each one melded into the other, if I’m getting this correct. So each corner is a different profile point of view of your guides.

Louie Gong:
Yeah. The Guardians Bent Wood Box, which is a collaboration with my uncle, Peter Gong. He makes the boxes, and I often put art on them.

Louie Gong:
The Guardians box that we’re talking about was actually a gift that was commissioned by the city of Seattle, and gifted to the President of China, back in 2015. So I put my guardians design on it, which is a Chinese Fu dog, designed with Northwest Native design elements on it.

Louie Gong:
But it’s a good example of how I think very purposefully about the space that I’m putting the art on, and the purpose of the product or the object that the art is going on, as well. In this case, I wanted something to represent protection, so that you could put something important on the box, and the way the Guardian’s design is composed on the box, it represents sort of protections for each direction.

Gina Colucci:
That’s really, really beautiful. Actually I wanted to know, because …

Louie Gong:
That was my first box that I ever painted.

Gina Colucci:
Really?

Louie Gong:
Yeah, it was my first box that I ever painted. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was all very last minute too. So I had two days to make something for the President of China, and …

Gina Colucci:
No pressure.

Louie Gong:
Yeah, no big deal. But I already had the box in hand, so I got to work and finished it at the eleventh hour.

Louie Gong:
The last step in the process was to put a coat of notoriously slow drawing walnut oil on the box. It just brought out the color of the wood, and made it super beautiful.

Louie Gong:
But I wasn’t able to see what it looked like completely dry. When I stuck it in the box to give to the Mayor, who was going to give it to the President of China, and what I know is that when that then dry box was pulled from its packaging, to gift to the president of China, it had a perfectly visible thumbprint from my thumb on the top of it.

Gina Colucci:
So now they have your fingerprints.

Louie Gong:
Now they have the fingerprints, and I have an important lesson about what not to do, at the very last minute, before giving an important gift.

Gina Colucci:
Sorry.

Speaker 3:
Yeah.

Announcer:
Seattle Design Center is the premier marketplace for fine home furnishings, designer, textiles, bespoke lighting, curated art, and custom kitchen and bath solutions. We are located in the heart of Georgetown, open to the public Monday through Friday, with complimentary parking.

Announcer:
Our showroom associates are industry experts known for their customer service. We are celebrating new showrooms and added onsite amenities. Visit seattledesigncenter.com for more information about our showrooms, and our find a designer program.

Gina Colucci:
I’m just so curious about everything around me. Do you want to, I guess, talk about the drum that’s up here?

Louie Gong:
Oh, sure. So this drum up here, we’re really proud of. It’s not a ceremonial drum. It was a drum that was gifted to Eighth Generation by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development.

Louie Gong:
It’s a national organization, and they recognized us in Vegas, in this grand showcase, because of our work on behalf of Indigenous artists. Receiving that award as an Indigenous artist myself makes me really proud.

Gina Colucci:
What a cool moment. Can you just describe to me, because I don’t know, what’s the difference between this drum and the ceremonial drum?

Louie Gong:
Well, if we had anything that was ceremonial, it wouldn’t be in the store. So one of the reasons why buying from a Native company or a Native artist is important, is because we vet what we bring to market before you ever see it. If you want to make sure that you’re not culturally appropriating or holding something that is not appropriate for you to have, then make sure you are purchasing the things that you’re interested in from Indigenous artists, or Indigenous businesses.

Gina Colucci:
Do you want to tell us about these blankets?

Louie Gong:
Yeah, come over here. This is the first blanket we ever produced. Eighth Generation is the first Native-owned company to produce wool blankets. As an entrepreneur, I didn’t have any business knowledge, and I didn’t have any money.

Louie Gong:
So getting to the point where I can produce a wool blanket with my art on, was not only a first for the Native community, but man, it was a whole collection of first for me in my development. Anyway, the first blanket we produced is this Thunderbird design.

Louie Gong:
The Thunderbird design is mine, but on the ends of it, you’ll see some Maori waves. They’re here on this blanket, because it was a collaboration with our friends at the Evergreen Longhouse.

Louie Gong:
They have a really strong relationship with the Maori, and often do cultural exchanges. So we wanted this to represent that sort of intersection or exchange of cultural knowledge between the Maori and Coast Salish communities.

Gina Colucci:
What made you choose the Thunderbird personally?

Louie Gong:
One of the things that I enjoy as a artist is taking a client’s vision and bringing it to life. It sort of gets filtered through my interests and my experience, and something totally new is created.

Louie Gong:
What you see here is a giant Thunderbird on a bright red blanket, and it’s reminiscent of the giant Thunderbird that’s on the very front of the Evergreen Longhouse. In this way, we’re honoring that physical space that they created, but the artwork in itself is totally unique to me.

Louie Gong:
I think that there are a lot of ways that Native values and traditions have been sort of siloed all under one category, in this sort of pan-Indian idea, and been sold to consumers for hundreds of years. One thing that Eighth Generation is doing, by talking about all the different regions and the difference between artists, by making sure that people know the values of our company, and how they might be different from values of a company that’s on another side of the country, we’re unpacking all that stuff that this broad base of consumers in this country have absorbed over a lifetime.

Louie Gong:
This idea of spirit animal is one of those things. In some communities, it might be a legitimate belief system, but the way that it is commonly understood in pop culture is not very accurate.

Louie Gong:
So here at Eighth Generation, you’ll never hear us talking about spirit animals. And if you see that on a product description of a product, you better go check to see if that’s a Native-owned business, because it’s probably not.

Louie Gong:
We’re less interested in reaffirming stereotypes, and we don’t care at all if the ’80s music being blasted on the sound system in the store throws you off. Because we like ’80s music.

Speaker 3:
Thanks.

Speaker 6:
And so do I.

Louie Gong:
So we just have transitioned from the main retail side of the store to the gallery space.

Gina Colucci:
What I’m noticing is, you have these amazing displays, that visually show you exactly where the artist is from.

Louie Gong:
Let’s come over here and look at this blanket. It’s called Renewal, by Sarah Agaton Howes. What it displays is the floral that is indicative of the traditional art from her region. So Sarah is a bead work artist, and traditionally in her area, they would put their bead work on black fabric, and that’s why the base of this design is black.

Louie Gong:
The reason why they worked on black fabric is pretty similar to the reason why I say John Pepion, who’s a Blackfeet artist from Montana works on ledger paper. And it is that during the reservation period, Native people had very limited access to resources for art.

Louie Gong:
In Sarah’s community, the only fabric that they had to apply their bead work to were the hand-me-down robes from priests. In John Pepion’s community, the only paper that they had to illustrate on were the scrap ledger papers from the Indian agents who were in that area at the time.

Gina Colucci:
I asked Louie to explain what it means to have that art created from necessity, displayed in a Native gallery, a meeting space.

Louie Gong:
It’s crazy to think that in 2016, when the store opened, it was the only Native store in the entire city of Seattle. And Seattle, of course, is named after a Native person. Our football team has a Native aesthetic in its logo.

Louie Gong:
There are totem poles everywhere, and the Native origins of this region are used in the branding of the city, all over the place. Yet the actual participation of Native people in commerce, for people visiting Seattle, was almost nothing.

Louie Gong:
So us being here is an important symbol of change, because I think, with Eighth Generation reaching the scale that we’ve reached now, we’re the fastest growing Native-owned business in the United States or Canada.

Louie Gong:
The reality is that we’ll never go back to the time when there were no Native stores or artists truly participating in the commerce around people coming to visit Seattle. I believe that we’ve opened the doors for a whole generation of Native artists to understand that what we have done is totally possible.

