Introducing GRAMMAR || The Last White Shirt You'll Ever Need
These two phrases are easily the quickest way to my heart: quality wardrobe staples and good grammar. As it turns out, today's brand has mastered both. GRAMMAR is a crisp, new fashion company hailing from NYC, on a mission to create wardrobe classics that every woman will wear time and again.
Although GRAMMAR's first collection, aptly titled the Perfect White Shirt Collection, seems effortless, the brand's founder and designer, Althea Simons, had anything but an effortless journey to see them to this point. In celebration of GRAMMAR's official launch on Kickstarter, I'm sharing a bit of a peek into that story today.
I had the chance to chat with Althea on the phone in preparation for this post and was immediately impressed by her warm yet professional tone. We kept our talk casual (because, honestly, formal interviews are far too intimidating) but in depth, and I listened as Althea told me about her background and the tedious journey of kickstarting an ethical fashion brand.
Sustainability runs deep in her blood, she noted, as both of her parents instilled a love for organic, sustainable, conscious lifestyle in her from a young age (before it was "cool" to do so). Although her bachelors degree is in Neuroscience, Althea said that her dream has always been to start a fashion company. Her friends in college continually told her that spearheading an ethically-minded company was impossible. She (eventually) ignored their warnings, and after earning an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management and spending time studying abroad in Paris, the idea for GRAMMAR sparked.
Unfortunately, (remember I said her journey wasn't effortless and glamorous?) a spark of another kind caused Althea's apartment complex to go up in flames. She lost everything. A minimalist at heart and lover of well-made investment pieces, Althea couldn't simply replace everything she had lost quickly or easily and she began to ruminate on the concept of having fewer better things. The first whisperings of GRAMMAR were birthed out of this loss.
Her decision to design a first collection of white button-up shirts flowed from a desire to eliminate decision fatigue in her own life and make getting dressed easy and accessible for the working woman.
And so, GRAMMAR slowly become more than just an idea. Althea told me that from the start, she knew she wanted her shirts to be made from 100% organic cotton. As it turns out, finding ethically produced organic cotton is quite the feat, as less than 1% of cotton grown is organic (ethically so or not). Eventually, she found a producer in India (the world's leading source of cotton) to grow, spin, and weave her organic cotton poplin locally. The final product, she says, has great structure, but is soft enough to not feel stiff.
From there, the crisp, white fabric is sewn into the shirts in the Perfect White Shirt Collection by a family owned factory in the Garment District of New York City.
For their first collection, GRAMMAR is releasing five styles of white shirts, each with a unique twist on a classic silouhette, and each with a satisfying grammatically-inspired name. There's The Dangling Modifier, The Verb Shirt, The Split Infinitive, The Conjunction Shirt, and The Preposition Shirt.
As the names of the shirts imply, these button-ups are meant to be the building blocks of a simple, intentional wardrobe.
The Kickstarter Campaign is only the beginning. Althea has plans to design pants, blazers and other wardrobe staples to help women live comfortably, confidently, and fashionably, without offering too many options. For now though, you can purchase the Perfect White Shirt Collection at a discounted price during the campaign which lasts from today (September 5th) to the 30th.
Althea hopes to raise 25K to help fund production costs and enable her to lay the groundwork for future designs.
View the shirts on GRAMMAR's website, support their Kickstarter campaign, and follow along on Instagram!
*This post is in partnership with GRAMMAR LLC in support of their Kickstarter campaign. As always, all sponsored posts are authentic and hand selected by me. Thank you for supporting the brands that make Simply Liv & Co. possible! #sponsored*
