Brook DeLorme:
Clothing Designer

Brook DeLorme has been sewing since she was twelve, and selling clothing in Portland boutiques for the past ten years. In 2009 she decided to make the leap and open her own retail store under the name Brook There. Brook says the experience of finding a retail space couldn’t have been easier: “I decided to look for a new spot, signed a lease within four days, and moved the next day.” The shop sits on the quiet cobblestoned Wharf Street, one street up from Commercial Street and Portland’s working waterfront. Brook describes the area as a burgeoning “local arts district, or local design district,” referring to 37-A Gallery—the small gallery accessible through an open doorway in Brook’s shop that she founded in December with artist and designer Daniel Pepice—and Rogues Gallery, the Portland-based men’s clothing company whose storefront is just a few doors down on Wharf Street.

The Wharf Street space functions as both a retail store and sewing studio. Behind the racks of clothing and the cash register sit the tools of Brook’s craft: large drafting tables with cut out patterns, scissors, and pins, mannequins, several sewing machines, and a steam iron. Brook says there’s a relationship between the lifestyle in Portland and the clothes she creates: “it’s creative and comfortable and it’s not constricting.” The most defining quality of her work is the “hand-touched aesthetic.” Not only does Brook sew every seam herself, she also paints her bags with the Brook There logo and sews borders onto her paper business cards; even the font on her tags and website is her own handwriting. Brook says, “I think what I do is right on the edge between something that is manufactured and something that isn’t, or you know, design and art.”

Check out Brook’s designs her website, Brook There, read her blog, or learn more about 37-A Gallery.

Connect to Brook on Facebook and Twitter, glimpse through her camera lens on Flickr, or shop Brook’s line on Etsy.