Happy Earth Day

Dear friends,

Happy Earth Day; it’s the 50th anniversary of Earth Day this year!

Many years ago, I moved down to Los Angeles to be with my elderly parents and help take care of my aging mother. I found their house full of stuff (literally, stuffed to the brim). My mother loved clothing and had saved clothing from both my own childhood as well as hers (like this cute wool hat). She had also saved my grandmother’s and great aunts wardrobes, so I had some clothing dating back to the civil war era.

I started weeding through the items and started playing with some of the things that I could salvage. My grandson Devon was newly hatched and I wanted to give him something special, so I started to reuse clothing and textiles already in my parents house to make him some cute new clothing.

I started Devon’s Drawer as a way to re-imagine used and discarded clothing, and as a way to inspire others to re-use already existing clothing and textiles. We started really small, I’ve included a few snapshots of some of our earliest designs below (these are long since sold or gifted, sadly).

I threw sweaters in to washing machine and re-cut them to make little sweaters and outfits. As time went on we thought that maybe this could be a business so we experimented with using men’s shirts as lining, and old dresses as bindings. Nowadays we use new fabrics as we found that re-using older clothing has its limits in size and quantity. However, I still make little sweaters for my grandchildren, re-using old favorites that have seen better days (at least as full sized adult clothing)

So on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we go back to our roots, re-using, and re-thinking what we need as opposed to what we may want. We encourage you to not purchase anything on this day, not as a protest, but as a symbol of our commitment to buying better and buying less. Instead, take a walk in your neighborhood, and enjoy the beauty all around you!

Happy Earth Day from all of us at Devon’s Drawer!

Cynthia