Starting with Dolls and Paris: Beth Peterson’s Career in Fashion Design
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Growing up in Ephraim in the 1970s, it never occurred to the three little Peterson girls that every family wasn’t just like theirs. Deeply immersed in art and music, they were taught to constantly observe what was going on around them. If they were driving through a city, for example, they’d often stop and discuss the design of a building. Their mom, Susan, wrote poetry, and in the evening their dad would bring in the painting he’d finished that day and prop it against the fireplace so the family could discuss it during dinner and sometimes make suggestions for changes. (Yes, he’s that Peterson — Charles “Chick” Peterson — and occasionally he did make changes based on his family’s input.)
Beth’s interest in clothing design was evident from an early age, when she was the only one of the sisters interested in making doll clothes. In high school, she wore the “most unusual clothes” that were neither fashionable nor trendy, but were often selected from a refrigerator-size box of Victorian dresses, hats and shoes given to her father by a former colleague who was retiring as head of the theater department at Marietta College in Ohio. (The shoes, unfortunately, were mostly size two — too small for teenage feet in the modern era.)
At 17, just after graduating from Gibraltar High School, she went to work as a seamstress for Alicia Wilson [Mulliken], a clothing designer in Ephraim who taught her pattern-making and tailoring techniques. Four years later, Beth was off to Paris for intensive study in the field.
“There are times I still think, ‘Did I really do that?’” she says. “Going to Paris alone at that age, not speaking a word of the language.” The time there, of course, solidified her commitment to her career and provided invaluable training. She was also introduced to the work of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, who remains one of her primary inspirations.
“His designs were very unusual 30 years ago,” Beth says. “I learned from him that it was possible to create things for the body that are not fashionable or trendy.”
When her study in Paris ended, she returned to Ephraim to work with Wilson for a few more years. She would take a temporary hiatus from fashion design to focus on her family and what would become a 12-year dedication to streamlining the India adoption process.
After marriage at 26 and the birth of her first son, Nicholas, in 1988, Beth and her husband began talking seriously about international adoption, something they’d always been interested in. In 1994, when second son, Alexander, was three, Beth spent six weeks in India waiting to finalize the adoption of two-year-old Ellie.
“I was naïve,” she reflects now. “I was sure I could develop a more efficient plan.”
And she did, establishing India Adoption and Assistance, an agency that operated for 12 years as part of The Barker Foundation in Washington, D.C. She went to India twice a year to work with the government, adoption agencies and orphanages, and during this time she added second daughter Maia to their family.
“I loved this work so much,” she says, “and I still miss it badly. But I had to stop. It was just too emotionally draining.”
After taking a year to train an assistant to take over her position, Beth returned in 2012 to the career that was her first love. She now works from her home in Sturgeon Bay, creating unique clothing designs for women, primarily for sale in two shops — Breathe Clothing and Breathe-Again on Etsy.com, advertised as “the world’s most vibrant handmade marketplace.”
Breathe Clothing, Beth says on its website, “expresses [a] mood or attitude…eclectic or structured, tattered or architectural, light, dark or even whimsical.” The pieces are not mass-produced but individually made with quality linens and other natural materials by Beth and her “two wonderful seamstresses, Elizabeth and Jill.”
As Beth notes on the site, “The garments are meant to look as if you’d found your grandparents’ steamer trunk and revived the rumpled linen clothing, back to life.”
The Breathe collection includes separates of all kinds, dresses and accessories. The Breathe-Again shop, described as “art for the body,” is especially dear to Beth’s heart, as it involves recycled garments for which she creates one-of-a-kind patterns. For example, a customer in Australia sent her a camisole that Beth combined with bits of an old wedding gown to create a new blouse and skirt. The customer was delighted.
“I love to imagine how something might look and create a pattern for it,” Beth says. “I might take a cashmere sweater, drape it on a dress form and imagine how it could become part of something else. It’s fun to go into my room when I’m working because it looks like a tornado with pieces everywhere. I’ve learned how to make patterns to match my vision of how something would hang on the human body.”
One of her favorite quotes is from former top fashion model Lauren Hutton: “Fashion is what you’re offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose.”
Breathe designs have been sold locally at What Next? in Fish Creek and Kim’s Boutique in Egg Harbor. To see Beth Peterson’s fashion designs, visit Etsy.com/shop/BreatheAgainClothing or Etsy.com/shop/BreatheAgainDesign.
