Kate Jacobsen

owner/designer Shibuy Hada                                                                                      

BACK IN THE DAY – OUT ON THE FARM

Kate comes from a family artsy folk.Her mother; an excellent seamstress, her aunt; a spinner, weaver, dyer of fleece, and even once raised silk worms, and spun their coccoons.Long sunny afternoons were spent boiling up walnut husks and flowers for dyes. Her aunt prefers the natural fiber colors best.

Her sisters sewed and baked constantly, and one came home from college and taught batik. Kate's favorite thing was her tjanting tool, for dragging liquid wax over fabric.

Clay from the creek provided opportunity to make sculptural pottery. Her highest desire was to achieve that raw look of Japanese pottery in books. At the ceramics studio in town, that rawness was taken as, poor thing, she can't do any better. But her pots were fired along with the salt and pepper shakers shaped like mushrooms, and the essential water pitcher and bowl everybody had to have on their hutch. Even though she didn't know it, she already hit on that "un-made" Japanese aesthetic. On wandering the fields, riding her brother's horse, playing with the wild kittens, Kate got the sense of the silence of Nature, and the power of the unfinished statement.

Like most rural kids, Kate looked to books. All the masters loomed large, especially Henry Moore, Rodin, Jean Arp, Paul Klee, Joan Miro, Calder, and to some extent Monet and Renoir. Later would be Picasso and Andy Warhol.

At first seeing the Art Institute of Chicago, she realized it all really existed, not just in books, and she saw herself in that. They were telling girls in those days, they could be anything they wanted now, and she took their word for it.

At Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, the acting major went hand in hand with production. There was need for costume staff and eventually designer. Costuming augmented Kate's career in college for the next four years, earning her awards for contribution, as well as 6 years beyond college. Her most memorable work may have been in Ibsen's Macbett, an absurdist take on (That Scottish Play) by W. Shakespeare. Picture mossy primeval Scotland mixed with Kitch, and a bit of Caribbean Voondoon.

After school there was costuming and wardrobe for a ballet company, a Shakespeare troupe in Iowa, a melodrama in Colorado, and an opera in Chicago.

Two trips abroad naturally turned into, "What kind of textile art do they do here, and where can I find it?"

Bali

"Life" means "Art" in Bahasa Indonesian, sama sama. (same same) Amongst the tourist geared art and craft there are the staggering traditions of batik, and ikat weaving. Kate joined a business partner to design a batik line of clothing for export. She ended up splitting from that partnership, okay, he was a ranting drunk, and designed a children's line of custom batik. Kate sold that line upon her return to the U.S., but she has two pieces of advice on that adventure... 1. do this sort of thing on the same land mass, in case you have to walk home, and 2. make sure your factory lady doesn't have the philosophy with customs forms: "oh, well, it'll be okay." This a very typical Balinese philosophy.

Morocco

The souk in Marrakech is a lesson in sun drenched Mediterranean color. Billowing clouds of raw yarn hanks, just drying overhead, can it get any better? The berber patterns of hand woven rugs were her favorites, as well as the henna and tattoos on the older berber ladies. This was a case where no amount of French was going to help Kate communicate, or even if she knew Arabic. Yet she sorted out bulgur wheat grains with a stranger, (because it needed to be done,) and the beautiful toothless weaver showed Kate the loom made with roughly hewn logs. Textile Sistas. A line of heavy aran style hand knits came out of that trip, made of luxurious Moroccan wool. Kate's advice on importing from Morocco, then the whole world suffering 911... let it go. It stresses out your knitters.

Meanwhile, Kate has knitted with machines since 1986. In the environment of Des Moines in the 80's, a machine made look was THE THING. Kate worked making shoulder pads for a company innovating with indigo dyed yarn, yet her own THING was that raw roughly hewn look, embroidered with motifs from Egyptian jewelry, and the aforementioned Picasso and Miro. She started with white postal twine, because it was what she could find that didn't have dacron. She sold sweaters via her roommate who hawked them as she followed the Grateful Dead. Kate has advice on this as well... ask her AHEAD of time not to trade them for a bagel or a ticket. She said it was a VERY GOOD bagel.

Finally in 1997 Kate dragged herself out of the stone age with spinning wools and such, to the world of electronic knitting. Dragged at least to the 20th century, and the PC. The love of Mod graphics landed full force in making jacquards with photos she had taken. This is what has put Kate on the map of Chicago fashion, and maybe a few other maps in time.

Shibuy Hada Boutique and Studio

Retail space opened September 09, 2005, at 56 West Maple, Chicago, IL.

The adventure continues...