Parents as a species have always had a bad rap for the way they dress, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve seen my mom and dad as quite the sartorially savvy couple. One always seems to compliment the other, and no matter what they’re wearing, they fit perfectly together. When I was home a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an album of photos from early in my parents’ marriage. I can safely say one thing: my parents are cooler than yours.

Apparently parents have been on the brain at WORN. Check out Lisa Kannakko’s photo shoot in issue 13 for more hip parental styles captured on film. (Just a warning: there will be Mom jeans.)

text by Stephanie Fereiro

Anja Wakeham is a designer, tailor, and all around sewing machine. She is also my mother’s cousin. On a family trip to Germany in June, I saw (for the first time since I was 14) just how hard Anja works. Though she and her husband, Dave, took some time out of their busy work days to make us breakfast and show us around Hamburg, where they live, Anja was constantly working. From restaurant uniforms to wedding gowns to her own line of organic clothing, Anja sews it all. Luckily, I had time to hang out in Anja’s home studio and hear a little about what she does.

How did you dress as a teenager, and how has your style changed since then?

As a teenager I was a punk. When I was 15 I went to London to learn more English. When I came back after three weeks I wore my new black and white checked trousers that I bought on Carnaby Street and my hair was red. My mother’s first question was: “Does that wash out?” My style is still a bit rock ‘n’ roll, but more stylish. When I started to study fashion design, the biker style was very trendy and I made a lot of stuff out of black leather and studs for myself. That was in 1989.

How old were you when you first started sewing? Why did you start?

I was 18 when I first started sewing. I still went to school and I made trousers without a zipper, because I couldn’t do difficult things like that. I just sewed loops on them for a belt and the belt would hold them up. Some people even asked me where I got the trousers from. I always knew exacty what I wanted and so I thought it was better to be able to make it myself. It happens to me all the time with other things, like shoes, that I want something that I can’t find in a shop. Sometimes it’s in the shops a year later!

Did you study fashion in school?

I studied in two different private schools in Hamburg, Germany. The first one was a one year preparation where I learned sewing techniques and how to make patterns. Later I studied Fashion Design at the AMD Academy for Fashion Design where I learned design, drawing and textile technology. Other subjects where photography, Italian, and how to run a business.

What things in particular inspire your designs?

I get inspired by films, especially historic ones. An example is a parka I made where you can fold up the sides with a pushbutton which was inspired by a Prussian cavalry uniform. It’s a modern uniform for riding your bicycle in the city. I really loved the TV series The Tudors for the costumes and I will try to use details from that in the future. I certainly always look at trends, but these days there are so many different styles, that it’s more about the shape.

What do you hope to accomplish with your designs?

My intention with everything I design and make is very easy: I want people to look good and cool. That’s all I want and I believe that that’s what fashion should be. If you wear a good piece of clothing it makes you feel good. I also think of practical details.

Besides designing your own line of clothing, what else do you do?

I do a lot of different things. I design service uniforms for the gastronomy, as well as workwear (for dentists, for example). I make made-to-measure evening dresses and bridal wear, I work one day a week as a freelancer for a company that makes sportswear, and I sew curtains for customers. I even designed and made a cuddly toy for a friend who is a cartoon illustrator. The character was an elk named Roffe.

You often use organic and fair trade materials. Why do you think that’s important?

All fabrics I am using now for my Organic Fashion collection are fair trade and made of organic cotton. Some are even hand-loom or naturally dyed with herbal colours. When I studied we had a project with a school in Berlin called HDK Universitiy of Art. The students there were studying how to create a marketing concept and corporate identity for a product. We had to form groups, and our part was to design a collection with a certain concept and they had to create the marketing. That was 21 years ago, in 1990, and I had just read something about pesticides in cotton and how dangerous it can be. I suggested to design a collection made of organic cotton. Looking back now, I was far ahead of the times, because now many labels are doing this. In the past I worked with natural un-dyed linen, because it was not possible to get organic cotton fabrics. When I was able to make my own small collection in 2009 it was clear that I would only use organic cotton.

Do your clothing designs for customers reflect your own personal style?

My own collection reflects my own style, but I also make clothing for customers how they want them, which I would probably never wear myself. I only wear certain colours, like black, white, grey, and pink.

When you’re not wearing your own designs, what do you wear?

