When Kim Ortengren was in her twenties, she was exposed to a side of the apparel industry that few consumers see. As part of her work, the young designer traveled to mainland China, Taiwan, and South America, where she visited factories. What she witnessed there changed her. “You would see older women who would have fabric scraps tied around their waist to support them,” she recalls. “You would see men with no shoes on, no safety glasses, with feet that were black from dirt. The seamstresses were packed in there, making two dollars and change an hour.” But, she adds, “That was pretty darn good for many of the factories.”

Ortengren relays this information as she sits in her office at Wallace James, her apparel production studio, which she founded in February 2017, after spending a decade in the industry designing and developing product for companies like Spyder, L.L.Bean, Sperry, Crane and Lion, and Athena Apparel Solutions. Her office, like the rest of the Bayside facility in Portland, is cheerful and sunny. “Our space doesn’t look like a factory or a sweatshop, and there’s a good reason for that,” she explains. “Everything is digital, and we keep all our workspaces neat and clean and tidy.” Ortengren wants her employees to look forward to coming to work, not dread their morning alarm. On the day of my visit, a few seamstresses are at work in various corners of the room; a woman with dark hair and headphones irons a blue jumpsuit, calmly smoothing seams, while another young woman maneuvers a thick piece of fabric through a sewing machine. In the very back of the Wallace James facility, expert pattern maker Ellen Weeks sits perched at her computer, tweaking two-dimensional shapes that will soon come together to form three-dimensional garments, including jackets, leggings, and sweatshirts.

Wallace James is an unconventional apparel company in many ways. In 2017, only 17 percent of start-ups in America were founded by women, and women currently own just 36 percent of all small businesses in the United States. Not only was Wallace James female-founded, but Ortengren chose to hire Kate Harnden, a fellow Cape Elizabeth native, as her right-hand woman. She named her company after her parents’ dog, Wally, who the family calls “Wallace James” when he gets into trouble. (She also liked the gender-neutral ring of Wallace James. “As much as I would like to be taken as seriously as a male counterpart when starting my own business, that’s just not yet the case,” she says. “Right out of the gate, I wanted people to judge us on the quality of our work, not the fact that we are women.”) Gender aside, Ortengren and Harnden are also doing things differently from their competitors. Wallace James doesn’t produce Wallace James– branded clothes (at least, not yet). Instead, they work with would-be designers to create their dream products. Ortengren and her team help design, develop, and produce clothes for both established independent designers and up-and-coming makers. This model helps address what Ortengren identifies as a flaw in American higher education. “Our school systems aren’t training students to understand the entire production process,” she says. “Most of them don’t understand the various sides of the apparel industry or all the steps it takes to produce a quality piece of clothing.”

While she credits her time at Colorado State University for sparking her interest in the design and apparel field, Ortengren says she learned how to be an “expert in the big picture” by working a variety of different positions within the fashion industry. “I jumped around from design to technical design to start-up branding,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to do my own collection, but I came to understand that producing garments here in the United States is quite difficult. You have to do a lot of bouncing around—you might have a pattern maker in New York, the person who does your cutting in Pennsylvania, and your fit person in California. You’re constantly tracking items, and you have no negotiation power.” Ortengren set out to build a company that could do it all in one place, thus allowing independent designers to focus on their favorite part of the process—design—while leaving some of the thornier questions of production up to the team at Wallace James.

While she credits her time at Colorado State University for sparking her interest in the design and apparel field, Ortengren says she learned how to be an “expert in the big picture” by working a variety of different positions within the fashion industry. “I jumped around from design to technical design to start-up branding,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to do my own collection, but I came to understand that producing garments here in the United States is quite difficult. You have to do a lot of bouncing around—you might have a pattern maker in New York, the person who does your cutting in Pennsylvania, and your fit person in California. You’re constantly tracking items, and you have no negotiation power.” Ortengren set out to build a company that could do it all in one place, thus allowing independent designers to focus on their favorite part of the process—design—while leaving some of the thornier questions of production up to the team at Wallace James.

Over the past year, Ortengren and Harnden have hired a staff with a diverse range of talents. Director of production Naybi Vargas Luna came to the company after spending nine years working for companies like Sea Bags, L.L.Bean, and Angelrox. Vargas Luna knew from an early age that she wanted to work in fashion. “Like any young girl, I liked watching fashion shows and dressing up, but I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in fashion,” she says. After moving to Maine from Mexico City at the age of eight, she decided as a high-school student to start learning more about the local fashion industry. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to college, because I didn’t want to go into debt,” she says. After taking classes through the Portland Arts and Technology High School, Vargas Luna realized that she liked working directly with materials. Sewing came naturally to her. “Naybi came into apparel right out of high school, and she has continued to learn the craft,” Ortengren says. “She never stops learning, which I love.” Vargas Luna says something similar about her boss: “When we don’t know how to do something, Kim will come and figure it out with us. We figure it out together.”

Patternmaker Ellen Weeks came to Wallace James with more than 30 years of experience. “This is exactly the kind of company I want to work for,” she says. “It’s small. It’s independent. When I met Kim, I told her, ‘Older people don’t do this kind of thing, like start a business, because we know better.’ But I get a vicarious thrill from being a part of it.” Weeks feels strongly that there aren’t enough patternmakers working in America today. Like Ortengren, she expresses dismay at how much of the apparel industry has been shipped overseas. “A big thing for us is bringing in younger people and helping inspire students,” Weeks says. To that end, Ortengren has been mentoring several young women from Maine College of Art, and Weeks says she hopes they will soon be able to bring more Mainers who have newly immigrated into the Wallace James fold.

Ortengren is open about the fact that they’re still a new company, and as a startup, they have certain limitations on what kind of perks and benefits they can offer employees. The trade-off, she explains, is that “every single person who is at Wallace James has a serious role. I told everyone, right at the beginning, that this is a start-up. Each employee has an opportunity to pave their own way and to be heard.” Harnden agrees, “Even as leadership, we’re the first ones to admit when we don’t know something. And we have team members who do. It’s important to us that everyone chips in and gets their opinions heard.” Every Wallace James employee I spoke with also talked about the value of having a flexible schedule. Several of the designers and production managers are parents, including Vargas Luna. “I have to look for flexibility with my work,” she explains. “If something happens and I need to be at home with my daughter, Kim understands.”  When asked what’s next for the company,

Ortengren and Harnden both say they’re going to wait and see. “We’re still in startup mode,” says Ortengren cautiously. But Weeks is quick to voice her excitement. “I expect there will be a lot of growth and change in the next few years, but we’re up for a challenge,” Weeks adds. “I told Kim, ‘We’re the apparel think tank,’ and I can’t help but think, when you have good chemistry like we do, you’re bound to be successful.”