DEL.ICIO.USAtlanta fashion designer Clint Zeagler creates new generation of ready-to-wear treats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/15/06
Atlanta fashion designer Clint Zeagler's hand-crafted T-shirts proudly proclaim that they're "Made With Real Butter" and "Baked With Love" — just like his grandparents' famous pecan pies from the 1960s.
And on this Saturday night in August, the Pecan Pie Couture founder's fall line is proving as irresistible as the desserts once served in his family's Town House Restaurant in Sylvania.
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| Clint Zeagler has a Southern sensibility and degrees from Georgia Tech and a school in Milan. | ||
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| T-shirts from Pecan Pie Couture, Zeagler's clothing line, are popular for their tongue-in-cheek style. | ||
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| This pie box logo with a childhood photo of Dennis Treado (Clint Zeagler's uncle) found new life years later. | ||
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| "Fashion doesn't have to be pretentious," Zeagler says. This jacket is from his fall line. | ||
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| "It's cutting edge, and he's hitting all the key trends out there right now, but with a real Southern sensibility," Atlanta style arbiter Kevin Knaus says of Clint Zeagler's Pecan Pie Couture line. | ||
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| Clint Zeagler's Nana and chief inspiration is Theola Hurst Treado, shown with Georgette. | ||
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| Zeagler's grandparents made a name for themselves with the pies from their Sylvania eatery. | ||
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It's nearing midnight at the Royal, a hipster downtown nightclub. Models suck on cigarettes as they slink around, displaying Zeagler's fall fashion line — a combo of the beehive hairsprayed kitschiness of the B-52's, a flash of "Flashdance"-era leggings and the mirrored-ball abandon of the Jimmy Carter era.
Oh, with a solemn nod to traditional Native American beading and feathers.
Zeagler is happily soaking in the scene. But his face immediately clouds over after he receives a cellphone call from his family in Sylvania.
Theola Hurst Treado, the 82-year-old family matriarch and chief inspiration behind Pecan Pie Couture, has suffered a heart attack and is being rushed to University Hospital in Augusta.
For the 27-year-old Georgia Tech grad, the decision to bail on the debut party requires no deliberation.
"It's my Nana," he later reflects. "I just had to get to her."
That deep devotion to his Southern roots is the chief reason behind Pecan Pie's early success, fashion insiders say, potentially making Pecan Pie Couture the tastiest export out of the South since Krispy Kreme's hot glazed goodness hit New York City and London.
"It's cutting edge, and he's hitting all the key trends out there right now," says Atlanta style arbiter Kevin Knaus, "but with a real Southern sensibility." This month, Zeagler and his company were named "Best Local Clothing Designer" in the reader-driven "Best of Atlanta" issue of Creative Loafing.
Changing attitudes about the American South could also propel Pecan Pie Couture, says Topher Payne, a friend of Zeagler's and an Atlanta columnist and playwright.
"Twenty years ago, people like us from small Southern towns were going to classes to lose their accents," says Payne, a native of Kosciusko, Miss. "Clint is representative of a new generation of young urban Southerners who are really taking ownership of our histories."
A very influential Nana
While his Castleberry Hill-based business is less than a year old, the roots of Clint Zeagler's Pecan Pie Couture can be traced back more than 75 years to a Screven County cotton field.
It was there that his maternal grandmother, Theola Hurst, as a girl, picked the cash crop.
"Mama always said if she ever got off that farm, she would never wear jeans again," recalls Jan Zeagler, Clint's mother. "She kept her word."
Hurst met Charles Treado, a Connecticut Yankee who was in Georgia in 1948 for military training, and shortly after, she swapped out her bluejeans for an apron.
The newlyweds opened the Sylvania mainstay that would become the Town House Restaurant in 1951.
A few years later, the popular eatery on U.S. 301 (used by golf enthusiasts on their way to the Masters in Augusta) was selling so many pecan and lemon chess pies, the couple opened a pie factory behind the restaurant.
But even when she was out back hand-crimping pie crusts, Theola Treado's attention to her appearance didn't go unnoticed.
"I'm night and day without my makeup," Treado recalled in a 2002 interview. One day, since she was working in the pie factory away from customers, Treado had shrugged off her normal beauty regimen. A young boy from the restaurant came knocking on the door. He didn't recognize her without "her face on."
Treado also never left the house without her hair done just so or a hat perched on her head. Charles bought her a closet full of fancy dresses, furs and jewelry.
And the Treados pulled out that finery when Jimmy Carter — a man they actively campaigned for in their restaurant when he ran for Georgia governor — invited them to a state dinner at the White House.
Dining with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and the Treados that night were the president of Romania and his wife. The menu included smoked trout and squab.
"Nana was looking forward to some fancy food," Clint Zeagler recalls. "She was a little disappointed. She told us, 'We used to go out back and shoot that for dinner all the time back on the farm.' "
"Mama's sense of style really rubbed off on Clint, even as a little boy," says Jan Zeagler. "Since she lived with us for many years, they spent a lot of time together. She has always been Clint's biggest cheerleader and his biggest critic. She's always been after him to make more feminine pieces. But knowing Mama, it's probably because she just wanted to wear his clothes!"
When Pecan Pie Couture debuted at the James Gunn boutique in Savannah earlier this year, Nana Treado baked the pecan pies for the reception. At the party, she stationed herself near the door, handing out 10 percent off coupons while whispering to shoppers, "I've seen what he's charging — you're probably gonna need this!"
For years, Zeagler's other set of grandparents, Carolyn and Frank Zeagler, meanwhile, operated Zeagler's Fabrics in downtown Sylvania. Clint took craft classes there and received his first sewing machine from his granddaddy at age 8. Grandmama Zeagler helped him with his Halloween costumes.
