Allen Farm
Motorists traveling South Road tend to zip past the Allen Farm sign time after time, year after year. When curiosity finally prevails, they pull in and discover an inviting store stocked with sweaters, hats, gloves, vests, shawls, blankets, throws, yarn, and, incidentally, meat. Proprietors Clarissa Allen and Mitchell Posin began weaving and knitting wool twenty-one years ago – a plausible sideline for a twelfth-generation farm girl from Chilmark, if not for a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Expanding farm chores have since forced the couple to give up their handiwork, but their traditional designs live on through the support of several Island crafters and a few off-Island manufacturers. Allen Farm supplies the raw material, shorn from 200 half-merino, half-Lincoln sheep that yield superior wool as well as superior meat. Even the rugged-looking fisherman-knit sweaters feel surprisingly soft. Four-pocket men’s vests are available in tweeds and solid colors. The design never varies; the colors do. This year’s purple herringbone – a vision more subtle than it sounds – is faring “so-so” in sales, says Mitchell. Jackie O used to shop at the Allen Farm store. Carly S and Bill C have been customers, too. But the regulars are the two decades of anonymous passersby who finally, and gladly, stopped.

Fleece Dreams
Though Betsy Edge has been sewing avidly since childhood, it wasn’t until a friend asked her to make her a hat – out of fleece – that it dawned on her to make clothes for profit as well as fun. Thus began Fleece Dreams a dozen or so years ago, when the fleece trend was in its infancy. Rather than compete with front-runners such as L.L. Bean, Betsy veered away from take-a-hike zipper jackets to find her niche in classy street wear. Her thick, cuddly swing coats with the big buttons are a prime example. She increasingly works in wool, velvet, and silk. “Most of my clothes have a vintage look,” she says. “I think fashion has been a wasteland since the ’40s.” Betsy scaled up to a retail shop in Vineyard Haven and a wholesale business. In a preemptive strike against burnout, she scaled back to hawking her wares at craft shows. She has plenty of repeat customers. “I make clothing for people who aren’t eighteen any more, especially as I get older myself.” Off the record, Betsy names a few rich and famous patrons, admitting that she’s often clueless about who the rich and famous are. “I can’t live solely on the business, but I love what I do. I don’t define success only in terms of money.”

Vital Signs
They’re hardly as ubiquitous as the black Lab or the bluefish, but for many fashionistas, the lyrical block prints of Vital Signs Artwear belong on the short list of Vineyard clothing icons. For the past twenty years, seventeen of them on-Island, owner Keren Tonnesen has been transferring her Future Primitive designs, as she calls them, onto loose and easy linen separates, thus forging a distinctive brand of summer chic. “Each piece of clothing is an original,” says Keren. “I never combine the same print with the same piece of clothing twice.” After drawing an image and carving it into plastic, she inks the plate with multiple colors and hand-presses it onto pants, tops, skirts, jackets, men’s shirts, sweats, or handbags dyed in solid, offbeat hues. “I combine colors you don’t ordinarily think of together,” she says. Today, she buys ready-to-wear garments so she can focus her energies on printmaking rather than sewing. Her regulars – “collectors” may be the apt word – feel hip and trendy in her clothing even if they’re past seventy or beyond size fourteen. Since closing the Vital Signs store on Circuit Avenue a few seasons ago, Keren sells her wares through the C’est La Vie gift shop, craft fairs, off-Island trunk shows, and her Oak Bluffs studio.