Meet the Makers: Kimberly McGlonn of Grant Blvd

Several months ago, I spoke with my ‘sister in sustainability’ about her Philadelphia-based shop Grant Blvd.

One thing I haven’t been able to forget is our brief conversation on excellence in fashion and what that looks like. If I’m being honest, this is something we could afford to see more of in ethical and sustainable fashion today. Because I think of excellence as producing fashion with functionality and longevity in mind, as well as art and architecture, movement, color and culture.

We’ve taken a hit over the past year economically, and there is no denying the impact that fighting the larger, exploitative industry has had on makers. But often the message we’re sending with some of the pieces created is that we’ve got to compromise on style for ethics. This isn’t true and I hope that we can come together even more to challenge this, and get back to designing more beautiful and intentional fashion…not just clothes. Check out an excerpt from this colorful Q&A with one of my favorite people and brand owners in the industry, Kimberly McGlonn.

Katie: Kimberly, I admire what Grant Blvd brings to fashion and to sustainability so much. I have been looking forward to this conversation, so I’ll just jump right in with the questions. What part of your work with Grant Blvd is most fulfilling and why?

Kimberly: What a beautiful question…I think that the aspects of my work with Grant Blvd that I find the most joy in executing have little to do with me. For me the joy lives in collaborating with the diverse womxn creatives I’ve assembled, in offering them a community to thrive in, in co-creating with them as we think through each of our collections. There’s also so much fulfillment in the teaching I so often find myself doing about what’s at the heart of intentionally intersectional ingenuity, which is what happens every time I slip into a conversation with our customers, and our neighbors, and our non-profit partners about what lives in the DNA of Grant Blvd.

Katie: Ooh, I like that. So, what does live in the DNA of Grant Blvd?

Kimberly: Let’s see, a focus on environmental and social impact, yes, but also a real clarity about the need to recalibrate not only the fashion industry, but our relationship with it, a real certainty about the infinite power that BIPOC women in particular have to lead by example. When we’re in the studio, we talk about our aspirations as a design team. We want to produce undeniably beautiful garments, but beyond that, we want to leave these values, these traits, as our legacy. This is what drives us to persist and to aspire to excellence across the board.

Katie: Excellence is something we don’t talk about enough in this space. It’s such an important concept for creating fashion in the most intentional way. Can you share what excellence looks like in a Grant Blvd piece? What design styles and methods define this for you?

Kimberly: Yes, to an approach to design that’s excellent across the board! And that’s not to say that aspiring to design in that direction is “easy” or “cheap”- in the short term excellent design is neither. Excellence is a recognition of the challenges posed by conceptualizing sustainable, justice-informed approaches to team & construction, that take more care & time (not cheap) and that take more purposeful consideration of waste & process (not easy). For Grant Blvd that means using reimagined, remixed menswear which, because of our inventiveness, allows us to produce garments without making any new waste — something we’re so incredibly proud of. This line, Grant Blvd Zero, has resulted in four seasons of one of one pieces, each with its own flavor, its own unique sauce. Another method that’s a staple for us is only producing two collections each year. By aligning our approach to broad climate cycles (cool & warm weather), we’re able to produce garments that show our understanding that the fashion industry’s current rapidity is utterly out of whack. Excellence is aligning design with the natural world, not voracious consumption.