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His website calls his clothing “bespoke, wearable art.” Not unlike his nickname, Tea, Montgomery says he infuses clothing with color and flavor and makes it into something better.Behind the Design Wednesdays: Every week Tea writes about our designers’ inspiration for our current collection of clothing. Montgomery talks as much like an artist as a businessman, which is no mistake. He’s just hired two master tailors to help him on a contract basis. Already, Threads by Tea has grown beyond what he can manage himself. He’d like to take on more work for theatrical productions. cities, a separate manufacturing business making uniforms, maybe even producing his own fabric. He has dreams for himself, too: a trunk show tour to several major U.S. “What I want him to do, just like my father taught me, is be able to do things for himself, be able to make money for himself,” Montgomery says.
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Now he’s teaching his 11-year-old son, Haiven, to be his cutter. From his entrepreneurial parents, who have owned a few different businesses, he learned what it takes to start and run your own operation. Sewing, however, may be in his genes both his grandmothers were seamstresses. He’s also a musician, both classical and hip hop. He went to college for marketing and earned a graduate degree in entertainment business management. Though he’s always had an eye for fashion, Montgomery never intended to become a clothing designer. Simple commissions start at $300, “street tuxedos” at $400 and dresses and gowns at $500. His creations range in price from $50 “tea shirts” and $60 caps to $1,500 leather backpacks. A collection of bespoke baseball caps pieced with silk linings to protect the wearer’s hair are piled to one side of a starter sewing machine, which Montgomery hopes to replace soon with an industrial model that will speed up production. An unfinished pantsuit of black fabric textured with tiny, gold-threaded slits sports a quilted lapel. Montgomery shows how it could also be folded up higher and tied around the waist. A light knit tank top rolling up at its raw edges isn’t sewn at all but rather knotted over one shoulder and hanging loose on a mannequin. They boast bright patterns, stripes and flares of ingenuity.
#FASHION ART TEA FULL#
Montgomery’s new studio, taller than it is wide, is crowded with his sewing table and a side table, a TV, a couch and two full racks of one-of-a-kind outfits for men, women and kids, much of it unisex. “I was trying to figure out how I can fix it without destroying the fabric or wasting the fabric.” He decided to open the seams and add more, a “mistake that I made into a blessing”-one he’s repeated again and again. “The first pair of pants I made, they weren’t cut right,” Montgomery says. The lined hood, he says, is attached farther back along the neckline than he’d make it today because “some things take some wearing to thoroughly learn what works and what doesn’t.” The signature stripe of contrasting fabric down the outer seam of each leg is the result of a mistake. The trousers and hoodie he’s wearing bear the marks of his process.
#FASHION ART TEA TRIAL#
Montgomery learned sewing the hard way, mostly through trial and error. But now he’d rather wear his own designs, which garner compliments and questions on the street. He knew he looked good, and people treated him with greater respect. He used to enjoy dressing for work, he says. Bank men’s shop in Milford, where he wears a suit. The exception is his full-time job as a manager at the Jos. “I dress for how I feel, not for anyone else,” he says. So, he put his creativity to work sewing his own clothing. “I never really enjoyed shopping, but whenever I did need to shop, I couldn’t find anything in my size,” says Montgomery, who is tall and slim. It’s one of the designs Montgomery, a Westville native, sells in his fledgling business, Threads by Tea. A lightweight top using the same fabric is rolled at the sleeves, and a hood drapes over the shoulders. He meets me at the door to his West River Arts studio wearing a light pair of pants with vertical green stripes and a contrasting print insert along the outside of the legs. S triped bedsheets from home and a printed fabric from Goodwill were all Terone “Tea” Montgomery needed to create the look.