Mother And Daughter Share Flair For Fashion

Times Colonist:

This is where we meet - at the Starbucks in Eaton Centre - where her daily routine often includes a chai latte and cruise through mall to socialize.

It’s time for the next bus in our trip, the 2A to Estevan Village. This is where the 17-year-old has run her own clothing store, the Back Door, for the past six months.

Sewell got the idea to open her store when a space adjacent to her mom’s store, Arden and Grace Designs, became available. She’s always sewn clothes for herself, and friends comment on her unique style sense.

“The store is basically what you’d find in my closet. I pick out things that are very unique, that you can’t find here anywhere else.”

We reach our stop and walk into Arden and Grace, where Sewell’s mother, Karen Grace, is keeping shop. Sewell heads to the back to open her store.

I stay to browse through the clothing Grace designs herself and the other Canadian lines in her store.

Grace, 46, opened her store three years ago. Her new fiancé had encouraged her to get back into fashion after she kept getting inquiries about the clothes she designed for herself. She had studied fashion design in her early 20s at what was then Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, but then along came marriage, three children and a career as a kindergarten teacher.

“I’ve wanted to be a designer since I was seven,” Grace says. “I loved that other part of my life, but this is a dream come true.”

Grace’s designs cater to the 35-plus crowd, with classic-fitting cuts and lush fabrics.

“I make clothes to flatter bodies,” says Grace. “But they still have a lot of style.”

Grace says it’s nice having her daughter work so closely with her, but she knows it is not likely a future career for her.

Sewell will get credit from her high school for starting and running her own business.