local designer Amy Michielle Freeman’s fashions take billboards out of the sky and into your closet
In a consumer-driven culture, walking advertisements—think preteens with Abercrombie & Fitch plastered on their sweatshirts—are as common as Starbucks. But
Freeman is the founder and lead designer of Soho Exchange, a full-service boutique launched in 2003, which offers design, wardrobe styling and consulting. But don’t assume her creations are disposable – this designer reuses vinyl billboards to construct her clothing.
Freeman uses vinyl from advertising companies and transforms it into jackets, totes and rain hats. Items like a tea-length circle skirt or a belted, collared raincoat can even be customized for the client. Fan of Coca-Cola? Then a red coat it is.
But before it’s wearable, the vinyl needs work. “The billboards are filthy and the material doesn’t have a lot of give like other textiles,” Freeman explains. To prep the vinyl for her customer’s closet, she cuts the salvageable pieces from the sheets she receives from the warehouse, then soaks, scrubs and applies astringent—all before cutting it into the pattern pieces that make up her next design. Not surprisingly, the vinyl isn’t always comfortable. But Freeman’s clients think that’s a small price to pay to be green and hip.
Freeman might be inspired by billboards, but the green movement wasn’t what inspired her to start using them. “It has influenced me to continue, but sustainability is so ingrained in who I am that I don’t think about it,” she says. But other people are thinking about it, and those who choose to be fashionably green can have Freeman to thank for it.
Alyssa Cogan
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