Gina Colucci:
We grabbed a seat and started to talk more about Louie’s personal journey. Thank you so much for being so open with everything in your store and with Eighth Generation.

Gina Colucci:
But I also want to learn like a little bit more bout you personally. Do you want to tell what it was like growing up for you as a Native person with the Nooksack tribe?

Louie Gong:
You know, growing up as a Native person, living in Nooksack was pretty tricky. Right now, I’m able to exercise my identity in a really bold way. I’m Chinese, Native and white. So it wasn’t like there was one set of cultural MAs and communities to connect with, there were always multiple for me.

Louie Gong:
So it was pretty complicated for a young kid. I can remember looking in the mirror and thinking, “Do I look, am I Chinese? Am I Native?” And not really understanding how I was perceived, because the world around me was giving me different messages.

Louie Gong:
Specifically, I can remember this one time, I think I was about 12 years old, I went to the bank, and I didn’t have my ID.

Louie Gong:
So I looked up at the teller in this very small town of Everson, Washington, where I grew up, and I said, “Come on. Don’t I look like a Gong?”

Louie Gong:
She looked down at me and she said, “No.” So I turned around and left without being able to withdraw any money. But the more lasting impact on me was that, “Oh my God, I don’t look Chinese. What do I look like?”

Louie Gong:
I think I spent a lot of time in my teens and into college, trying to understand how, what I inherited from Grandma and Grandpa who raised me, either matched or didn’t match how I was perceived by the community.

Louie Gong:
What you’re sort of told by society is that those things should be congruent. And for me, there was no congruency. I had always received resistance if I was trying to enter an Asian space, or enter a native space, or enter a white space. There was no place where I felt implicit belonging.

Gina Colucci:
I asked Louie, how did he manage to and navigate different spaces if he never fit in?

Louie Gong:
As a kid being raised by Grandma and Grandpa, I was first raised in a house with no running water, and we were very poor, but that doesn’t tell the whole story of how I grew up, because I always had a dad who was very good at a few different things. And one of them was the martial arts.

Louie Gong:
From the time I was able to walk, my dad would come pick me up, and bring me to the martial arts school, where he taught classes. And my early years are defined by participating in the martial arts, starting off with traditional Kung Fu, and then transitioning to kickboxing.

Louie Gong:
Later, my dad and family would transition into Muay Thai, and then have a school that also had mixed martial arts. To this day, they still have a martial arts school.

Louie Gong:
I guess, as a kid, I learned code switching really quickly. So I would be at home, and it was perfectly normal for me to grab a tin ladle and dip it into a bucket of water. That was where I got my drinking water.

Louie Gong:
But then my dad would take me to a martial arts tournament on the weekend, and there’d be hundreds of people there, and he would enroll me in the division up. As an eight-year-old, I was fighting 12 year olds that are way bigger. I have some great pictures of that.

Louie Gong:
Now, I’m not just unafraid of getting punched in the face. I think being not afraid of being punched in the face comes out in me not being afraid to be courageous with my ideas, or to express them, even when I know there’ll be resistance, but also I’m having grown up poor, and with a fair amount of chaos, I’m quite comfortable with the unknown.

Louie Gong:
So that has been an important tool for me on this entrepreneurial journey. You never quite know what the future holds, but you’re constantly required to take all your resources and go all in, like in a poker game.

Louie Gong:
I did that over and over many times, in order to build Eighth Generation. I think that was possible, because I was not really attached to my poker chips.

Louie Gong:
I know what it’s like to be poor. And frankly, those are one of the most happy times of my life. So to go back to that space was not as scary for me, as it might have been to other people.

Gina Colucci:
Going back to that, I mean, you’re from a multi-generational home, same as myself. How do you think that influenced who you are in your work today?

Louie Gong:
When people tell the story about what it was like to go visit that old home that I grew up in, they say the doors were always open. My dad, who was also raised in that home, brought four friends home after school, and my uncle Ted brought five friends home.

Louie Gong:
My grandpa would cook up a big meal on his Coleman camp stove, and then feed everybody. And I think that this meeting space that’s embedded in the store, that we’re sitting in right now, sort of flows from those origins.

Gina Colucci:
What do you think identity means today? And how has that changed, and what does it mean to you?

Louie Gong:
I think that I got to a point, in my exploration of identity. Well, I think I got to a point where I stopped trying to understand it explicitly, but I know what the ingredients are to supporting healthy identity development. It’s just, I don’t have to monitor where it ends up.

Louie Gong:
For me, identity was so important that in college, I started working with a national organization at the time called Maven. It was a nonprofit whose mission was to raise awareness about mixed heritage people and families.

Louie Gong:
By the time we got into the 2000s, I was volunteering regularly with Maven. Then I became a board member, and I became president of Maven in 2006 or 2007-ish, when Barack Obama was running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and people were really confused about him.

Louie Gong:
“Is he Kenyan? Is he American? Is he black? Is he white? How do we describe his lived experience?” And it was super clear at that time that the country not have the tools for talking about a complex identity.

Louie Gong:
Because I was a leader of an institutional force around that discussion, I got a lot of opportunity to use my experience, growing up with my Chinese grandpa and Native grandma, in a rural farming community, to a national audience. In doing that, I learned a couple powerful lessons.

Louie Gong:
One is that the experiences that I had growing up with my grandma and grandpa on the reservation were not only relevant to the experiences of everybody in the country, they were absolutely needed. Also, what I realized is that when I am thinking about other ideas, whether it was a business idea, or who might like my art, I need to think about how those ideas will be experienced beyond the boundaries of my community.

Louie Gong:
It may seem like a simple idea, but Native people are taught this idea that your relevance ends at the boundaries of your community. So it was at that time, based upon my experiences talking about race and identity, that I started to think globally about what is possible for my life.

Louie Gong:
And my artwork, work around identity, really is work for here, I’m pointing to my head, and here, the heart, and I think it was maintenance and building up of those two things that allowed me to think big, and then push forward really hard on the business.

Gina Colucci:
Louie mentioned in passing that he sold Eighth Gen to the Snoqualmie tribe. I was curious about the significance of that.

Louie Gong:
Eighth Generation grew really fast, since launching wool blankets in 2015. In 2019, I did something that had never been done before, which is to sell this art space business to the Snoqualmie tribe. Now Eighth Generation is owned by hundreds of local Indigenous people.

Louie Gong:
For me, as a sort of grass roots artist, accidental entrepreneur, the idea of handing it off to a group of Indigenous people, sort of ensures that the trajectory of the business and our values will get maintained into the future. A good example of that played out recently when a national brand co-opted our tagline and talking points to create a program that looked like ours.

Louie Gong:
Our tagline is “Inspired natives, not Native-inspired,” and they were saying, “Indigenous inspired,” and just changing the one term, but then also co-opting other talking points associated with our business.

Louie Gong:
Our legal counsel was able to send a cease and desist, and took care of it within a matter of weeks. For the first time, we have a Native business that can hold legal space with national level companies, and keep the market that we’ve illuminated at that next level open, until we can develop our capacity to occupy that space.

Louie Gong:
In the past, capitalism would have closed off that space almost immediately. So the business sale to Snoqualmie, I think, was an amazing strategic move for the idea of Eighth Generation, as a symbol for Native excellence and Native power.

Louie Gong:
Together, we’re just going to keep kicking ass, until we can occupy that space lateral with these legacy companies. And then, when we’re on our level playing field, let’s see what we can do.

Gina Colucci:
Inspired Design is brought to you by the Seattle Design Center. The show is produced by Larj Media.

