This week I spoke to textile artist, Julie Newton about natural dyeing, what items in your closet you take for granted, and why Ally and AJ should be protected at all costs.

Julie’s fashion journey began in high school when she began embroidering and personalizing the clothes she already had. She explains that as a beginner embroidery was attractive because “it’s a very accessible art form; you just need thread and a needle” to get started. Inspired by embroidery from the 50s and 60s, she experimented with thrifted clothes and eventually decided to pursue the textile arts as a career. After a brief stint at The University of British Columbia, she decided to enrol at Polimoda, a fashion school based in Florence, Italy. She says that there was a vast divide between her education at these two institutions; at UBC she was accustomed to one or two hour lectures, whereas Polimoda demanded ten-hour days of hands-on learning to simulate life on the job. A particularly tough class was knitwear, a class in which “you either learned really quickly or you were behind from thirty minutes in the first class”. Despite being a four-year program, Julie decided to leave Polimoda after two years, citing that “I really felt that I wanted to give it my go” back in Vancouver.

Prior to her studies at Polimoda, Julie had started her own company, Hijulez, when she was eighteen years old. This was a continuation of her love of embroidery that she had developed in high school, but began to involve more intricate and expansive work following her post-secondary studies. Julie describes her style as comfortable clothing with unique patterns, bright colours and natural dyeing; the latter becoming an area of focus over the last year and a half.

Natural Dyeing

With her background in fashion history, Julie notes that for the most part, people simply did not have access to most colours until the advent of synthetic dyes. That is not to say that civilizations lived in beige and grey, but rather that natural dyes were a major source to bring life into one’s clothing. Julie says that Vancouver affords her nearly limitless opportunities to experiment as “every month, something changes in Vancouver and there is something available” to try. She describes this process as a bit of a science experiment, combining different ingredients, bonding agents and fabrics to try and get her desired effect. Some ingredients she has sampled this year include cherry blossoms, magnolias, cedar, berries, sumac, and mint sage, many of which even came from her home garden. Julie began growing her garden at the onset of quarantine, and she says that this process has helped her become more patient with herself, citing that the fast-paced schedule that she pushes to maintain is forcibly balanced by the fixed growth cycles of her garden. This has also helped her localize the means of production for her items as she is able to source, sew and sell her products within a much smaller range.

Fast Fashion

When I asked Julie about what item of clothing most people take for granted, she said that a simple collared shirt could actually take up to five hours of continuous labour to produce. This discrepancy between perceived and actual labour is one of the reasons Julie had found it difficult at times to compete with the fast fashion industry. She says that the prices we have been accustomed to are relative to exploitative practices that go into the making of the clothing, while consequently making local goods seem overpriced in comparison. Julie’s upcoming launch of an intimates line has been directly affected by this dichotomy as she is trying to balance pricing, labour, and quantity in an effort to combat this issue.

Another issue she has faced is larger companies taking designs she has created and used them in their own products without any attribution or credit. Julie says that in fashion “there’s always inspiration, but there’s definitely blatant knockoffs” as well, and that it can be very disheartening to see her work gain traction under another name. But as a smaller company, she tries to maintain a balance between making efforts to protect her intellectual property and overextending herself and risking burnout.

Aly & AJ and other Happy Accidents

Inherent to creative experimentation is failure, and Julie says that she is lucky to achieve her original vision in half of the projects she attempts. While her success rate has increased over the five years of Hijulez, failure continues to be a part of her creative process. However, she embraces the positive aspect of failure, contrary to the definition that was presented to her in fashion school. Instead of viewing a project negatively if it doesn’t turn out as intended, she says that her career has in many ways progressed due to “lots of happy accidents”. (This, of course, excludes mistakes she has made in respect to not getting enough sleep, such as “sewing the wrong arm on something five times because you’re too tired”).

For Julie, the best part about being a textile artist is when she is able to connect with someone who shares the same aesthetic and values that are represented in her products. This can range from folks browsing her clothing in her driveway, collaborating on product launches with her friends, all the way up to much bigger clientele. One of the stores Julie sells her clothing in is One of a Few in Gastown. She has worked with this company for several years now, having been discovered on Instagram early in her career due to her embroidery work. Two of the many (get it?) visitors to One of a Few are Aly & AJ, a pair who are a pretty big deal for anyone, but an even bigger deal if you are like me and grew up in the early 2000s. Attracted to Julie’s work, Aly & AJ reached out to her on Instagram and began a chat that eventually led to Julie designing their tour merch and drum kit.

To end this article, I thought it was important to mention that Julie’s passion for sewing is much more than skin-deep. She shared a story from when she was six years old and camping with her family. Upon her dad (who is an ER doctor) accidentally cutting a deep gash in his hand, she was tasked with suturing the wound so they could get to a hospital. After a passable suture job, she remembers thinking “great, let’s do this on fabric. Or anything else,” which if nothing else shows the drive and perseverance that has got her to where she is today.

For more on Julie and her work, check her out on her website and on Instagram.

Follow A Musing on Facebook and Instagram for more content on Julie and the other creatives in this series.

And don’t forget to read about podcaster Jake Robins.

-BF