Courtney Coll is an au naturale multi-hyphenate, specifically a designer-turned-model-turned-herbalist-turned-farmer. While she is a native of Chicago, she has been working on her family farm, Doc’s Family Farms, in Trinity Valley, California for five years. The farm is situated in a micro valley, allowing for lush greenery, including organic veggies, as well as marijuana. She’s bringing that nature-minded philosophy to her just-launched clothing label, Garden Crew. The colorful workwear pants, bucket hats, and shirts have all been dyed using natural plant dyes.
This wasn’t the first time that she had created merch, though. She also released a groovy, recycled cotton T-shirt with a healthy marijuana plant printed on the back. This time, Coll wanted to get more personal and launched a category of gardenwear. “When COVID was happening, I spent a lot of time up at the farm and just thought it makes sense to now merge all worlds together of what I’m into, like wellness, design, and creative work,” she said on the phone from Trinity Valley. The sweatshirt features a sketch of a sun face, while the pants are adorned with a sun with leaves sprouting from its head. For this, Coll worked with London-based artist Magnus Reid to work on images to best represent the farm, and collaborated with Born to Roam Vintage to print on naturally-dyed deadstock. “What I was trying to focus on in this collection is a sustainable route and not having the product be wasteful,” she says.
The inspiration came from the workwear Coll dresses in for a day on the farm. “What I wear on the farm is what each collection will be,” says Coll. “I really want it colorful and funky as that’s my personality, but also stuff we can wear all day while working.” Since Doc’s is a small-batch farm, Coll wanted to apply that philosophy to her clothing production as well. “We take so much time making sure it [farming] is done correctly,” she says. “That is why I really want every line to be a small batch limited line as well.”
The pants are deadstock Stan Ray pants dyed in indigo, eucalyptus, and madder root. “I also didn’t want the collection to just be all plain white,” says Coll. “Each pant color is from a different plant, which is so amazing as they are bright.” Naturally dyed clothing has actually been on the rise amid the pandemic. Smaller designers like New York-based Emily Dawn Long and Andrea Smith of AMS have also been working with natural dyes. After all, it’s easy to take food scraps and take the time to turn them into at-home dye. For Coll, the natural design process all ties back to what Doc’s Family Farm stands for: sustainability. “From just farming and being on land, you can merge both worlds [design and sustainability], but how you do it correctly is where I want to take Docs.”