Gina Colucci:
You can find them at larjmedia.com. Special thanks to Michi Suzuki, Lisa Willis, and Kimmy Design, for bringing this podcast to life.

Gina Colucci:
For more, head to seattledesigncenter.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on social media. Is there an iconic Northwest creator that you want to hear from? Head to our website and leave a comment.

Gina Colucci:
Next time on Inspired Design, we go behind the scenes with Liesl Alice Gatcheco, director of costumes, hair and makeup at the Seattle Opera.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
So this is Carmen’s fancy dress that you see at the end.

Gina Colucci:
Oh. And it’s heavy.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
It’s heavy, it’s probably 20 pounds.

Gina Colucci:
Oh.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
I mean, down to the corsets they made from scratch.

Gina Colucci:
Oh my gosh.

Liesl Alice Gatcheco:
Every single thing was handmade.

Leonard Garfield | Magnificent MOHAI

In this episode of Inspired Design, explore the MOHAI (Museum of History and Industry) with Executive Director, Leonard Garfield, a true walking encyclopedia. His knowledge of Northwest history beautifully compliments his contagious passion for architecture. We also learn how a few key individuals laid the groundwork for the flourishing tech hub Seattle is today.

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Episode Transcript

Leonard Garfield:
People of all ages come in here and they listen and they reflect on who we are, where we are and they ask themselves what’s this all about, which is what we want. We want people to be curious.

Gina Colucci:
This is Leonard Garfield, the Executive Director of Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry. He is like an encyclopedia, he knows so much about local history and has seen just about everything during his 20 years as the head of MOHAI.

Leonard Garfield:
One of the ones that we’ve always been curious about is an artifact from the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair called the Bubbleator.

Speaker 1:
Please step to the rear of the fair. We can only accommodate 100 of you essentially at a time.

Leonard Garfield:
That was the elevator that went up and down in what is now the center house and it’s this really cool kind of little pod that would take you up and down, seemed very futuristic at the time. When the fair ended, it ended up in someone’s backyard, where it served as a kind of terrarium filled with plants and so forth. And we were called out to take a look at, to see if we could maybe persuade the owner to donate that to the museums.

Gina Colucci:
I’m Gina Colucci with the Seattle Design Center. Every week on Inspired Design, we sit down with an iconic creator in a space that inspires them. What you just heard is one of many stories that Leonard told me as we explored the museum. The building itself is an icon in South Lake Union, but it also keeps all the stories from Seattle’s past, from the obscure, to the historic.

Leonard Garfield:
Well, come on this way. Gina, I don’t know if you know this, but this is a historic armory building built during World War II where thousands and thousands of Navy recruits would practice for the war. It actually is designed like a battleship. This building was to simulate a ship because the guys who were training here were actually going to go into combat in the Pacific. There are parts of this building that look like the bridge of a ship, there are places that folks could practice all the skills they need for war.

Gina Colucci:
Leonard, do you want to tell us a little bit about the remodel and move of MOHAI?

Leonard Garfield:
Yeah. It’s and you know, Gina, it’s been in about 10 years. We opened up here at the historic Naval Reserve Armory, the building we’re in right now in the late, late fall, in fact, December 29, 2012, so almost 10 years and that’s exciting. We used to be located closer to the University of Washington in a building actually designed by a well known Seattle architect, Paul Thiry back in 1952, but it really was… We’d outgrown it. Really, it was time to move, but more importantly, 520 needed to be wide and then it came right through our museum, so we had to move and we came down here.

Leonard Garfield:
Naval Reserve Armory was never meant to be a museum. It has huge open spaces where there are rooms. The ceilings are very low, lots and lots of windows and museums hate windows, but we decided, let’s just preserve all that. Let’s keep the great atrium. Let’s keep the historic floor where the guys used to drill. Let’s leave all the windows around it and just find other ways of showcasing the artifacts and telling the story of Seattle history. The remodel was a big project. We opened up about 10 years ago and we’ve been going great guns ever since, but I think our biggest artifact actually is the building itself and we totally were committed to saving the historic character. Despite all the exhibits and the kind of fun stuff, that’s in here now, the bones of the building still really shine. And I love like when you look at the Seattle skyline from Lake Union, you see the MOHAI in sort of in the center, all gleaming and white.

Gina Colucci:
Our tour starts with an artifact that’s rich in Seattle history. Tell me about what we’re standing next to.

Leonard Garfield:
What are we standing next to. Well, the building was to train Naval people, but actually, there’s a lot of maritime history here. And this is probably the most remarkable artifact we have just about. This particular piece is called the Wawona. It’s a gigantic 64-foot sculpture by the Seattle artist named John Grode. He’s a very important… very large scale environmental artist. What does it look like to you, Gina?

Gina Colucci:
It looks almost like the trunk of a tree.

Leonard Garfield:
Exactly. It looks like a 65-foot tall tree, and here’s what’s remarkable about it. It’s actually hanging. It weighs 11 tons and what it is, is it is the remnants of a tall masted sailing ship from the 1890s that used to be moored right out here on Lake Union. You know what that ship did? It carried lumber, of course, in the Northwest, from our great forest. The ship had deteriorated over a century and eventually had to be dismantled, but John and a team of dozens and dozens of artists worked to save the remnants of that boat, planks from the hull, pieces of wood from throughout the ship and to reconstitute it as an enormous sculpture, it was a ship made of wood and the artist’s thought was let’s have it return to nature. Let’s have it go right back where it started, which was a tree.

Leonard Garfield:
Those nodules that come out or almost like the roots of a tree, or they could be the barnacles on the hull of the ship, because in a way, it’s both things. You can actually… Let’s go this way because you can push it and you can go inside it. And if you… Can you hear the sound?

Gina Colucci:
It almost sounds like a ship.

Leonard Garfield:
It sounds like the hull of a ship. And if you go inside, are we allowed to go inside? Gina, come on, let’s walk inside.

Gina Colucci:
Okay, let’s go.

Leonard Garfield:
This is so cool, because if you look down here, you’re looking at Lake Union. This sculpture actually continues below the water line and if you look up, there’s a hole in our roof, a little oculus that connects you to the sky. This enormous tree that he crafted from a ship, now connects the sea to the sky and it kind of reminds us that history is all about making those connections.

Gina Colucci:
Wow.

Leonard Garfield:
Is this amazing? It’s called the Wawona.

Gina Colucci:
It’s fascinating.

Leonard Garfield:
It’s fascinating and it’s absolutely breathtaking. And people of all ages come in here and they listen and they reflect on who we are, where we are and they ask themselves what’s this all about, which is what we want. We want people to be curious.

Gina Colucci:
This is… piques that curiosity, definitely.

Leonard Garfield:
We could go out this way. What should we do next?

Gina Colucci:
Well, I know that since we’re here, there’s a giant, well, plane in the middle of the building.

Leonard Garfield:
Oh my gosh. All right.

Gina Colucci:
I don’t know if you noticed.

Leonard Garfield:
I did notice that. And it’s about to land on us. What have we got to do? Well, here’s another thing. And it all kind of ties together. That giant plane, which is the very commercial airplane ever made by anybody, it’s called the Boeing B-1, Boeing’s first plane. And he made it from Northwest lumber, of course, but what’s so cool about it is it was really in the early days called a flying boat because it was fashion crafted by maritime craftsmen by actually the folks who made boats right out here on Lake Union.

Leonard Garfield:
I don’t know if you’ve heard of those great boat makers, the Pocock brothers, but you might have heard this book called The Boys Who Rode… what’s the book called?

