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Dallas fashion designers are making masks to help out during the pandemic

They’re eager to pitch in but hope to be making dresses again soon.

Julie McCullough, a Dallas designer and owner of Oak Cliff clothing and fragrance shop Harkensback, is making face masks instead of dresses during the COVID-19 pandemic. With her team, she has made 250 masks a day — impressive for her first two days on the job — and plans to continue until someone else is filling the need. She is also selling mask supply sewing kits, available for delivery or pickup.

“We’ve always had the Rosie the Riveter sign up in our studio, and now it just means a lot more,” McCullough says. “This is like we are at war with a virus and we have been called to work somehow. It’s crazy to me that this is the solution for a nationwide problem. At first I was like, ‘There’s no way these hospitals want us to sew them masks.’”

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No one was interested in designer dresses during this crisis and her store is closed, but she was receiving many calls from all kinds of people asking for masks and McCullough wanted to keep her sewing studio staff employed.

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“I want to be out of this business as fast as possible,” she says. “This is not a business I want to be in. I shouldn’t be in it because it’s a science business. But we just happen to have machines and supplies to make these, where the government fell short, or whoever fell short.

Oak Cliff fashion designer Julie McCullough and her staff are making face masks instead of...
Oak Cliff fashion designer Julie McCullough and her staff are making face masks instead of dresses during the COVID-19 pandemic.(Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)
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“Why are we all sitting at home sewing masks?” McCullough asks. “It’s insane to me, but here we are. What conversation happened at the top that said, ‘All right, our hospitals are running out of masks. OK, we’ll send that to the costume department.’ How did we get here?”

McCullough, who is about to deliver masks to a school in Oak Cliff, says she’s been researching filters and sewing four kinds of face masks for hospitals because they use different styles. She is also collaborating with artists for more expensive masks. McCullough says she needed the creative outlet “or she would die.” She’s working on a $20 face mask with the words “Women Vote 2020” on them to help fund masks for a nursing home that does not have the budget to buy them.

McCullough thinks these collaborations will help make face masks more acceptable. “They seem a little bit punk rock,” she says. “But for me, they also appear less scary.” She says grocery store cashiers seem alarmed by her face mask. “I understand that. I was a non-mask wearer. But if we can make them beautiful, maybe more people will wear them.”

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A seamstress sews a mask in fashion designer Julie McCullough's studio. McCullough is also...
A seamstress sews a mask in fashion designer Julie McCullough's studio. McCullough is also selling sewing kits for people who want to make their own masks.(Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

She started selling sewing kits when she realized there were people at home without masks who were making trips to multiple businesses to get the supplies they needed to make them.

Dallas womenswear designer Charles Smith II says he started making masks and donating them to hospitals for a similar reason. He says his mother, who has a management job that puts her in multiple hospitals, told him of shortages in Mansfield and Dallas. Smith II says he has made 28 face masks for hospitals and has started working on another batch of 25. He says his mother, Janet Brame, is picking up the masks and dropping them off at hospitals like Baylor and Parkland.

Fashion Designer Charles Smith in his studio in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, March 24, 2020.
Fashion Designer Charles Smith in his studio in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, March 24, 2020. (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

Before making masks for hospitals, Smith II had already made a limited run of $50 designer face masks with the name of his brand, Do Not Touch. But he says he plans to continue this charity work indefinitely.

“We are fortunate to even have the skill set to do this,” he says. “If this crisis doesn’t teach us that we are all equal, I don’t know what will. We all have to stay in the house. This virus don’t care what your status is or what your money’s like. Designers are quarantined as well. If you can do something to help, why not do it as long as your heart is in it?”

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