Grace Warren

Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
Collection in three words: Feminine, artisanal, pioneering
Instagram: @gracie_jeanie

Grace Warren was feeling uninspired as she began trying to find a concept for her collection. That all changed when she stumbled across the realistic oil paintings of women on the frontier painted by Benjamin Wu. She immediately knew this would be the motivation behind the collection that became Liberation: Homage to the Heroine. Warren began collecting images and researching westward expansion and pioneer life. She learned that modesty and practicality were the leading factors of design during this time when women were looked to as property and their modesty as obedience to their husbands. “Today, women are more freely able to verbalize their style by the way they dress, so I wanted to celebrate that through this collection,” she says. Warren substituted synthetic fabrics with natural materials such as linen, cotton poplin, cotton percale, and cotton yarn to make prairie-inspired maxi dresses, shirt dresses, and crocheted sweater accents. Pomegranate skins, black tea, and other natural items were used to dye materials shades of yellow, olive, sepia, and ivory and round out this homage to the heroine, Warren says.