Gina Colucci:
The Boys in the Boat.

Leonard Garfield:
The Boys in the Boat. Thank you, Gina. You got it. George Pocock, he made the hull of that plane. Bill Boeing said that George Pocock, he makes the most beautiful vessels… make a beautiful vessel that flies. And so, he crafted the fuselage. The women who made sails actually made the wings of the airplane and he decided that he wasn’t going to fiddle with landing. He was just going to take off from water and land on water, so it went from Seattle Lake Union to Victoria, landing in the Victoria Harbor. And it was the first commercial airplane. It carried mail. It was the first international airplane. It went from the U.S. to Canada. And it’s just so emblematic of our Northwest because it is wood, it is maritime craftsmanship, and it takes advantage of the fact that we can land on water and take off from water and not worry so much about these tricky hills.

Leonard Garfield:
But here is one other thing, if you look at the engine there that actually propelled the plane, that was engineered by a very young guy, he was about 20 years old and his name was Wong Tsu. He was from China. He was an aeronautical prodigy. Somehow, Bill Boeing had discovered this young man. He recruited him from China, put him through MIT. And when he was fully educated and this brilliant, brilliant young man came to Seattle and he worked with Boeing and with George Pocock to make the plane fly. The very first aeronautical engineer in the United States was from China.

Leonard Garfield:
He stayed with Boeing for a couple of years, got the company off the ground, went back to China and founded the aviation industry in China. And today, if you ask a school kid in China who’s Wong Tsu, they’ll know, because he was the father of Chinese aviation, but he was also the father of American aviation, but we sometimes forget that, but what a wonderful story of what an international community we are and that great innovations like this take craftsmen of the old traditions like the boat builders and brilliant new minds who may come from anywhere in the world, and in a way, isn’t that what Seattle’s about even today?

Gina Colucci:
Absolutely. And what’s also fascinating is that as a first U.S. mail transport, and this also being the home of a giant company, that it’s kind of-

Leonard Garfield:
I forgot about that. It’s such a great point. Where would Amazon be if it weren’t for planes like that going all over the world and getting you those products instantly? It all started right here in Lake Union back in 1919 is when that plane took off. Can I tell you very quickly though, that the very first truck of UPS, another great partner of Amazon, is in our collection? Because UPS was founded in Seattle. Did you know that?

Gina Colucci:
I did not know that.

Leonard Garfield:
There was a young bicycle courier, bicycles were brand new in the early 20th century, Seattle was growing a support and in the gold rush days, people wanted to get down to that port real quickly, because they wanted to get their stuff either from Alaska or to Alaska and a young guy decided he was going to do a delivery service on a bicycle. And his name was… I’m going blank on his name momentarily. What was our friend who founded UPS? I am blanking on our friend’s name. UPS founder, he was a young kid. He was like 17. James Casey, Jim Casey. He was a 17-year-old. He founded UPS. Years ago, it moved out of Seattle in terms of the corporate headquarters, but it’s so fun as you pointed out to think that all that way of getting products around the world, it began here and getting those products around the world is still here in a really big way.

Gina Colucci:
And so, you said you have the UPS truck.

Leonard Garfield:
We do.

Gina Colucci:
Where is it?

Leonard Garfield:
Like many museums, the word in storage is frequently used. We have 4 million things. Lots of them are photographs or archival elements, but we have hundreds of thousands of three dimensional objects including the UPS truck. And so, it has been on display actually right where we’re standing a few years ago, it’ll come back on display, but museums are very protective about bringing things out in display too long because the environment, the light, people sort of never touching them, but they think about touching them and that alone causes them to deteriorate because sometimes they do touch them. The truck is resting right now in storage at the MOHAI Resource Center. Gina, our resource center is in Georgetown. It’s as big as this building. It’s that big because we have so many things.

Gina Colucci:
I think your Resource Center is actually very close to the Design Center.

Leonard Garfield:
I think you are absolutely right. It is exactly one block south of the Design Center. And isn’t that cool too, because I would love someday for the design center folks and the MOHAI folks to get together and look at historic designs because we have a very significant furniture collection. We have a huge decorative arts collection and we have 10,000 garments that are absolutely amazing, wedding gowns to bathing suits, to everything in between.

Gina Colucci:
And the Design Center’s The largest supplier location of textile choices in the Pacific Northwest. Just thinking about that and that history is fascinating.

Leonard Garfield:
Let’s do that. I really want to do that partnership. You heard it here, because the design history of the Northwest is really, really important and there’s some great names, Jack Lenor Larsen. I won’t go into all the names, but I know you guys at the Design Center are familiar with them that really did innovate, especially after World War II.

Gina Colucci:
We’re talking about the Jack Lenor Larsen, a Seattle born textile designer, innovator really, who was at the top of his professional game for decades. He did tons of commercial work, but his fabrics can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre, hey, and even the Seattle Design Center. Another local tie in for you, it said that Jack convinced a young Dale Chihuly to give up weaving glass and to try blowing it instead.

Leonard Garfield:
There have been quite a few important designs that have come out of here, including some important artists. That’s my next stop. And see, we’re doing a very easy tour because we don’t have to ever move away. It’s right there. It’s a gigantic picture that you see on the wall. And I can tell you where you can see even more of those, but-

Gina Colucci:
I was going to say it’s very familiar.

Leonard Garfield:
It does look familiar because you know what? It’s WPA art, Work Progress Administration. That was the program during the great depression in the 1930s that put everybody back to work, but it also put artists back to work, but artists were asked to do artwork that reflected other people working. This is a mural called the Men Who Work the Ships. It is designed by Kenneth Callahan. Kenneth Callahan is a very, very important Seattle artist who was particularly prolific in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.

Leonard Garfield:
And if you look at that, you actually see the working labor force of Seattle during the depression doing one of our core industries, which is making sure that all the vessels that came in and out of Seattle were in good repair. What I love about this particular painting is you really are seeing people at work. They’re working on repairing boilers and other aspects of the engine room of the ship. And you see a little racial diversity there as well. And it’s important to remember that in the Seattle workforce, there were people from all over the world. There were Black people, white people, Asian people, Hispanic people, native workers as well.

Leonard Garfield:
And not many artists captured that because regrettably, artists were encouraged to paint the world that they thought their patrons would most appreciate, but Kenneth Callahan stepped beyond that. He said, “I want to paint the world as it is.” He went down to the waterfront. He went into the engine room of these great vessels and he saw these guys just sweating and working from all over the world, working together to get something done. And that was the spirit that President Roosevelt wanted to really embody when he asked these artists to join the WPA. That particular mural is one of his series and the others you can see at the Pacific… What do they call the building now on Beacon Hill? It was Amazon for a while, Pacific Health Center.

Gina Colucci:
I think it’s Pacific Health Center. I went right by it. I’m convinced it’s [crosstalk 00:15:30] but that’s a different story.

Leonard Garfield:
Next time you go home, if you go there, still that way, go into the lobby. There’s a whole series of those murals that MOHAI restored and donated back to the… because that used to be the Marine hospital where all the guys who worked in the maritime industry would get their healthcare. They were originally designed for that building. They’d been at MOHAI for a number of years. We restored them and sent some of them back to their original location, which is kind of cool.

Gina Colucci:
I mean, that is also kind of an iconic building. You’re driving south on the five and I should say I-5, but-

Leonard Garfield:
Don’t get California on me.

