NEW CONCORD – Everything was black. At least it used to be. A renovation project introduced some reclaimed oak flooring and reintroduced the red windows and the blue door of old to a century-old building in New Concord.
Today, it houses a boutique offering handmade, all-cotton clothing, wellness products and plans for community classes. It has brought color, craftsmanship and new opportunities for residents to gather and connect in Downtown New Concord.
“We just really wanted to restore the building to what we felt like it should have been preserved like, with its age,” Clarity Cotton owner, founder and designer Jaye Lenchis explained.
“All of the beadboard and all of the trim work here is original. We wanted to keep the tin ceilings as nicely as we could and we just tried to pick finishings that we felt brought the building back to life.”
It’s apropos of Clarity Cotton Dresses’ clothing, too.
“I’m looking for something a little bit more alive and joyful, so that’s why I do a lot of floral patterns,” Jaye noted. “I do a lot of feminine jewel tones and things like that…I’m really drawn to the stripes. I’m drawn to the florals. I’m a little sick of beige, frankly. As you can tell, there’s not too much going on in my store with the white and beige. I feel like if I wanted something like that, there’s a lot of stores that I could go get it at.”
The shop mostly features dresses with nearly 70 different patterns on display, Jaye added. They range from $25 to $75. However, she’s also planning to introduce blouses and button-ups for men and children in the fall.
They’re all handmade and crafted with a centuries-old method using wooden blocks carved with a template pattern. The block is then used over and over again to stamp the same pattern across the entire dress.
“You can see in the fabric they’re all unique and they’re all different. So, every eight inches, there’s a little bit of a break in the pattern, but it lines up just about perfectly,” Jaye said. “I just love the character that it adds to all of the clothing. When I discovered this fabric, we actually used to make clothes in America this way in the late 1700s. But then when we industrialized, it did away with the blocks and went to a printing press.”
That’s not the only thing that makes Clarity Cotton Dresses unique, Jaye continued.
“We don’t use any chemicals in our manufacturing. We don’t use any preservatives for anti-wrinkling, like formaldehyde is something that’s used a lot. In a lot of water-resistant fabrics, they add BPA to it, which is no good…like from recycled water bottles. There’s a lot of phthalates and forever chemicals and all kinds of things in synthetic fabrics,” she explained.
The shop’s clothing is 100% cotton. Jaye hopes to redirect the market more toward the all-natural clothing – and play a role in it herself.
“I would love to see more 100% cotton on the market, but there just really isn’t any. Polyester is so inexpensive because it’s just spun plastic. All of those things we recycle have to go be used somewhere. But at the end of the day, natural is best. I find that the farther you get from nature, the worse it is – in just about every instance in my life.”
Farmers market success sparks storefront
What’s now Clarity Cotton Dresses was born around three years ago, the same time as Jaye’s son, River.
“It started because I was looking for clothing that was comfortable, modest, feminine, but with all the things I wanted in it. When I became a mother, I really started learning about all of the toxins and the chemicals that are in our food, are in our clothes, are in our environment, and I realized that there really weren’t very many companies that were making exactly what I was looking for,” she shared.
“It’s just hard to understand. Why would they even put all of these things and expose us to all of these chemicals in clothing that has no business being in there?” Jaye asked. She also questioned the prices of dresses, with some options $150 or more.
“Even if I would spend something that much on a dress, I wouldn’t really wear it or enjoy it because I’d be worried about staining something so expensive,” she admitted.
She started selling her dresses last fall at a farmers markets in Cambridge and the feedback was strong.
“We did about two to four farmers markets every week and we would set up our tent and hang up the dowel rods and have the dresses swaying on the side of the tents,” she explained. “We…quickly outgrow the farmers market situation. So, when we heard wind of the building opening up, we only lived five minutes from here, and we just felt like it was the next natural step.”
Shop blends fashion and wellness
Clarity Cotton Dresses isn’t going to be just a boutique, Jaye revealed. She also has plans to offer small group classes in the future, including stained-glass crafts and yoga for six to eight people, with the help of WildheART Holistic Wellness founder Sarah Gotschall, Jaye’s business partner. The shop already features the art of local watercolor painters and photographers.
The dress shop sells various health and wellness products of two Ohio herbalist businesses: Dancing Woods Apothecary & Healing Arts from the Senecaville area and Woodland Herbal from Warsaw. It, too, sells the honey of Jaye’s husband, Michael, who is a beekeeper.
The shop is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
For more information, visit Clarity Cotton’s website or Facebook page, call 740-607-7470 or email jaye@wearclarity.com.
Shawn Digity is a reporter for the Zanesville Times Recorder. He can be emailed at sdigity@usatodayco.com or found on X at @ShawnDigityZTR.
This article originally appeared on Zanesville Times Recorder: Jaye Lenchis promotes natural, chemical-free products at Clarity Cotton
Reporting by Shawn Digity, Zanesville Times Recorder / Zanesville Times Recorder
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By Shawn Digity, Zanesville Times Recorder | USA TODAY Network
