style
| origin Fashion designer Trina Turk, based in southern California, credits early creative inspiration to her Northwest upbringing. She runs her eponymous company with her husband Jonathan Skow, shown here with Turk on their first date in the early ‘80s, when they studied apparel design together at the University of Washington.
who’s that girl?
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As told to debra prinzing
Trina Turk expounds on her Northwest roots. 48
GRAY ISSUE No. EIGHTEEN
y mother, Michie Turk, is a very creative person. She’s Japanese, and while we weren’t immersed in Japanese culture growing up in Bellevue, Washington, we had things in our home that none of my friends had—like cool, square dinner plates. There is a graphic quality to the Japanese aesthetic that seeped into my consciousness early on. My mom taught me how to sew when I was 11, and presented me with the idea that you don’t have to follow the Simplicity pattern—you can change it. Realizing that I could make my own fashion excited me. I didn’t have to follow the rules. To their credit, the home economics teachers at Interlake High School were cool about letting me create my own courses. They let me just sew my own designs. I earned a B.A. in the University of Washington’s now-defunct apparel-design program in 1983. I met Jonathan Skow »