Daily Inspiration: Meet Heidi Gates

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Gates.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
We created a tiny clothing company focused on graphic tees and tanks in South Pasadena California in 2004. We created a Chinese zodiac-inspired collection on American Apparel tees and tanks, which we sold to local boutiques and, surprisingly, Fred Segal Santa Monica. We decided to focus on colorful, vintage-inspired artwork mostly inspired by the 60s and 70s. I actually design all of the artwork myself. Inspirations have always been psychedelic posters, vintage clothing and artwork, and geometric, eye-catching forms.

We quickly learned that the industry-standard blank garments were much too small for our customers (they were junior sized and our market is contemporary sized), so we decided to expand to custom cut and sew for our garments. We designed our own bodies, found small sewing contractors, dye houses and screen printers for our designs, and expanded our size range to 5 sizes, a plethora of colors and 2-3 colorways/design so people had more options. In the next several years we added several more cuts of shirts, keeping the same high quality cottons while adding new treatments such as foil, flocking and discharge inks. We explored so many embellishments and processes!

We expanded to plus sizes, adding 1X-4X when a large customer, ModCloth, requested additional sizes. We have continued to offer our designs in 9 sizes since. In the mean time, we decided to venture into allover (roll) printing as well as new silhouettes like knit and woven dresses, skirts, and some accessories such as patches, pins and tote bags.

One of the most consequential decisions was to use our allover prints on a zip-front collared jumpsuit. This proved very popular, and is probably our best-seller other than our tees. These days most of our garments are allover printed with my whimsical and fantastical prints in bright colors on woven cotton fabric. We’ve recently shifted from mostly knits to mostly woven garments.

We’ve worked with reps, attended trade shows in Las Vegas, Chicago, etc. and we now sell wholesale on Faire, and retail on our Shopify site. Our line sells particularly well in California and the Pacific Northwest. We have really been working on our social media with the help of my dear friend Amber (@eatdrinkcat) and fantastic photography in the last few years.

It’s been a wild 20+ year run, with ever-changing market conditions, demand, ever-increasing costs and the challenge of domestic production costs. We know all of our contractors personally and take pride in our excellent quality, intriguing artwork, fair wages paid, and positive relationships with customers and suppliers. We love that our customers are all shapes and sizes, and not afraid to express themselves with our funky clothing.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s been a fairly circuitous path. Struggles include increasing costs of fabrics, labor, trims, dyeing and printing as well as changing economic conditions. Since fun clothing is not an absolute necessity, we’ve seen sales increase and decrease over time. Every time we think we have something figured out, things change- trends change, maybe a supplier goes out of business or quality is suddenly sub-par, delays occur so sometimes deliveries are late, reps don’t sell much on the road, or stores choose styles which don’t fit their customers’ wants and needs. For me, design is the easy part. Getting something made to spec, properly, is very difficult, even for a basic garment, and selling it can be even more of a challenge, especially when so many fast fashion garments exist at very cheap prices. That might be our biggest issue right now.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I love designing graphics for tees and making allover prints. I most enjoy hand-drawing elements and modifying them in Adobe Illustrator, re-coloring, re-arranging and re-sizing them until they are fit for production. I absolutely love my pantone books and I feel like choosing intriguing colors for garments is one of my trademarks. I am most proud of my landscape print I created during covid. It’s our bestseller and came out of a very dark time. It took me months to create and I almost gave up a few times, but it eventually came together, thankfully. I am probably most known for mushroom prints, landscape prints and tees that are vintage-inspired with a modern twist, bold and geometric. I’ve done nautical prints, a line of tees I call the betties, my dandylions (are they flowers or disco girls?) and my allover psychedelic prints.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Designing. Color. Shapes. Visual things. I love aesthetically pleasing things- art, architecture, costume and set design, and the beauty of nature.

Also- spending time with my dog & family, taking a day off during the week to do something fun like go to an art exhibit or a zoo or aquarium. I’m a high-stress person, so I enjoy getting out of my routine and exploring.

Pricing:

• Jumpsuits- $120-$140
• Tees- $30-$40
• Dresses $40-$110

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blue-platypus.com
• Instagram: @blue_platypus_clothing
• Facebook: @blueplatypusclothing

Image Credits
Amber Lu
Paige Marguiles