Kate Jacobsen

Biography

Gold Coast — Kate Jacobsen Studio, formerly Shibuy Hada, came about as a name from discussions with a customer. He explained to me how the Japanese had detailed concepts of beauty aesthetics.

“Shibuy” would be the kind of subtle beauty, not all-at-once, cool temperament, deepened through time and wear. It would never be garish, or trendy, but always elegant.
“Hada” on the other hand, literally means the complexion of things, or the public face we put on. It is smart, chic, hot in temperament, bold.

BACK IN THE DAY – OUT ON THE FARM

I always just made things. My first knitting machine was a round plastic thing with pegs, and my “Barbies” all had tube knitted gowns and such, to go with their Chenille bedspread fringe shawls. I still make hats that way, knitted in tubes that is, (but larger). My mom is a great seamstress, and my aunt dyed, spun, and wove wool. We cooked up kettles of walnut husks, flowers, leaves and such, to dye fleece. All the time there was some mess; either batik in the basement, or clay from the creek, or crushing elderberries on cloth to dye it. There was a shelf in the library that was the craft area; the histories of painters and other masters. I checked them all out a few times. So though art wasn’t big there, there were books of masters. At first seeing the Art Institute of Chicago, I nearly fainted. It all really existed, not just in books.

SCHOOL

At Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, we had no costume instructor. If you knew how to thread a sewing machine, you were in. It was lucky for me that it was so. For four years I just did it; sometimes crew, sometimes head costumer. It never occurred to me that you can’t just do that, but we did. In the evenings I was in the shows, I got my Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts in 1983.

PROFESSIONAL

After school I did a bit of costuming and wardrobe for a ballet company, a Shakespeare troupe in Iowa, a melodrama in Colorado, Civic Opera here in Chicago. I took a couple of trips and explored textiles and cloth, one to Bali and a couple to Morrocco. I highly reccommend it . I knitted for Su-zen, in Chicago, for a year and a half.