I buy clothes from H&M, and I bought the first organic cotton T-shirts they offered. I am not willing to pay a lot of money for expensive labels. I make most of my clothes myself and I got fleece jackets and a rain-proof jacket from Jack Wolfskin. They have a good design and the materials keep you warm in the winter.

Interview and photography by Stephanie Fereiro

I’ve always been obsessed with my family’s old photo albums; they bring back memories so far gone that sometimes I think I’ll never get them back. On a recent visit with my parents, my dad (while looking for some important papers in a tightly-packed drawer) stumbled upon some albums from his own childhood and teenage years. It was the seventies and eighties; the bell-bottoms were nothing short of epic, the plaids were so bad they were good, and the floral-prints were downright groovy.

Where to begin? Look at those pants (second from the left, like you didn’t already notice)!
Then there’s my grandmother and Auntie Ruth in plaid (on the right). Also note my
Uncle Bill’s hair (centre, back) and that awesome shearling coat in the front row.

Here’s my dad’s mum in a poppy-printed dress, belted at the waist. Spring inspiration?

Well, what do we have here? There’s some wicked-cool knee-high socks with what looks
like a school kilt and a leather jacket. Then there’s the mustard yellow tops (far left, far right), and
my dad in double-denim (front and centre). My cousin Adam sports a bonnet and one-piece sleeper.

Dad’s mum again, this time wearing a simple, navy, nautical-themed outfit.

Auntie Ruth, perfectly happy in purple flowers. If I were in that dress, I’d be smiling too.

I don’t have any recollection of the events at which these photos were taken — I hadn’t yet been born. But somehow, looking at these albums, I’d like to think I was there. I’d like to think my personal style grew from all of these people. Because, after all, I knew my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents before I knew my right shoe from my left.

- Stephanie Fereiro

The first chill of winter wind cutting through my layers always takes me back to my childhood, when the bitter cold always evoked the same feeling of dread in my bones: the horror of the winter parka. I vividly remember trying to sneak out the back door into the rolling hills of the first snow; tiptoeing across the icy tile floor to slowly open the squeaky door, I almost expected my mother’s slightly annoyed voice to stop me in my tracks with, “Wait, wait, you forgot your winter coat!”

I can still feel the overwhelming entrapment puffy garments meant for me. Stuffed into those marshmallow-like neon jackets, I was sweaty and annoyed, completely paralyzed from moving my arms in any practical manner and certainly unable to maneuver through the snow at a reasonable speed.

Apparently my mom enjoyed this feeling. Every year she pulled out her very own puffer, an item we coined her “sleeping bag coat,” turning her into a small human taco in a black insulated tortilla.

I freed myself from the chains of the puffy winter coat as soon as I was old enough to reasonably make wardrobe decisions for myself. I use the term “reasonably” quite loosely. For years I waded through the North Vancouver snow in next to nothing, always near hypothermia but never quite humble enough to admit it, especially to my triple-layered-taco mom. By the time I realized I was sick of feeling hypothermic every winter, I was already off to university in Toronto, a land that all Vancouverites warned me was, “so cold you couldn’t even go outside in the winter.” My very stylish father was alarmed by this news, and in order to ensure my survival in the desolate artic tundra of Canada’s East, he vowed to buy me an impenetrable parka.

True to his word, on the first day we landed in Toronto, we went shopping to find the ideal warm winter wrapping; I ended up with a fantastic navy blue twill parka lined with light blue silk and layered with pockets of down insulating the inside, complete with an Eskimo-style fur hood and big shiny silver buttons.

Although my mother was a little disappointed I turned down the black shiny puffer-coat options she had presented, when she felt the weight of my new parka she was satisfied; I would be warm.

Over the years, having suffered through winters full of nagging and many claustrophobic moments of being buried under too many layers, I’ve come to realize my mom was just trying to teach me the most important survival skill in a Canadian winter: staying warm, inside and out. In retrospect, the donning of the winter coat was always linked with hugs and kisses, warm shortbread cookies, and homemade apple cider — all my mother’s ways of keeping her family as warm as possible. Now in my twenties, I am always eager to layer up each winter with my parka, sweet treats, and lots of love — proof that mothers always know best. My mother, to this day, still wears her sleeping bag coat, proudly donning it every holiday season.

- Alyssa Garrison
Photography by Erika Neilly