"Clint never wanted a store-bought costume or anything from a pattern," Clint's mother says. "He always wanted to make his own."
A recipe for success
Clint Zeagler has woven all those homespun elements, along with the skills he learned studying industrial design and textile manufacturing at Georgia Tech and getting a master's degree from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy, to create Pecan Pie Couture.
Like his grandfather, who used only local ingredients to make pies, Zeagler uses Villa Rica Knitters, Pembroke Textile Associates in South Carolina and Cherokee beaders on a Native American reservation in North Carolina to create his shirts, hoodies and scarves.
His Nana's "Baked with love" spirit is mixed with sass, inspiring T-shirts with sayings like "Can't You See My Hairnet? That Means I'm Working!"
Nana also serves as the hostess for the company's Web site, pecanpiecouture.com. Online users can read the latest press on the company posted on "Nana's refrigerator."
"The only thing better than Clint's clothes are the stories behind Clint's clothes," says Melissa Murdock, who owns Sandpiper boutiques in Vinings and Sandy Springs and also buys for the St. Simons Island location. She began stocking Pecan Pie Couture last spring. Murdock says the clothes are a hit.
"I hear from people all the time who say, 'My friend makes jewelry or my grandmother makes handbags.' But it took me 14 seconds to stock the Pecan Pie line after meeting Clint and seeing his work. I told him, 'Where have you been?!' Clint's roots just bleed out of him. It's like this sweet Georgia Tech geek collided with Seventh Avenue."
Murdock says she's had shoppers from Wisconsin buy a handful of $148 Pecan Pie Couture T-shirts as souvenirs from the South. "There's a tongue-in-cheek sense of it that people embrace. There's no stuffiness. I've had 6-foot-2 guys stop and share stories about their grandmothers after they see Clint's clothes. T-shirts don't typically inspire that."
A hands-on business
Zeagler explains: "Fashion doesn't have to be pretentious. My Nana's my muse. I also love Dolly Parton. Dolly proved you can be from the South, be a little tacky but wholesome and still be really, really successful in business."
Zeagler says he's happy for now with just a couple of dozen pieces and an infrastructure with overhead so low he personally does the finishing on all the clothes. With some financial help from his family, Zeagler is bankrolling the venture with his own money.
But he says the fledgling company is breaking even, and he's hopeful that his bigger summer 2007 line will translate into dough — of the green variety — for Pecan Pie.
Payne believes Pecan Pie Couture could easily make the transition to New York and Los Angeles boutiques and beyond. He wore Zeagler's hand-finished "I Got This Shirt for Free Because I'm Famous" T-shirt "to death" this past summer while working in Europe.
"It's not only the narrative nature of the shirt and that poke in the eye at celebrity, but it's also the craftsmanship. People wanted to touch it, investigate it," Payne says. "And that quintessential Southern element got it noticed."
Excitement builds
In September, at the Fashionada benefit fashion show at Atlantic Station, Zeagler is more concerned about getting members of the Atlanta Ballet noticed. The hoofers have been hired to pirouette in Pecan Pie Couture down the outdoor runway to open the show. But a downpour has doused the catwalk so severely, squeegees are being used to remove the water. After the ballerinas make it safely down the runway, he concedes to a few anxious moments.
"In New York or L.A., you put on a fashion show for buyers," he explains. "But in Atlanta, you put on the show for the people who actually wear the clothes and for the press. You just hope the word of mouth will be good."
A few nights later at the opening of Atlanta photographer Harriet Leibowitz's show at Vaknin gallery in Midtown, Zeagler is introduced to a buyer for Jeffrey Atlanta. Jeffrey Kalinsky is the Atlanta retailer who also owns Jeffrey New York, a boutique in the trendy Meatpacking District so popular it's been lampooned on "Saturday Night Live."
After the buyer leaves, Zeagler confides that even the idea of getting Pecan Pie Couture into one of Kalinsky's stores "is incredibly exciting." But he remains respectful of the relationships he already has with local retailers.
A spirit that lives on
Exactly one week after meeting the buyer for Jeffrey Atlanta, Zeagler is inside the Four Seasons Hotel, among the 300 partygoers shoehorned into the private High Museum "Louvre Atlanta" opening fete after-party.
No one seems to notice that Saturday night has become Sunday morning.
Zeagler has contributed hot-pink pillows emblazoned with "Let Them Eat Cake" for the party's black couches. His silk-screened "Glamour Is Lethal" Marie Antoinette-themed white tank tops are lined up in gift bags in the hall, awaiting departing guests.
But no one is departing.
Knaus and Carey Carter — two men who have helped Jeffrey Kalinsky transform his annual Fashion Cares benefit into a fall fashion tradition in Atlanta — are clustered around Zeagler, introducing him to their friends.
Holly Moore, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Paper City, a style and fashion monthly, has flown in from Houston for the occasion. The Atlanta edition of Paper City is sponsoring the party.
As champagne and cake are served, Moore marvels at Zeagler's work. "It's impeccable," Moore says. "He's witty, intellectual and very chic all at the same time. He's going to be a big star."
A few feet away, Zeagler is reflecting on what his grandmother might think of all this.
In August, Zeagler was with his Nana in her Augusta hospital room, holding her hand when she died following a second heart attack.
Tonight, her vintage red Diane von Furstenberg scarf is tied around his neck. "It's just something that represents her spirit to me," he says. "She's always going to be a huge part of what I do creatively. Pecan Pie just helps me share her with everyone."
Nana's spirit is indeed evident at the swanky party.
After all, a Georgia harvest moon hovers over the hotel. And tasty baked goods have been set out for company.
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