Deborah Reschmeyer is the owner of The Artful Dressmaker, a passionate dressmaker, and the winner of the 2022 Hand and Lock competition in London with her dress made of various plastics and scraps.
“I am a dressmaker. Eco-Couture is the title that I like because I take stuff that would otherwise be thrown away and make it into something highly fashionable and unusual,” she stated.
While she really enjoys all aspects of dressmaking, one of her favorite parts is being able to help the people who come into her shop.
“I’m a nerd, so I’m in it really deep. I like every single part of the creation process, and it’s really cool. The best part is when it can help somebody, like two worlds kind of come together. So that’s super fun,” she said. “I love what I do, and I do it all by myself in the back, but then a client comes in and then they love what I’ve done, and then they’re going to wear it for their special occasion, I mean that just makes the whole world go round, so I love it.”
She has been interested in sewing, and specifically dressmaking, ever since she was young. Her love and passion for the craft only continued to grow from there.
“I saw Cinderella when I was five, and the dressmaking scene in the attic, I was like, that’s what I want to do, and my mom was like, I don’t know how to help you because I don’t know how to sew. So she was like, I have one sewing needle, it was like a rusty, really fat tapestry needle that can’t sew much and a dusty spool of green thread, I remember, so just don’t touch any of that because you’ll hurt yourself, and I was like, fine I’ll just take it. So I just helped myself. My naughty behavior was sitting under the table covertly sewing Barbie clothes, and eventually she caught me and she was like, fine I’m not going to be able to stop you so she kind of encouraged me from there,” she explained.
Ruschmeyer loves all of her creations, but there are a few that hold special places in her heart, from recent years and in the past.
“Well, it’s got to be my London dress, the one that won me the award overseas. So far, she’s kind of top-notch. That, and actually my velvet one. I made that back in design school and that was kind of my first inclination that I wanted to go into even higher methods of dressmaking, so that one won me a scholarship for half my senior year of tuition, and from there it was just kind of like the fabric manipulation part of design started to be more of a place I wanted to focus on,” Ruschmeyer stated.
She has been doing dressmaking for hire for 34 years and really loves and enjoys what she does.
“If we start when I was making money from it, I always count high school for that, because I started sewing for my sisters, so I always consider that the start of my career because you’re taking somebody else’s thoughts, feelings, and wishes, and you’re making it into the garment and then dealing with all aspects of the business that I deal with now. It’s emotional, there’s body image concerns, there’s all the technical parts of it, there’s ‘well, I want red velvet,’ well, I’ve never worked with red velvet, so how do I work with red velvet? It’s all those different things, so I do consider the start of my career when I was 15, but probably more like 5 if we’re talking Cinderella,” she said.
Ruschmeyer’s biggest inspiration is nature and the love and passion she has for protecting it.
“Well, I’ll have to say nature because I’m a treehugger, legit, and I was doing things that were sustainable before I realized they were sustainable, because I never had a lot of money for a long time growing up, and starting my career, so I saved everything just because I wanted to make some kind of use out of it, and thinking in that way is what led me to using plastic bags for lace and taking little bits and making it into full pieces of fabric, and kind of pushing myself to think in different directions. Mother Nature is my biggest inspiration,” she explained.
She is also an advocate of having more high fashion coming from the United States and highlighting the incredible designers from here.
“I think there is amazing things available here in Monroe, but also just in the United States in general. I would like to see more higher fashion come from American designers,” she stated.
Deborah Ruschmeyer really wants to focus on making sure that people can bring their dream vision to life and wants to give people that fairytale experience. Dressmaking is something she has wanted to do ever since she was young, and she truly loves her job. To learn more, stop by her shop on the Square, go to her website (earthgown.com), or visit any of her social media accounts (The Artful Dressmaker).
