PROFILE-September 2011

By Celeste Parke |  Photography Winky Lewis

For 16 years, fashion designer Jill McGowan has made people look (and feel) good

It all begins with a shirt. The one we wish we had. Like a shirt that musician Patti Smith might wear, it’s masculine but delicate, rebellious but vulnerable. Or carefree like an island breeze in summer. Something suited to life in Maine, perhaps, and its balance of hard work and leisure, industry and creativity. It’s in the tangled undergrowth of the fashion world that Jill McGowan thrives like perennial lavender, elegant and timeless. Because it balances playful comfort with feminine sophistication, Jill McGowan apparel is sought after in over 300 boutiques throughout the country, including a brand-new flagship store in Freeport.

A Jill McGowan catalog features about twenty pieces a season—including shirts, dresses, pants, and outerwear—that are often available in several different materials. At first glance, these clothes seem basic. How much can you really trick out a white button-up shirt? Extensively, it turns out. Perfect tailoring, the occasional unexpected pocket, stretchiness (where you least expect it and most want it), and other details mean you might actually feel good wearing it…like everyday. Appliqué and embroidery transform a simple Swiss dot into a surface of undulating depth and transparency that imbues the women it sheathes with light.

On a lazy summer day, Jill McGowan, petite and blonde with a tomboy’s grin, is glowing in just such a shirt. Light filters into the studio that her husband, an architect who works across the hall, designed for her. It was once a darkroom when this building, which formerly housed the Walker Manual Training School, still had students passing through its cavernous door, but it is now bathed in sunlight from a block window of bubbly glass. From an array of just-in fabrics McGowan excitedly pulls out a roll of what looks like distressed denim. This and the other fabrics in her studio are hand selected and sourced from the best small-scale designers. It’s easy to see why she offers women so many choices for each piece, and why her material selections are so innovative and creative. In this case, her fabric designer in Italy had found beautiful salvaged cotton to use as a backing and then arranged and patterned it with rococo chunks of distressed denim. The resulting fabric is fascinating, dramatic, and definitely controversial. “Some people have hated it,” McGowan admits with a smile. “I’m thinking about a ball gown.”
Inspired to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York after stints in theater and film costuming, McGowan cut her chops at the couture company Badgley Mischka. Following her personal compass, McGowan returned to her hometown of Waterville to work for three years at C.F. Hathaway Company, the iconic men’s shirt manufacturer. Unfortunately, the Hathaway factory went the way of many once-powerful Maine industries, closing its doors in 2002. McGowan had already left, but the approach she takes to her own business is no doubt a reaction to outsourcing and the new economics of the clothing industry. Jill McGowan clothing designs all begin in Portland, and are made entirely in the United States by small-scale manufacturers.

McGowan started Jill McGowan, Inc., in 1994 to fill what she perceived as “a gap in the market.” She was intrigued by the magnetic appeal of Levi’s and yearned to capture the quality of flea-market finds from her younger days when she lived for a period in West German Berlin. “They were made so well and I would wear and wear and wear them until they would turn into fabric molecules,” McGowan says. “I had a green Swedish military shirt. The cotton was so amazing it felt like velvet and I wore it until it started falling apart everywhere because the fabric was so worn.” What McGowan sought were designs that could transcend their intended use and era, and fabrics that could withstand a lifetime.

Although McGowan’s design process starts in a personal place, it aims to be democratic and accessible. The designs begin, essentially, as clothing for herself and her friends with input from her twenty-something nieces. Her sister, who helps run the business, is an invaluable sounding board—McGowan describes the two as complementary opposites. Although she draws on a tight community of influences, her vision isn’t just suited to a particular demographic. “The age range begins at 25, and I don’t close the end number because there are people in their eighties and nineties who are just so cool and into clothing and fashion and I like to include them,” McGowan says. “I don’t want to be locked into any age range or category that the garment industry tries to put you in. They try to break things down by contemporary. They have these old terms that they have used since the fifties that I don’t even want to use.”

Despite her deep respect for the tailoring of menswear, McGowan is quick to note that women have more fun. “You know, we get the benefits of change in design and fabrics and innovation, but the cost is sometimes an inferior product because they’ll only make it for one season.” McGowan does have fun, using fabrics that border on fantastic (such as one woven with elegant steel threads) and inviting other local designers to be featured at her new flagship store. The fall 2011 catalog, featuring zany jewelry from Portland’s Madgirl World, is, McGowan writes, “a welcome flag to come see Portland, our city/town, and Maine, our grand state that is filled with so much talent, it screams at you from I-95. This state is filled with gracious hosts for art exhibits, book openings, upstart businesses, designers, people who are just too foolish/mad/genius to give up on new ideas and upside-down ways of doing things.” Always down-to-earth, she adds, “And the weather keeps us all real.”

“As I move forward, I really like the quality part of it more and more, and the timelessness more and more,” McGowan reflects. “There are a handful of things where I think, oh, I shouldn’t have done that. Not a one-hit wonder, not a waste of energy, but just kind of a distraction and I should have stayed more on track. But every season I reassess. I have to let go of a season before it’s really gotten into a store and that’s really interesting. It lands in the store and then I find out what people respond to and it might surprise me completely.” Her ability to imagine so many options, from a refined white shirt to a conversation-piece coat made of densely embroidered and printed wool (this item sold out) lends her clothing aesthetic dynamism tempered with integrity. She is a designer willing to experiment but stubborn enough to perfect the essentials.

“If I feel like there is a need for a new stretch pant, I’ll measure every pair of pants that I have and try to find a perfect formula for it,” McGowan says. “There are people out there who are just kind of copying someone else or chasing trends, but I feel like I’m really trying to do things that are original. They might be inspired by something like athletic-wear shorts that have stretch panels. I have made these amazing silk dresses with these knit panels so it’s just this really comfortable piece, but it’s also something that you could wear to a wedding.”

“I like the word timeless better than classic,” McGowan continues. “Someone could make a brand and then define it as classic, but it might not have the qualities that a classic would have—like a fabric that you remember for a long time,” and here her voice gets almost imperceptibly charged with emotion. “Even if you don’t know anything about textiles you just have a memory of the fabric because it held up so long and it felt so good against your skin.”

“’Timeless’ is my favorite description of what I do,” McGowan concludes. Looking around her studio and work room, this old space now dappled with light and filled with bolts of fabric and hanging patterns patiently waiting for McGowan’s careful guidance, it is easy to agree.