We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Evette Preston a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Evette, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?

I host a monthly party highlighting local visual and musical artists completely at no cost for our community. Each month we feature new artists giving them a venue to display their work and showcase their sound giving all who attend a new experience each time and encourages our customers and guest to connect with their community through art. Customers have expressed that they felt the parties were welcoming, fun and chill and they loved getting to see new artists every month.

Evette, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

For me, fashion has been part of my life since I was a little girl. I thrived on every chance to be unique from my siblings and peers from day one! Growing up in a big family meant you had to be creative with your wardrobe, incorporating hand-me-downs with vintage and new. Fashion has been my career choice since grade school and I’m blessed to say I’ve had the opportunity to be part of this field my entire working career.

I’m a huge nature girl and conscientious of our environment and future. I started the brand with sustainable living and effortless style in mind. My first collections were vintage and up-cycled pieces. Over the years as the collections evolved and with lots of trial and error our styles have morphed into our fun capsules you see today.

I’m forever inspired by my love of California, our mother Earth and vintage. As a brand for all humans and unisex fashion, each collection is produced with recycled or sustainable materials and are ethically small batch produced locally or by myself. Once they sell out, I move on to the next. With each collection focusing on trend, color, fun and uniqueness!

My favorite part about Preston and James is that our collections are very eclectic. The style of our brand changes daily as we create with new ideas and styles with all humans in mind. The focus of our designs is to make fun and unique pieces that evoke humor and showcase effortless style. From painting bugs, dinos and vegetables on denim to creating one of kind trench coats with large heart side insets. Our pieces are made for a free spirited customer whom enjoys standing out in a crowd.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We host a block pop up every summer from May to September free of charge for local vendors, giving them a space to sale their wares in a community environment. We also have several art classes and workshops for free each month as we want our store to be more than just a retail space but a community hub for our neighborhood. Our audience has grown from connecting with our customers through these events and remaining active throughout each social media platform.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Preston and James collections are completely hand sewn, using patterns designed and created by myself or up-cycled from vintage pieces. Our sustainable collections are ethically created using 100% cotton and are small-batched produced. I learned to sew at an early age from my mother, and fashion was my career choice since grade school. I grasped at every opportunity to enrich my sewing and design skill set during my early education and furthering it with fashion trade school for college. Eventually earning a degree in fashion design and working in the fashion industry for over 25 years. Throughout my career in the industry I created valuable relationships with overseas and local factories that helped me start the brand. After 7 years of creating wholesale collections, our current collections are more focused on handmade and one of a kind as we have seen a slowdown in mass produced items and the need for more unique and special pieces.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.prestonandjames.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/prestonandjames
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/prestonandjames

Image Credits

Kent Nugent- Model
@kentnugent_

Zano Lovato- Photographer
@zanolovato