Internet helps Hampshire grad expand her Wild Child business beyond the Pioneer Valley.
While a student at Hampshire College in the mid-1980s, Jodi Levine would sell a variety of her tie-dyed clothing at an outdoor table in downtown Amherst with passersby as her customers.
From that beginning, Levine, now 48, is selling her Wild Child Tie-Dyes clothing and accessories at craft fairs in Massachusetts and New York, and all over the world, including in Germany, Scotland and the Philippines, thanks to online shopping options such as eBay and Facebook.
“What’s really wild is I just sold a pair of baby socks on eBay to somebody in Chile. And sunhats sell like mad in Australia,” Levine said. “I probably have tie-dyed clothing in 30 countries now.”
The concept of tie-dying is an ancient one and is resist-dyeing, meaning patterns are created by preventing the dye from reaching certain areas of the fabric. A skilled artist knows how to twist, fold and tie to create geometric and other patterns, often in bright colors.
Levine, who operates her tie-dye studio out of her Pelham home, said the Internet has completely changed the way people shop, especially for handmade items.
“The traditional craft fair still exists, is still vibrant and one of my favorites, but now people don’t have to seek that out,” she said. “So now if people in New Zealand decide at 2 a.m. they need a tie-dye onesie for a baby they can find me. That’s something I never expected and it’s really fun.”
Levine got the idea to go into making tie-dyed clothing when she initially sold her handmade jewelry in downtown Amherst, right next to a friend who sold tie-dyed clothing. When he did not respond to customers’ requests that he offer children’s tie-dyed clothing, Levine said she saw an opportunity.
“I asked him to teach me to tie-dye and I started making children’s items and gradually he stopped doing it, but I kept going,” she said.
Besides the early days of selling in downtown Amherst, Levine would bring her products to sell at Grateful Dead concerts and other music festivals all over the country when she was in her 20s.
Eventually, Levine attended graduate school and helped support herself by selling her tie-dyed goods at craft fairs. After that she continued selling part-time, while she worked for 10 years as an environmental educator at Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary in Easthampton, and now as the director of the Pelham Library.
Levine is married to Bruce Klotz, who handles the the Wild Child website. The couple has a son, Adin Klotz, 14, and daughter, Nora Klotz, 10. The family will often travel with her on weekends to the craft shows or concerts. Her children have even modeled the clothing on her website www.wildchildtiedyes.com, she said. Adin has followed in her footsteps, Levine said, noting that he tie-dyed 60 kippot, the skull cap worn by Jewish men, to give out at his bar mitzvah last April, and helped design and create the tallit, or prayer shawl, that he wore for the ceremony.
In 2014, Levine estimates that she will sell her adult-, children- and infant-size tie-dyed socks, T-shirts, bandanas, skirts, tank tops, quilts and other accessories at about a dozen craft shows in Massachusetts and New York.
One thing that sets her apart from other tie-dye artists is that she uses organic cotton whenever possible and all materials must be sweatshop-free, either made domestically or from an importer she trusts, Levine said.
“The way I sum it up is I am feeding my family and I want the people who are growing the cotton, making the cloth and sewing the shirts to be able to feed their families too,” she said. “It’s just human decency. I can’t fix the world but at least I don’t have to make it any worse.”