Faded Front Door: The Business Against Fast Fashion
During quarantine in August, Elon senior Lindsey Patterson spent most of her days thrift shopping to pass the time.
She masks up, covers her hands in gloves and starts browsing through the masses of clothes leftover from before lockdown started. Patterson has a method for thrifting: “Being able to recognize the potential,” she says. “I think a lot of what thrifting is, is having the eye to be like, ‘This is what it is right now, but what could I make it into?’”
She found an old Coors Light shirt at a thrift shop in Greensboro and came up with an idea that would later become a staple in her clothes—to bleach the bottom of it.
“I got a ton of positive responses from like, my guy friends in particular,” she says. “They were like ‘Oh, that’s so cool! Will you make me one?’”
Patterson’s official first customers (unknowingly) became two of her good friends and from there, she came to realize this could become more than just a hobby.
“I was like wait, you know, I can maybe turn this into something… I can thrift these shirts and then dye them.”
It’s easy to take risks when thrifting—you’re not going to be breaking the bank on a shirt that doesn’t come out right. It gives you the freedom to experiment and find the right course of action.
During one of Patterson’s first times bleaching, the bleach was too concentrated, and it made a rip in the shirt. She tried something new and connected the ripped fabric together with safety pins. “It has an edgy look in the back now, it actually came out really cool,” she says.
And it was relatively easy for her to start an Instagram for the business, too. “I’m a communications major, so it was easy for me to just be like ‘I’m going to start an Instagram!’ and what’s the harm really?”
Patterson posted her first photo on Faded Front Door on August 3rd—it’s a T-shirt of D.C characters Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman who are outlined by bleach stains.
“Basically, I started the business because I’ve always loved thrifting,” Patterson says. “And when there wasn’t a lot to do this summer, the thrift shops were there.”
Patterson started making shirts regularly, having her friends model her shirts for her and she watched it grow all by itself.
She’s had help from the Eon’s Doherty Center for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. “They’ve been awesome with arranging for me to sell on campus and providing me with different resources that have helped me understand what it means to run a small business,” Patterson says.
The mission of Faded Front Door, as Patterson explains, is sustainability and to try and reduce fast fashion—the inexpensive, rapidly producing market of clothes that leaves quite an enormous environmental footprint from production and disposal.
Patterson first saw the massive problems of fast fashion while she worked abroad in Berlin at a place called Kleiderly. “My boss, Alina, she would take clothing textiles and break them down into something that would be similar to a plastic material,” she says. “I learned a lot about the harmful effects of the fast fashion industry through that.”
Patterson just started receiving funding from Elon through The Acorn Fund—a fund for students to support their innovations and own businesses. Patterson says she will receive important supplies and materials from them.
“I wanted this embroidery machine so that I could make custom designs and truly make any T-shirt really cool,” she says. “Because what I’m thrifting right now is mainly graphic T-shirts and a lot of people will say like, ‘Oh, those look like the ones from Urban Outfitters’ and I’m like, yes, but for half price and it’s not fast fashion.”
Patterson mainly focuses on T-shirts that have mini graphics or sayings, with a lot of blank space for her to play around with bleach dye and different coloring.
She just started selling on campus and at locations nearby. Her first stop was at the High Wire brewery in Durham where they were looking for local artists and small businesses to come sell their stuff. “They were gracious enough to not charge me anything to sell there either,” she says.
Pop-ups have been helpful for the business, even if it’s a one woman show, as Patterson describes it, hauling 40 to 50 pieces to each sale, exhausted and drenched in sweat. But it’s worth it for the exposure, she says, getting clothes in front of the people who are interested and getting her story out there. “The support I get from my friends and the community has been really awesome.”
Dealing with a business, school and a new full-time job is a balancing act for Patterson. “There’s so much time that I want to dedicate to this,” she says.
There are ideas, marketing tactics, and expansions—all of which Patterson doesn’t currently have time to spare for. But in her minimal free time, when she can, she dedicates it all to Faded Front Door.
Cover photo from the Faded Front Door Instagram.