It's Howard Brown, pictured alongside his wife, Karen Stewart. They got cool by running a clothing company - Stewart+Brown - that features sustainable business practices and clothes made from organic and recycled materials.
They sell cashmere products that start with a co-op in Mongolia, where herders gather the cashmere and do their own processing. Finally, they give 1 percent of their gross sales to environmental causes.
That's a rather long way from Brown's rather remote beginning in this world, as the third child of a Havre couple who owned a hardware business and a clothing store.
"I guess it's pretty far from the Havre days," Brown said in a telephone interview from Ventura, Calif., where he and Stewart live with their young daughter, Hazel. "But it feels right, and I think we're getting the recognition for the right reasons."
In a convoluted sort of way, Missoula plays a central role in Stewart-Brown being recognized for the "right reasons."
"Missoula is really a huge part of what we're about; it's part of the reason we're doing what we're doing," said Brown, who is 37.
So let's go back to Havre, swing back through Missoula, then update the Stewart+Brown story now that they've been officially anointed as "cool."
Brown grew up in Havre in a family mostly filled with pragmatists. Bob and Florence Brown, son and daughter of Hi-Line immigrants, were solid business people, and Bob's hardware store was once one of the largest in the state.
"I grew up in retail, and I had an appreciation for what it took to keep a family business going," Brown said. "Eventually, though, the big-box stores pushed my dad out of business, and they started thinking about moving."
Although Florence and Bob considered Billings and the Kalispell-Whitefish area, Howard had designs on Missoula. The Garden City had always struck him as, well, cool.
Finally, the Browns opted for Missoula. For a teenager from the Big Open, Missoula almost oozed culture and, in a way, freedom. Howard, who'd been nursing an artistic bent for years, quickly fell into the artsy world of the punk rock scene.
"There was just all this music and all this chance to think for yourself," he said. "I had come out of a pretty conservative environment up there and Missoula was a place that really changed the way I thought about things."
Brown graduated from Hellgate High School in 1985, after playing on the Knights' state championship basketball team, then set his sights on the University of Montana. And it was there, in an art class, that he began to see something of his future.
"That's when I knew that being an economics major was not what I wanted to do with my life," he said. "I wanted to do something in the applied arts. I just didn't know what."
A couple of things happened after that to put Brown once and for all on the road to being a graphic designer in the clothing industry. One, he got accepted to architecture school at the University of Oregon, but eventually went to the University of Arizona to study design.
And two, he spent a year abroad studying in Italy, where he gained extensive knowledge about silk screening and fabric.
"I knew after Italy that I wanted to be in fashion design," he said.
Since then, Howard Brown has had the knack for being in the right place at the right time. While working on his portfolio back in Missoula in 1990, Brown's sister Shannon came through town on her way to moving to Seattle. She had the Seattle classified ads with her and inside, there was a job ad for International News, a Seattle-based sportswear company.
Brown applied and, despite a certain fiction in his resume regarding his computer experience, got the job. That job led to a job with Urban Outfitters, which eventually led him to Philadelphia, where he met another hot young designer named Karen Stewart.
They were dating within weeks - their first date was to see George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars. The young couple had a powerful dynamic; although they liked a lot of the same things, they came at the world from different angles. Brown was a graphic designer and his world was somewhat anal retentive. Stewart, on the other hand, was a painter, and is, in her husband's words, "loose and crafty."
"We just came together with a visual language that no one else was really producing," Brown said. "We knew we could do stuff."
Although they would spend the next 10 years working for others - including J Crew, Patagonia and ESPN - the couple knew they would one day have their own line of clothing. It was just a matter of time.
The time, oddly enough, came on Sept. 11, 2001, the day terrorists commandeered four airplanes and attacked America.
"That's when we sat down and decided the future is now," he said. "We just said, 'If we're gonna do this thing, we need to do it now.' "
Instead of buying a home in Ventura, where high prices had held them at bay, the couple opted to buy a home in Missoula and sink the rest of their money into the business. Stewart+Brown was born.
The company is essentially a maker of high-end women's sportswear, although they also make some items for infants. Cashmere figures heavily in the mix, but the company also uses organic cotton and recycled materials for both its clothes and tote bags.
Brown and Stewart are committed to doing business right. They aren't going to be hiring their production out to overseas manufacturers. Other than cashmere, the production of which is handled by the Mongolian co-op, their manufacturing is done in Los Angeles.
"It's disgusting what's happened to manufacturing in this country, and we don't want to be part of that," Brown said. "Our motto is if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
Stewart+Brown has generated plenty of buzz, both within its principles' cadre of friends and acquaintances, and within the fashion industry.
"We have a good pedigree and we've taken it slowly," Brown said. "It's really a matter of understanding supply and demand, so we're really not surprised that it's working out."
Already, the company's clothes have been featured in magazines and on CNN, and actresses Liv Tyler and Cameron Diaz have bought from the Stewart+Brown line.
That is all well and good with Stewart and Brown, but it's important to both that they remain focused on doing business in what they see as a principled manner. That said, Brown isn't under the impression that the family company will solve the world's problems.
But if he and Stewart can get people in the fashion business to follow more sustainable business practices, that will be enough.
"Everybody just needs to do a little bit," he said. "It doesn't have to be a religion. It just has to be a case where people in every field do a little bit to help out."
Ideally, Stewart and Brown would like to do their part from Missoula.
"We want to run this business from Missoula," he said. "That's where so much of what we love is, so it makes sense for us to be there. The things we love, the rivers and mountains, are under attack, and we want to be there to do our part. Revolution starts with the grass roots."
If it's cool to do business right in the place that you love, then Howard Brown and Karen Stewart will gladly take the honor.
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)