Gina Colucci:
As you’re driving south on I-5 and it’s up on your left hand-side and it kind of glows and it’s like an-

Leonard Garfield:
It’s Art Deco. It’s Art Deco. It’s probably… You’re so good, Gina, in identifying that. It’s probably the best Art Deco building in Seattle, maybe the whole Northwest. It’s just this beautiful orange mountain as if it were rising up echoing, of course, Mount Rainier, which was such an inspiration to artists and architects of the 1930s. The building is also a WPA building as were the murals. They were all done as a piece.

Gina Colucci:
That’s really… I don’t think you see many buildings that have art done at the same time.

Leonard Garfield:
Very few. And that wasn’t… Again, to the design center, we all know design is holistic, right? I mean, it can be the spoon you use to eat your breakfast. It can be the way you do your garden or the car you drive and it’s really the way we work and live. And that holistic view of design was the spirit of the WPA that work was of value and design and work were really complimentary parts of the same whole, not in contradiction to each other.

Gina Colucci:
It’s a beautiful perspective. I love how you put that.

Leonard Garfield:
It’s a really cool painting because it’s very heroic. The figures, it’s a series of about 10 guys working in the engine room, the boiler room of a great big ship. They’re down in the bowels of this big engine room and they’re very muscular guys. Kenneth Callahan liked a lot of muscular guys. They’ll be [crosstalk 00:17:31] exactly. He was not shy about. He actually was a gay artist. He was pretty openly gay, I guess he was. I don’t think any of his family’s living so if I get in trouble for saying that, but it is quite known that he was. And so, there’s a kind of sensuousness to the figures, which is… but it really was a celebration of muscularity and the muscularness of labor, whether it was women or men or whoever it was, it was the notion that there’s a kind of fluidity and power and strength. That’s much like the forms we admire in nature.

Leonard Garfield:
We can admire that in our own work and our own labor as well. And so, you see that at work here. The guys are dressed in probably the most casual, rough and tumble garments, jeans, the kinds of stuff you’d actually see. And all of their faces are turned toward their work. He’s really not asking us to celebrate the individuals as much as he’s asking us to celebrate the bodies in motion with the machine and the title of the work is the Men Who Work the Ships. And so, I think the men become really part of the ship and really, they’re celebrated as doing that really tough, tough work.

Gina Colucci:
You can kind of see the similarities of this very strong internal vessel to their strong hardworking bodies.

Leonard Garfield:
You’re so right. Look at the curves of the pipes and the sides of the walls. They’re sinewy and they’re curved much like you’re right, just like the musculature of the figures. There is very much a… They’re reflecting back to each other.

Gina Colucci:
And the color palette too is natural, but earthy.

Leonard Garfield:
It’s very natural. It’s gritty. It’s earthy. It’s like steel and strength, nothing flashy. And again, it all becomes one piece, really. The colors of the men and the colors of the ship itself are very much integrated.

Speaker 2:
Seattle Design Center is the premier marketplace for fine home furnishings, designer textiles, bespoke lighting, curated art, and custom kitchen and bath solutions. We are located in the heart of Georgetown, open to the public Monday through Friday with complimentary parking. Our showroom associates are industry experts known for their customer service. We are celebrating new showrooms and added onsite amenities. Visit seattledesigncenter.com for more information about our showrooms and our Find a Designer program.

Leonard Garfield:
That is the original R. Now, you got to remember it, Gina.

Gina Colucci:
I mean, I’ve-

Leonard Garfield:
Picture it, if you will. There’s a fake… No, there’s a replica R on the freeway today. When you go south or north on I-5, you do see it, but that’s the original put up there shortly after World War II to herald the Rainier Brewery, everyone’s favorite beer in Seattle. Here’s the funny thing about the sign. When we did dismantle it to take it down to preserve it, we noticed not only that we had the beautiful neon and all this little light bulbs, which light up if you turn a switch there, but it also had about 10 bullet holes in it. Apparently, it was an attractive target practice for passing motorists which kind of, I must tell another side of the story here, but that’s part of its history as well.

Gina Colucci:
Don’t try this at home, kids.

Leonard Garfield:
Yes, do not try this at home. Another fun sign that we have on display is the All Roads Lead to the Dog House. And for real old time Seattleites, they’ll remember the Dog House Restaurant. That was the all-night diner you’d go to with the kind of rough and tough waitresses and you’d get your cup of coffee. They keep you going, lots of folks coming in from the bars or folks working the late night shift and just a beloved restaurant. When that sign had to be removed, it came here. We are quite the repository of historic signs. And our most recent is the pink Elephant Car Wash sign. Gina, if you’ve got an idea of where we should put that in its new home, right now, it’s being restored. It will be ready one of these days and we’re going to locate it somewhere.

Gina Colucci:
Our tour ended. We sat down to talk more history, Leonard’s true passion. We talked a lot about historic design in Seattle and what themes, design, spaces, lessons seem most relevant to us today in your opinion?

Leonard Garfield:
I think if I were to think about Seattle design, I think there are a couple of things that come to the forge you look at historically. One is respect for the natural environment. I think our natural setting has really inspired our design, whether it is in our fabrics, our clothing, and we think of Eddie Bauer or Filson or REI or in our architecture, and The Northwest School of Architecture really paid great sensitivity to the use of natural locally sourced materials.

Leonard Garfield:
I think a respect and an understanding of nature and being open to that, recognizing that we live in nature, I think that’s hugely important. I think our location on the Pacific rim has been important. I think the influences, particularly from Asia, have been extremely important in our design, our architecture, our art. And then I think that in the Northwest and in Seattle in particular, there is an authenticity, a lack of pretentiousness, a lack of hierarchy, this kind of accessibility that everybody’s on an equal playing field, and we all have something to contribute. I think that spirit, as opposed to a spirit that’s very pretentious or exclusive, I think that approach of embracing everybody is very key to the Northwest design aesthetic.

Gina Colucci:
What’s something that you hope architects and builders and designers keep in mind as they’re creating and planning new spaces for us Seattleites?

Leonard Garfield:
Boy, that’s such a good question. What I always appreciate is when an architect or designer thinks not just about their work, but thinks about the work around them. I love context. I love people who design to fit into a larger fabric, whether it’s an urban fabric or whether it’s just a specific design palette or opportunity. And I think that where Seattle does best, and sometimes this is our most modest stuff is when we build in harmony with the setting and with the neighbors and with the neighborhood. I think we’re… sometimes we don’t have a distinguished stuff is when we build something that’s completely disrespectful or not paying much attention to the surrounding neighborhood. And I think all great designers are always cognizant of the larger context.

Leonard Garfield:
I’m loving all the glass that’s going up in Seattle. I love the glass because it reflects the sky and we have such a great sky here. In the middle of the summer, as we’re experiencing now, it’s just a brilliant sky with fabulous sunrises and sunsets, but through much of the year, it’s that misty haze that we have that we just kind of love because it’s so wonderful and refreshing. And I think all the new glass buildings do a good job of reflecting that. I like that. But I do agree that those craftsman buildings, whether they’re bungalows or whether they’re the more formal arts and crafts, English revival style buildings, because they do hearken back to the use of materials and to the natural setting.

Leonard Garfield:
I do think that’s a special asset that we have, but also, Pioneer Square. I mean, sometimes we forget that the stones, particularly the Romanesque revival architecture from Pioneer Square, there aren’t many places in America that have so many blocks of basically intact historic architecture from the turn of the last century. And I think we sometimes take that for granted because it’s been a number of decades since we really had the movement to save that.

Leonard Garfield:
Oh, and then speaking of saving, we have to save Pike Place Market because it’s just so special. And why is it special? Not because it’s fancier because there’s anything from a design standpoint that stands out, but because it’s so authentic and it’s so accessible and it’s a kind of design that really is about how we live and use spaces, how we exist in spaces as opposed to how spaces land on us. And so, I’d say Pike Place Market is just a great amazing treasure for Seattle.

