Blue Cast: Sewing and the City’s Christine Lindebak on Creating Clothes and Content
Blue Cast is a podcast series from the TENCEL™ Denim team. Each episode features a conversation with a special guest from within the industry or the fringes of the denim community. The following is a recap of Episode 517.
Christine Lindebak’s current career path in clothes making started when she was just 5 years old, when she determinedly convinced her mother to let her sew.
This passion for fashion has continued throughout her life. Christine spent her early career working in luxury retail in the U.S. for brands like Emilio Pucci and Nordstrom, but she eventually got burned out by the pressure for constant, season-by-season sales growth. Wanting an escape, she took a few months off and jetted to one of the Canary Islands. There, she reflected on what she actually wanted to do and arrived at three conclusions: She still wanted to work in fashion, but she wanted the flexibility to work from anywhere, and she desired more control over her own income.
The answer came in turning the blog she had been running as a hobby—Sewing and the City—into a business. She started monetizing courses teaching others how to sew, selling digital clothing patterns and creating content with brand partnerships. The timing worked in her favor; Sewing and the City’s switch from blog to business happened in 2019, right before global lockdown orders of 2020 gave everyone more time and desire to explore DIY crafts.
“It’s been a really interesting journey of…literally carving out a space in the industry that was exactly what I wanted it to be, and wasn’t like I was just fitting into a role that was already there,” Christine told Lenzing’s Tuncay Kilickan on the latest episode of our Blue Cast podcast.
Christine’s audience is mostly female, and she describes her main target as “style-conscious” women 35 and older. However, there is a younger teen and tween cohort that is also seeking out sewing as a way to avoid fast fashion, upcycle and create something unique. Across the board, she sees two main reasons why people want to make their own clothes: having a creative outlet and overcoming fit issues that might exist in ready-to-wear apparel.
One hurdle in the home sewer’s way is the dwindling availability of fabric stores, with the demise of Joann Stores the latest casualty. More textile and notion sales are migrating online, where the feel and drape of a fabric can’t be communicated as effectively.
In addition to Sewing and the City, Christine heads up the slow fashion brand Lindy Lindy. The garments are handcrafted in Spain from domestically sourced vintage linens with details like French seams. Despite her choice to adopt a slow fashion model, she is not opposed to fast fashion. Rather, she sees the importance of giving people options and alternatives.
“The power of sewing” is creating things that have value and are not considered disposable. Tuncay gave the example of quilts his mother-in-law created from his children’s outgrown clothing. “These kind of items that are made with a special fabric, or a combination of meaningful things, or just by someone you love, or there’s something just different about it than going fast fashion or mass produced,” Christine said.
Listen to the full conversation here.