NYLON - January 2008 - (Page 68) YOU’VE GOT MAYLE MAYLE HAS BECOME THE UNIFORM OF QUIRKY DOWNTOWN GIRLS WITH AN EYE FOR INDIVIDUALITY AND VINTAGE-INSPIRED PRINTS—THINK OF IT AS THE THRIFT STORE GIRL’S GROWN-UP OLDER SISTER. HERE’S WHY WE CAN’T GET ENOUGH. PHOTOGRAPHED BY WINONA BARTON-BALLENTINE AND ISABEL ASHA PENZLIEN “People who wear Mayle use clothes to parlay themselves into the things they love—film, art, music, and other creative outlets,” declares Jane Mayle, a former model who, in 1999, decided to open a boutique on Elizabeth Street that sold out of its nine styles in its first three weeks. The shop then had to close for a month while Mayle and her then business partner Chris Jarvis scrambled to whip up more stock. Some of the artistically inclined, not to mention well-heeled, devotees of the line include filmmakers Chiara Clemente and Sofia Coppola, the musician Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead, and girls-about-downtown Mirabelle Marden and Athena Razu. Oh, and the entire NYLON staff. On the day of the recent Mayle sample sale, various NYLON editors were conspicuously absent at various points of the day, only to return with mysterious unmarked brown paper bags stuffed with gorgeously tailored fall coats, fluttery silk blouses, and the kind of dresses that look killer on the streets of New York, but also work on the beach with damp hair and a pair of flip-flops. “It’s about a girl using clothes, rather than the clothes using the girl,” says Mayle. JENNY FELDMAN Kazu Makino, New York “Being on tour so much with Blonde Redhead and having Mayle clothes in my suitcase is like carrying secret weapons—they protect me and set me up for adventure.” collage for fall ’03 line Mayle’s inspirations list cult of PRETTY BABY THE COMING OF AGE OF A TRUE FASHION ORIGINAL 1971 Jane Mayle is born in Richmond, England, up the street from a dairy and the river Thames. 1974-1977 Jane repeatedly refuses to let her mother put shorts on her. 1981 Jane’s family relocates to Orlando, Florida, where her edelweissprinted school uniforms are summarily replaced by Hawaiian shirts, Le Sportsac bags, and bubblegum. Culture shock ensues. 1988-1994 Jane abandons Florida for Columbia University in NYC and, for the next seven years, embarks on undergraduate education and a not-so lucrative modeling career. 1995 Jane graduates from Columbia with a degree in English literature, and goes to work for Tocca. kazu photographed by winona barton-ballentine. all other images courtesy of mayle.
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