Gina Colucci:
I couldn’t agree more. Can you go into depth a little bit about or comment about the stone and being one of the largest collections of it in…

Leonard Garfield:
Pioneer Square, I’m not sure how many blocks it is, but it’s many blocks. It’s on the very site where Seattle burned down. Seattle was largely a wooden city until 1889. In the summer of that year, they had a dry spell just like we have a dry spell now. And there was an accident and a building caught on fire. And before you know it, basically the whole of downtown Seattle was burned down. When they rebuilt, they decided we’re going to be smarter, we’re going to make it fireproof. And so, they built in stone and that coincided with the movement in American architecture of the so-called Romanesque revival, which was taking huge blocks of stone in all cases locally sourced, sandstone for the most part from places like Tenino and places like Pierce County. And they bring these huge blocks in, sometimes they’d work them and form them on the outside and the ornament would be carved into the stone, so it was very much organic and coming from it.

Leonard Garfield:
And they would only go up X number of stories because stone is a heavy material and this predates the elevator or the reinforced steel architecture that will allow you to go very high. It gave the city almost an instant sense of monumentality and almost an instant sense of age. Even if they were brand new, they were so massive and heavy and ponderous that they seemed like suddenly we had an instantly old city happening in downtown Seattle, but it was quite an architectural marvel. And it was published… As the billions were going up, they were published in New York architecture magazines. It’s really an example of the best commercial work of the day.

Leonard Garfield:
And pretty much between the fire in 1889 and the turn of the century, say, in 1900, the entire Pioneer Square was built. If you can imagine the whole city rebuilding in a completely new design aesthetic and we talked about the harmony of buildings, all those buildings harmonize with each other. They’re all the same color. They’re basically all the same height. They use a lot of the same design vocabulary because people understood that they weren’t building just for themselves, they were really building an environment for people to occupy.

Gina Colucci:
Wow. And I’m guessing you probably have some of those publications.

Leonard Garfield:
We do in our library. Gina, we have a library filled with thousands of historic documents, everything from city directories to corporate records, to diaries and letters, to magazines and newspapers and lots and lots of historic photographs. If anybody at the design center anywhere is interested in researching the history of design in Seattle or particular buildings or neighborhoods, a good first step would be to the MOHAI library and you can find how to get information on that by just going to our website, mohai.org.

Gina Colucci:
That’s amazing tip right there. And one last question, what’s one story that really inspired you along the way?

Leonard Garfield:
The story that inspires me the most is actually the story of the cleaning up of Lake Washington. Back in the 1950s and well before that, the lake was becoming very polluted. It wasn’t safe to swim. It wasn’t safe certainly to catch fish or eat them. People who had taken this wonderful resource for granted were suddenly discovering that it was toxic. And rather than waiting for there to be an environmental calamity where the lake caught on fire as happened elsewhere around the country, or not waiting for a court order where it was mandated you must clean this up because all kinds of suits were filed, smart civic leaders all around the lake from the City of Seattle and from the dozens of suburban communities all got together and not just the political leaders, but volunteers and middle class folks and school teachers and lawyers and people who really cared and said, “Let’s get together and clean up this lake.”

Gina Colucci:
A little more background. In the 1950s, locals called Lake Washington, Lake Stinko. Surrounding cities had dumped raw sewage into the lake for decades. That ended in the early ’40s, but left the lake polluted and smelly. Sewage was handled mostly by individual cities, but we needed regional planning and cooperation to make any big improvements to the lake’s water quality. King County voters approved the creation of Metro in September 1958, but it had not been a sure thing. It was first on the ballot in May of that year and didn’t pass. Then there was a huge public education campaign over the summer led by volunteers and passionate citizens, like Leonard mentioned, and this is what convinced voters that we needed to spend the money and clean up the lake.

Gina Colucci:
Metro created a legal entity that could spearhead a regional approach to sewage management and divert it from the lake. It was a big project that lasted about a decade. By 1971, Lake Washington’s water was more transparent than it had been since 1950.

Leonard Garfield:
And the cleanup of Lake Washington was such a massive environmental undertaking, but it was all initiated by just regular people in Seattle who said, “We can do things smarter and we can do things better. We don’t need a big philanthropist to come in and solve our problems. We don’t need the government to tell us what to do. We can do it ourselves.” And that sense of self-reliance, which we sometimes call the Seattle spirit, that’s what inspires me. And I think if we take that attitude that we can build the city we want, we have the power to do it. We just have to get together and do it and Seattle’s never shied away from a smart idea. We can look to the past for those kinds of inspiring stories and tackle the challenges we have now.

Gina Colucci:
Inspired Design is brought to you by the Seattle Design Center. The show is produced by Larj Media. You can find them at larjmedia.com. Special thanks to Michi Suzuki, Lisa Willis, and Kimmy Design for bringing this podcast to life. For more, head to seattledesigncenter.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. Next time on Inspired Design, we meet up with Louie Gong at his eighth generation store in Pike Place Market.

Louie Gong:
It’s crazy to think that in 2016 when the store opened, it was the only native store in the entire city of Seattle. The native origins of this region are used in the branding of the city all over the place and yet the actual participation of native people in commerce for people visiting Seattle was almost nothing.

Gina Colucci:
Is there an iconic Northwest creator that you want to hear from? Head to our website and leave a comment.

In this episode of Inspired Design, Luly Yang takes us on a journey through her world-renowned bridal, couture and uniform collections, gives us insight into her signature creative process and reveals for the first time, her next collection that will launch this Fall. This episode is a delightful escape that begins with tea, transports us overseas, then back to the picturesque views of Luly’s inspirational space. And we finally get the answer to one of our biggest questions: What is design?

Watch a Q&A and Sneak Peek of Luly’s Newest Collection

Explore this Episode

Episode Transcript

Luly Yang:
I’ve fallen off of trees. You know I came from downtown Seattle where we have, really, skyscrapers. When we look out our window it’s buildings, and I love architecture too, and right now I’m very much inspired by nature.

Gina Colucci:
I’m Gina Colucci with the Seattle design center. Every week on Inspired Design, we sit down with an iconic creator in a space that inspires them. [inaudible 00:00:27] I recently met up with fashion designer, Lily Yang, in her Kirkland studio about the evolution of her 20 year career and how she continues to find inspiration in everything from teapots to maple trees and even a strong sense of place.

Luly Yang:
Hi! It’s so good to see you.

Gina Colucci:
We walk in to her corner office with these big bay windows looking out at the Kirkland waterfront. She has this stark white desk, and then, in the middle was this striking red teapot with these cute little cups.

Luly Yang:
I make tea crafts.

Speaker 4:
I love the red teacups and the… [inaudible 00:01:07]

Gina Colucci:
And it just set the stage for a lovely conversation that afternoon.

Speaker 4:
It’s beautiful. It’s striking.

Luly Yang:
Yeah, I love it.

Gina Colucci:
So you might know Lily Yang as the international known fashion designer, she’s based here in Seattle and has done everything from bridal couture, to runway gowns, to uniforms for some of the most well-known companies here in the US. She mentioned the uniforms she designed for Alaska Airlines in passing.

Luly Yang:
I Lived in Austria for three years and I came back to do Alaska airline.

Gina Colucci:
But no small undertaking. The airline selected her to revamp their uniforms in 2016 for its 20,000 plus employees.

