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Pepper Does Patsy
By Maggie Wolff Peterson
In the line she created as a 2005 finalist on cable television's
Project Runway, fashion designer Wendy Pepper translated original thinking through classical forms, creating pieces
with fur collars, asymmetrical hemlines, peplum waists and corseting. At her home-based business in equestrian
Middleburg, Va., Pepper makes candy-colored riding clothes for children, from stretch twill materials she has fabricated
especially for her.
But for the Patsy Cline Museum in Winchester, Va., Pepper is adhering strictly to a homemade design created by
Hilda Hensley for her daughter and sewn at the dining room table.
It's a blue dress with white fringe and felt details in playing-card clubs, hearts, diamonds and spades, that Cline
wore at club dates in and around Winchester during the years 1956 and '57, the time period that the museum is conserving.
"Her mom sewed for her in the house on Kent Street, in the dining room on the sewing machine that we own,
in front of the window," said Judy-Sue Huyett-Kempf, president of the museum board.
Pepper, who is donating her services, is also creating a tee-shirt design for the museum to sell. Her mission,
Pepper said, is to "make Patsy Cline appealing to a whole new generation," she said.
One proposed design for the shirt converts a line drawing of Cline's Kent Street home into a cartoon, ornamented
with stars and a guitar, expressed in neon tones. "I think punchy color always appeals to the young, and it
appeals graphically on a shirt," she said.
A self-taught designer, Pepper grew up around Washington, D.C. While pursuing a degree in anthropology from the
University of Seattle, she traveled to Nepal, where she saw women working in and weaving textiles that caught her
attention. She joined them in making carpets, then pursued the interest further upon returning home.
"I make my own patterns, taught myself to sew and fit," she said.
An "inspiration panel" in Pepper's studio includes pictures cut from magazines; many of them have curled
with time. Images of Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Princess Margaret are depicted in clothing with "classic
simple lines," Pepper said. "What I'm really good at is interpreting clients' aesthetic," she said.
Pepper, who learned of Project Runway through an announcement on the Internet and flew to Florida to audition,
said she was lucky to be on the show and even luckier not to win. As a finalist, she got exactly as much exposure
as the winner, but didn't have to negotiate the contract commitments that came with winning. She said that while
television exposure certainly improved her career, it is more important to her to be part of a community than to
be a star designer.
"I'm not a designer first," she said. "I'm a mom. My career fits into that."
Now, Pepper creates clothes in a windowed cellar studio, behind which she stores the yards of fabric that become
cocktail and wedding dresses, coats, pants and vests, for clients worldwide. Pepper communicates through the website,
wendypepper.com, and keeps her finished pieces in a large photo studio owned by a friend.
"There's nothing you're going to get in New York that you can't get here, but without the edge," she
said. "The pace of life here is humane."
A room adjacent to her studio is used as a crafts area for her preteen daughter, who has decorated it liberally
with fluorescent spray-painted graffiti. "When the kids come in, they all sign the wall," Pepper said.
"I can work in here and they can be in there, and they can do what they want. It's indestructible."
Pepper said she responded immediately to the invitation to recreate Cline's stage costume. "I like the local
aspect," she said. "I believe in working where you live."
A fan of Cline's music, Pepper said her work will "contribute to the richness of my culture. That's important
to me." |
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