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Alternation
PEOPLE IN STYLE (From Cleveland Plain Dealer Wed. July 9, 2008)
In AlterNation' Shannon Okey and Alexandra Underhill share their creative secrets
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 Evelyn Theiss Plain Dealer Reporter
One of the few drawbacks some people have found in shopping thrift or vintage stores is that clothes can be too darn small.
Mostly. Or they're too big or too long, or they don't fit in some other way.
Sounds like a problem, right? Not to Alexandra Underhill. She's an artist, so on such occasions, she sees opportunities.
Skirt or shirt too small? Cut into it just right, and add a crisscross bodice tie. See a permanent ink spot on the long sleeve of the T-shirt you love? Cut off both sleeves, and add half a scarf to each shoulder for a new look -- a Jackie O-in-Athens-style top.
Those are just a few of the hundreds of creative solutions Underhill, 38, (a raw-food devotee who looks 23) has devised.
She has long been reworking clothes to fit her body and aesthetic, but now, in the new book "AlterNation," which she co-authored with local knitting guru Shannon Okey, she shows the rest of us -- even those with minimal sewing skills -- how to do it
"Reduce, reuse, recycle," Okey and Underhill say in the book. "We'd like to see everyone, coast to coast, daring to be different by remaking clothes in their own style.
"No more cookie-cutter catalog dictators telling you what to wear; no more buying everything off the rack."
And even if you do buy something, there are easy ways to individualize it, says Underhill, who occasionally buys a garment at a discount store. She has cut off the hems of her black stretch dance pants and made a cool headband from them. Then she has topped the pants with a cheerleader-length skirt sewn from men's ties.
"Set the trends, don't follow them," is her mantra.
Underhill came to Cleveland from her hometown of Elmira, N.Y., to study at the Cleveland Institute of Art, majoring in fiber arts.
She began working in costume design for the avant-garde Cleveland dance company SAFMOD and as part of the costume department for some Cirque du Soleil tours.
"Everything always led to clothes," she says.
Now she sells some of her fashion redesigns (and jewelry that she makes) at local galleries and markets.
Underhill is also a dancer and stilt-walker, well-known to the crowds at Parade the Circle, and teaches art workshops around the country.
For this book, she created most of the looks. (Okey did the ones that required knitting or crocheting.)
"I'd make the stuff, and Shannon was the writer," says Underhill, whose home and studio are on the near West Side. "We did it all in three months."
For the 5-foot-3 Underhill, it was an extension of what she did with her own wardrobe.
"I was constantly shortening or adding insets," she says.
If something was too big, she didn't just take it in.
"That would be too boring," she says.
Instead, she thought of a different silhouette, perhaps decorating with zippers or laces.
"What we did for the book were the simplest designs," so even a person with minimal sewing/crafting skills could do them, she says.
"And it doesn't even have to be about buying. Before you get rid of stuff you have, look at it in a new light, and make it into something new."
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