Meet Jamie Hayes
Jamie’s interests lie at the intersection of fashion, art, labor, and identity. She has a B.A. from Washington University in English Literature, a B.A. from Columbia College in Fashion Design, and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Chicago. She has designed for fair trade organizations including SERRV, Intercrafts Peru, and Threads of Yunnan, and is a volunteer for Chicago Fair Trade, where she helped to pass an ordinance mandating that apparel procured by the City of Chicago be sweatshop-free.
She is the owner of slow fashion line Production Mode, and co-designed a collection of luxury slow fashion nightwear, Department of Curiosities. She is a professor at the School of the Art Institute and Columbia College, and also deejays regularly. You can catch her sets most Fridays at Bordel and every third Saturday at Penny Whistle.
Q+A
Where do you go for inspiration?
The dance floor and seeing my friends and colleagues deejay, perform, and make art and community: Damon Locks, Bumbac Joe, Tanja Buhler, Fanita Banana, Paula Wilson, Emily Winter, Anna Brown, Martine Whitehead, Nuria Montiel, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury, Katinka Kleijn, Tomeka Reid, Leslie Baum, and so many others ... thrift and vintage stores, the Fashion Resource Center at the School of the Art Institute and the Fashion Studies Collection at Columbia College, the museum at FIT in NYC, any library, Gramaphone Records, and anywhere I travel. My eyes and ears are always much more open when I’m out of my home city.
Tell us about your creative process:
My creative process is highly collaborative and materials-driven. I try to work with people I love and admire and then let them do their thing. My fashion collections are very material driven, so typically I find an artist with which to collaborate, then have them design a print or create weave patterns. I use the best quality materials I can find and afford. For example I use vegetable tanned leather (a traditional, artisanal, and sustainable way to tan leather) from Horween tannery, the last tannery left in Chicago, with a unionized workforce- a rare thing in the garment industry. I had artist Paula Wilson create an all over print on the leather, applied by hand by another artist, Nora Renick-Rinehart. My woven textiles come from the Weaving Mill, a small-scale industrial weaving mill in Humboldt Park. I'm currently working on a line of sweaters that will feature naturally-dyed wool yarns produced by the Bi Daüü cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico.
I like to show my work in non-traditional ways. For example, my MOVE/REPEAT collection debuted at Hyde Park Art Center in a dance performance with an original, live musical score by Damon Locks.
In my deejay sets, I like to search for under-appreciated songs, artists, and genres, with a heavy emphasis on creating a soulful and eclectic dance floor. I get bored staying in one tempo or genre for too long. I like to create collages and juxtapositions of unexpected and vibrant textures and colors. These preferences inform my tastes in both music and clothing.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given:
Damon Locks advised me to build mess into my work, so that aspect of my nature would not be a detriment but rather instead could be liberating and intentional. I’ll never be a minimalist and embracing that side of myself has been so freeing.
Alix Lambert advised me that the experience one gains in the process of conceiving and executing a work is much more important than the outside validation one is shown as an artist. The confidence and skills that are gained in the process are invaluable and can’t be taken away. That advice has also helped me shift to an internal rather than external focus. In the end it’s up to me to decide whether my work is meaningful or has value, regardless of what the market or trends say. Of course, patrons, clients, grants, press, gigs, and money are essential and highly appreciated by working artists, but to let my confidence rise and fall by how many people attend an event or how much money I make is something I want to avoid as it gives power to circumstances that are often beyond my control.
Favorite Songs:
"Sharevari" A Number of Names
“Funky Dudley” Dudley Perkins
"LLorarás" Oscar D'Leon
Want more? Connect with Jamie here:
www.productionmodechicago.com
www.buenortcollective.com
Instagram:
@productionmode
@departmentofcuriosities
@partylineonvinyl
Facebook: