It was fitting to meet with Ace & Jig designers Cary Vaughan and Jenna Wilson on International Women’s Day. As a brand, they’ve always set their intentions towards empowering women. They’ve accomplished this in their work with female weavers in India and in their community-based no-waste projects like a quilting initiative, in which their friends and customers each contributed their own upcycled fabric square to create a series of quilts. These blankets were donated to Project Night Night, a nonprofit focused on child homelessness. Ace & Jig celebrates women and their contributions to society in a pure and genuine way, minus any gimmicky slogan T-shirts or celebrity-promoted Instagram sponcon.
This season, Vaughan and Wilson wanted to shed light on a very niche group of unsung sheroes. Their Fall 2019 collection was inspired by female artists like Elizabeth Blackwell, who created the majority of scientific and botanical illustrations throughout history, particularly during the 1600s and 1700s. “This critical artwork was totally pioneered by women, but they never received any credit from their own field,” Vaughan explained.
Homage was paid to the ladies mostly by way of a color: The deep greens of an ivy vine with pops of olive, as well as the soft pinks of a peony petal and the dusty ivory hue of the canvas on which all of this was once captured by someone like Blackwell. Vaughan and Wilson traded in their typically eye-popping palette for one that felt a little softer and a lot more organic. As is always the case with Ace & Jig, the Fall collection was strong on easy and wearable silhouettes. There were pretty day-to-night dresses, relaxed blazers, and effortlessly cool drawstring trousers—all made with baby-soft linen check and ribbon-detailed fabric. It was not hard to tell that Vaughan and Wilson really poured their whole hearts into this season’s wares. Maybe it was because of those women who gave their own minds and hearts to science, or maybe it was because of the women weavers who helped create the textural, comfortable fabric. Mostly, though, it was because they simply love giving women an inspired, thoughtful thing to wear.