Luly Yang:
It’s such a musical city and you see people walking around with their instruments everywhere. And we lived really close. We were in the first district close to the Stefan Stone Church. So the main church, And we walked by, were very close to the main opera house. And it’s so beautiful there. I actually, when I was there, I designed a collection called crescendo. Places really inspire me. So when I’m at place, usually I will create a collection based on that location. And that was really fun. That crescendo collection. So I don’t know if you’ve seen, maybe I’ll show you, but we have piano and violin

Speaker 4:
It’s at the moPOP right now?

Luly Yang:
Yes. So that was really fun. I love that crescendo collection.

Gina Colucci:
Vienna is one of the many places Lily has called home and drawn inspiration from. Her parents are from Taiwan and were studying in Japan when Lily was a baby. Her family moved back to Taiwan when Lily was a toddler and then immigrated to the US when she was in fifth grade. Moving to the US was a tough transition for Lily. She had to learn English quickly out of necessity. There were struggles, but she told me she’s ultimately happy that HER family made the move. It gives her a different perspective in life. And it also influenced her work as a designer.

Luly Yang:
I remember every dress I’ve ever made in 20 years. So I reserve my brain capacity for these things, different selection.

Speaker 4:
What helps you remember them? Is it just, you can just kind of like…

Luly Yang:
I just remember them because you create them. They’re babies, they’re all my babies. Are many of them, so I remember them. I always, with my team, we always personify them because it’s easier. We name them after they’re made. So they have a name and they have a concept, usually they’re highly conceptual and then we named them. And then it’s really easy to remember.

Speaker 4:
What was your favorite name? That’s come out of that process.

Luly Yang:
I did a metamorphosis collection and that was for my 10th anniversary of my business. And we kind of look back in the 10 years and what happened. So we’ve made a parallel between kind of the, my life and my career, and the butterfly. Cause it’s my iconic dress. So you’ve seen them. It’s funny, most people don’t know that’s my first dress I ever made. Oh, actually it was a fashion show to benefit Art with Heart. And they invited graphic designers, not fashion designers, graphic designers to do it and pair them with paper companies. And I was paired with Mead paper company. So they’re pretty awesome company. And they wanted to promote a certain paper and I took a butterfly wing and Photoshop and worked with it. And it made a really, really big and draped the dress out of paper. That was hard. After I did that, I started my business. I fell in love with the process.

Speaker 4:
Just through that?

Gina Colucci:
And then how did it feel changing careers?

Luly Yang:
Scary at first, I think because I do like architecture, it was hard to… Actually didn’t leave it. I did part-time and then I started my business and then within a year I didn’t have time anymore to do that. So then I kind of slowly left it.

Speaker 4:
So it was a natural trend.

Luly Yang:
Yeah. I try to do things organically and it’s more comfortable.

Speaker 4:
That’s beautiful. And then I guess kind of back on that inspiration from creating this beautiful Monarch butterfly dress out of paper, how did you then transition into working with fabrics and textiles?

Luly Yang:
I’ve always wanted to do fashion though. It wasn’t a new thing. I was not surprised that I switched. So I think I knew when I was six. So I was already sketching at a very young age before, I think before I went to elementary school. So that was, I think it just came, I just came back. So I came back to what I didn’t arrive at a new location. I just kind of came back to where I wanted to be.

Speaker 4:
And when you were six, do you think that little girl sometimes is still in your designs?

Luly Yang:
Always. I think it’s my dream come true. I’m really happy that I, 20 years ago, I chose to take the plunge and change my career and switch to fashion because I love it so much every day. And I think that’s rewarding.

Speaker 4:
Yeah. I mean, each dress is your baby.

Luly Yang:
And I care very much about the product that we design and what we bring out for our clients, whether it’s one client for couture or, you know, Alaska airline for all the employees. And since I treat the process the same way with the same intention. And so it’s very, very rewarding. I love it so much. I’m so happy I did it. I really am really happy.

Speaker 4:
What’s your favorite part about the creation process? Like from beginning to end, you have one part that you liked the most?

Luly Yang:
I love the moment of conception. So the moment that I conceive the idea and the idea is exciting because it didn’t exist before. So it’s creating something from nothing. So that moment of creation is really exciting. And then the second favorite, maybe they’re competing with each other. My next favorite would be the end. So when I finish it, and if it’s a piece of clothing, I put it on the person who is going to wear it, whether it’s again, a group or one person. And I see them wearing it and experiencing it and the energy that it gives them and the feeling and the confidence that feels really good. So I think it’s the beginning. And then the very end. And then there’s a lot that goes on in the middle. That can be rewarding, but.

Speaker 4:
It’s a process.

Luly Yang:
It’s a process, yeah.

Speaker 4:
And can you kind of dive into more of that initial spark you were talking about? Where are some of the different places that has come from for you?

Luly Yang:
So concepts come from everywhere. So one of my favorite ones that I did within the last, I would say 10 years, is a collection called Ocean. And I’ve always loved everything about the ocean. I like water and I love the creatures that live within. I think it’s almost like an alien space. We don’t go there. We don’t know what’s in there. So we actually created a line called Ocean and benefited the aquarium. So we partnered with the aquarium and we did a fashion show there and it was really, really fun. And if you look outside, there’s something calming and magical about the waterfront here. And I almost feel like I’m going back in time. When I’m in Kirkland, I feel like I go back maybe 20, 30 years here and there’s a calmness about it. And the soul I really like, and this is my first year here. I arrived in October and I saw the leaves change. So these are all maple trees. Every day I’d come in and I would see the change and the yellow… the green turning into orange and then the yellow and then falling off and even just without leaves is so beautiful. So I think nature in Kirkland has really inspired me. And you will see that in our fall collection, the inspiration from Kirkland.

Gina Colucci:
Hey, do you have a special place outdoors that inspires you? Head to Instagram and comment on the post for this episode.

Speaker 4:
Speaking about finding inspiration in the places that you are in being here in Kirkland and watching those leaves change. Can you give us a little more insight into the collection?

Luly Yang:
Well, one of the things that I took inspiration from more is the color. So you will see the oranges and the yellows and the greens. We muted down the green a little bit to like more of an olive green. So those are… The palette is really the maple tree palette through four seasons. And as far as style-wise, I can tell you what it’s called. You’ll be the first. It’s called Lou Leisure. Lou Leisure. So it’s it’s a kind of a hybrid of resort lounge and work. So that it’s, I feel like life, even before COVID, life was becoming kind of blurry between work and play and living, and now with COVID and everyone being at home and working from home, if that line is blurring even more, this is something that you can wear and lounge around and be comfortable. And then you take your dog out for a walk and you’re actually not embarrassed to run into your friends from work. Or you have a last minute zoom call and you’re appropriately dressed. So it’s something like that. And, also when travel opens up again, it would be a great comfort travel collection that is low maintenance, low wrinkle, and easy to take care of and pack. So I’m hoping to launch that this fall.

Speaker 4:
That’s exciting.

Speaker 3:
Is that Lou Leisure?

Luly Yang:
Some. Yeah, some. So we use…

Speaker 3:
Well we won’t tell anyone

Gina Colucci:
This was one of my favorite moments. Lily walked us through her showroom and we got a sneak peek at some of her pieces in the line, Lou Leisure. We saw t-shirts with her signature butterflies in performance fabrics, thoughtful details in every piece and a very cool raincoat.

Speaker 4:
This is how you elevate the Pacific Northwest style.

Luly Yang:
Yeah… [inaudible 00:11:48] I want to.

Speaker 4:
How beautiful and fun.

