Just call her a material girl
EASTHAMPTON -- Djerba Goldfinger is living out a fabric fanatic's dream.
Whether the petite pattern maven is visiting manufacturers, choosing swatches to sell in her online boutique, reprodepot.com , or cutting yards from bolts of loudly colored, vintage-style fabrics in her office, she's constantly inspired.
"I'm obsessed with patterns, and I love fabric. I love the fact that it can be used for so many things, it's endless," said Goldfinger, 37. "You can frame it on the wall, or make a dress . . . it's just so utilitarian."
Goldfinger said her business has tripled in the past few years, and she attributes the surge to a sea change in the sewing and crafting communities. The vintage-style fabrics she sells -- once relegated to the quilter's realm -- have become wildly popular among the hipster set and designers, who are snatching up the punchy, bold prints for D.I.Y. home and fashion projects.
Indeed, you could spend hours online, clicking through reprodepot.com's fabric offerings. There are florals, stripes, animals, and cowboy-western prints. There's a twee 1930s-style fabric featuring tiny French bicycles, and psychedelic paisley prints. And don't forget the navy cloth stamped with bikini-clad women reclining on motorcycles, called "Heels on Wheels."
Most of the fabrics sell for $8 to $12 a yard, so crafters can make wall hangings and pillows to their heart's content. Goldfinger handpicks the inventory sold on the site -- she is a fabric editor, sifting through designs from Marimekko , Amy Butler , and Alexander Henry -- and has a discerning eye for prints that inspire conversation.
"Fabric is almost treated like fashion, it reflects the here and now," she said.
With the recent renewed appreciation for prints in fashion and home design (think celebrities sporting graphic mini-dresses on the red carpet this season), Goldfinger says she's found a niche with like-minded creative types who see the potential in sewing and crafting with vintage fabrics.
"It's very interesting to me to see this trend of combining patterns," she said, "to have this whole patchwork of patterns in all different scales and colors."
An art school grad who's collected vintage fabric since high school, Goldfinger isn't the only retailer catering to fabric fans. Joelle Hoverson , who owns the popular Soho yarn store Purl , opened a fabric shop, Purl Patchwork , just last year . The boutique carries colorful prints and Japanese import fabrics and was born from a love of sewing.
"The sewing industry is going through a big transition . . . smaller companies are producing great prints, and filling the demand for fabric," Hoverson said in a phone interview. "There is a huge online community of sewers, who are sharing ideas with each other."
Reprodepot.com has allowed Goldfinger to tap into this community -- the site draws 70 to 100 orders for fabric, buttons, and ribbon each day, and her customers include everyone from small bag and accessory manufacturers to interior designers from all over the world.
It wasn't always this way. When Goldfinger started reprodepot.com in 1999 in Seattle as a way to shed extra fabric she had left over from quilting baby blankets, she never thought the online store would blossom into a full-time job.
Her initial customers were other quilters, and the profits allowed Goldfinger to continue feeding her fabric addiction. But word of mouth soon brought reprodepot.com followers from outside the quilting community. She even opened a storefront in Seattle's Burien neighborhood for a short time.
"We started getting attention from a younger crowd, people who were like me: interested in older things and thrift shops," she said. "This whole cultural thing came together."
Goldfinger and her husband, artist Kevin Scalzo , moved their belongings and the reprodepot.com offices across the country to Western Massachusetts in 2003. They were ready to settle down and raise a family, she said. The couple's daughter, Eva, is now 3.
But fashion is fickle, and Goldfinger is constantly searching for new, timely fabrics and attending craft fairs, including the recent Renegade fair in Brooklyn. Her day is also spent updating the reprodepot.com blog, and helping her employees cut fabric and ship orders from the warehouse.
Would she ever consider opening a storefront in Massachusetts, so customers could touch and drool over the prints? "I would love to have a physical store," she said, "I know people would really like it."
Here's to hoping. 