NANCY MINSKY at home in Brussells with her new book, and at right, one of her fashion drawings.
Turn those old denims into haute couture
Nancy Minsky is booked for fashion
By Jenn Director Knudsen
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At age 12, Nancy Minsky (née Rosen) drew on paper and then created out of cotton fabric a prize-winning suit.
“(Her instructors) were astonished she did so well,” said Minsky’s mom, Micki Rosen, 80, of Southwest Portland and longtime Congregation Beth Israel member. “If she’d made it out of wool, they said they’d of sent her to New York.”
No need; Minsky got there on her own soon after graduating from Lincoln High School.
Minsky graduated in 1979 with a bachelor’s of fine arts from Parsons for Design at The New School in Manhattan, but even before receiving her bachelor’s Calvin Klein handpicked her as an assistant. She later took the helm of the Paul Alexander high-end women’s sportswear collection.
Fast-forward to the present day and Minsky has published her first book,
carefully considered, written, illustrated and photographed for everyone who sews, from complete newbie to experienced seamstress.
“Denim Revolution: Dozens of Ways to Turn Denim Cast-Offs into Fashion Must-Haves” (Random House, May 2008, $19.95) took two years from concept to published work. And late this summer and into fall, Minsky will tour in town, on the coast and in Seattle to sign, read from and create designs inspired by her book.
In 1980 Minsky married Israeli orchestra conductor Meir Minsky, later gave birth to son, Ranen, and settled in Brussels, Belgium. She took a nearly two-decade hiatus from the high-pressure world of designing haute couture to raise the couple’s son, now 20.
“I became a soccer mom, pretty much,” Minsky, 54, said via phone from her family’s high-ceilinged maison de ville in the Uccle neighborhood of Belgium’s capital. “Now,” she added, “I’m past 50 and going back to work in my métier.”
With audible passion.
Minsky excitedly describes standing in line at a Brussels post office, eyeing its clientele. Everyone is clad in denim.
“It’s just in every spot of the world,” she says of the stuff jeans are made of. Her blog—21centurydressmakers.blogspot.com/ —includes comments from folks
in Pakistan, Iran, India, Malaysia, Israel and elsewhere about her recycled denim designs.
She continues, “I just love (denim). There’s something about it: It’s one of the main basics of my wardrobe. It’s always reinvented in ways that are so appealing.”
She demonstrates much of that variety throughout her 127-page, soft-bound book.
For example, Minsky rates her “toreador style patches” as a beginner’s project; her “downtown babe jacket” is for the experienced.
Each style appears in photos—shot either at outdoor Brussels cafés or inside her home—of slim, young models wearing Minsky’s handiwork.
(One photo has a sultry model clad on top in a Pendleton shirt; she’d borrowed it for the shoot from her dad, Sidney Rosen, who died earlier this summer. On bottom, she’s wearing “ring my bell super-short shorts.” Minsky chuckled: “He’d have loved that.”)
Minsky’s descriptions and instructions on glossy paper encourage any reader to dive into a project and expect fantastic results.
“Whether you are a no-experience, all-thumbs type or a craft-nik who made her own wedding dress, if you love fashion and love denim, you can succeed with ‘Denim Revolution’ (DR) projects,” she writes in her introduction.
Childhood friend Lynn Wolfstone, 54, of Raleigh Hills, finds “Denim Revolution” inspirational, and “its drawings are beautiful.”
Wolfstone added: “I always knew she’d go and do something interesting with her creativity. She’s very ambitious and quiet about it; that’s what made her so charming.”
And a joy to work with.
Stylist Laurence Duchêne, 27, writes in French about working with Minsky to perfect the three-day photo shoots for “Denim Revolution”: “Minsky is a very passionate woman inspired by her work … Working with her was wonderful.”