Luly Yang:
Very fun, I think I want people to have such a fun raincoat that when it rains, they look forward to it. That’s my goal. So that there’s joy in rain. And so it’s not just the complaint. It’s actually, “Hey, opportunity to where my most favorite raincoat.”

Gina Colucci:
When you look around Lily’s work over her 20 year career, there’s a consistent theme of underlying elements in everything. There’s butterflies, and whimsy, beauty, and joy.

Luly Yang:
Usually in every collection, there’s some humor in it. We’ll find a couple of pieces and we’ll put a little humor in it and you don’t really know it’s there until you really look at it or put it on. And it’s like, “Hey, that’s kinda different,” so the humor, and then that’s the joy I think you’re talking about. We do that because it brings me joy to do it.

Speaker 4:
Yeah. It definitely comes through. Is there one specific example of like something that just made you giggle?

Luly Yang:
In my Passage to Shanghai collection I put these big, huge embroidered, koi fish on the back of the dress. And then I have them swimming up in different sizes up the back. And then there’s some kind of here organically placed on the sleeve and coming out. So that… every time I look at that I still have, I was looking at the pictures. It makes me smile. It makes me remember the moment we did that. We were all laughing. We were laughing in the studio. And then we said, okay, well, let’s place it in an elegant way. They’re swimming upstream. And they’re up the body. It just gives us that sparkle in the eye. And you never see a koi pond on the dress, and you never see it on the body, but here you… I think design is about putting two things that are familiar, that are never together and marrying them. And that’s innovation.

Luly Yang:
It’s not just because we have to invent a new fiber. Innovation to me is learning how to use the ingredients we have in a really fresh and exciting way. And in a sustainable way. With couture, I think sometimes designers tend to overdo it with bells and whistles and they just think more is more, more is better. And for me, my perspective is part of the art is really restraint, and giving the negative space. Because negative scape space helps you appreciate what’s really there. And without negative space, the design cannot be appreciated. When I designed clothing I think of it as also a three-dimensional product. And so I usually turn my client and I’ll turn our dress form around to make sure that the transition between all the angles are fluid.

Speaker 4:
Are you working on anything right now? I mean, the leisure, obviously.

Luly Yang:
I’m working on Lu-Leisure.

Speaker 4:
And then, is there anything else that is coming up that really excites you?

Luly Yang:
Well, I love doing uniforms, right? It’s so fun. It’s so much fun because it’s a way for a designer to truly scale their work. And so you design a collection and then you have, I don’t know, however many thousands of people are wearing it. So I’m still working on the Amazon projects, Amazon, the DSP drivers, their uniform. So we continue to update it and have new iterations of that. We’re working with other hotels for uniforms. It’s the same process on the design, but when you scale it, when you go to manufacturing, it’s very different there versus the couture piece. So yeah. So there, you have to put on the business hat quite a bit because you have to design to cost. Uniforms have to be at a certain cost and we need to be able to do it at a certain pace and speed. So it’s a very fun challenge. Very fun.

Speaker 4:
One thing that fascinates me with you is Seattle and the Pacific Northwest is known for its functional style. I guess we can call it, but you’re a couture designer at heart. How does that influence maybe your designs or maybe make you want to go the other direction?

Luly Yang:
I think the approach from the… The couture approach is about, for me is about listening. And I think across the board being a good designer of any medium is about listening and it’s about solving problems for human beings. So how do we make their lives better with our product? How do we make living even more enjoyable with our product? Whether it’s through beauty, looking at it or wearing it or feeling it. I think with that approach, I approach it the same way for couture versus the uniform projects where we’re producing massive amounts. I start with a really deep, deep understanding and listening, and that way our solution can be a hundred percent strategic. And we know that every decision we make is based on something soulful.

Speaker 4:
Can you take me through the process of designing for a client? Yes.

Luly Yang:
Yes. If it’s a first time meeting them, I definitely put aside quite a bit of time because this is a get to know each other and it’s a relationship. So the first half of the meeting really is about me asking questions about who they are, what they’re like, what their personality is like, and what’s their comfort, what makes them comfortable and what they’re looking for, whether it’s a wedding or the Oscars or an event that they’re about to attend. And so for couture, that’s what we do. We sit down and talk about what they’re looking for and I get to know them and I get to know them through what they tell me, but also through just kind of what I see and how they move and how they kind of present themselves and how they are.

Luly Yang:
I really like this part of it. The human aspect of it. Getting to know someone. And then the next is me offering some solutions. I’ll usually have my sketch pad or I’ll have my tissue paper and I’ll just sketch it. I do both electronic and by hand. And I might pull fabrics from my sewing room. I might pull dresses that are close to it to inspire from. And then we do the sketch. And usually I share those with the client. It’s a very interactive process. They would respond and then we would approve.

Luly Yang:
So that’s kind of the end of the first meeting.

Speaker 4:
That’s all in one?

Luly Yang:
That’s all in one. That’s all in one. Sometimes if they have more time, I would drape the fabric on them. If it’s a draped piece of material that’s what they want. They would stand up and I would drape on them. Like I do on a mannequin. Then we set up a fitting schedule and there’s usually two fittings till completion. Two and a half would be average. When they come back, they try on the garments. Usually 80% finished, we don’t finish at all because we still want to fit in. And then they come back for the second one and then we complete the garment and then the final one, they take it and we get beautiful pictures and stories afterwards, which is really rewarding.

Speaker 4:
I know. I mean, you’re obviously very well known for your wedding dresses, but for, you mentioned an Oscar gown or a big event gown. Is there one in particular that stands out in your mind in that creative process?

Luly Yang:
I think the best ones are the ones that are really out of the box that are unexpected. I did one for the Oscars. That is a Monarch by Night. So it’s my Monarch, but it’s what the colors would look like at night. And it’s actually, I made it a, more of a aubergine and gray. So it’s like what it would like, I imagine, if we didn’t have sight of color and there was no light. That’s a beautiful dress. I love this one. It has satin faced organza, ruffles that cascades down the back, and then it starts in the front and it kind of meanders around the body and then cascades down the train. I love that one.

Speaker 4:
It’s a piece of art.

Gina Colucci:
As I was sitting there a dress form in the corner caught my eye. It looked special. Like it had its own stories to tell. It was not like your normal dress form of, where you could stick pins in it. It was made of metal and different pieces of metal kind of put together. And Lily had placed a beautiful necklace around it. And I was just wanting to know more.

Luly Yang:
I went To Paris to the premiere vision, textile show, and I was walking in this little alley and I saw this dress form shop and they had all these different kinds of display, dress forms. And I bought three and I was like, how am I going to ship this? I was like, I don’t care. Look at this. So cool. It looks like a whole airplane. Isn’t that cool? It’s very cool.

Speaker 4:
Oh you had your name engraved on the…

Luly Yang:
Yeah. So it came from Paris. It was more than, yeah, just right before I opened my studio and then I had a really curvy pink one and pink satin. And then I had a turquoise one, but this outlasted, the satins because it’s been 20 years. So this is so beautiful. I love her. So this marks the beginning. So this in the butterfly dress.

Gina Colucci:
Inspired Design is brought to you by the Seattle Design Center. The show is produced by Larj Media. You can find them at larjmedia.com. Special thanks to Meechie Suzuki, Lisa Willis, and Kimmie Design for bringing this podcast to life. For more head to Seattledesigncenter.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media. Next time on Inspired Design, LaNesha DeBardelaben shares the important history of our city from her favorite spot, the Douglass Truth branch of the Seattle public library.

LaNesha DeBardelaben:
Well, there are just so many gems of cultural literacy. It’s not just the books that are on the shelf here that enrich us.