Business & Tech

Making Eco-friendly Sweaters with A Twist

Port Washington dance teacher combs North Shore consignment shops in search of materials for new business.

By day, Northport resident Debbie Mastrocinque teaches dance and personal fitness training. Off-hours, she’s just as busy, combing consignment shops, seeking new or gently worn garments that she then transforms into artisanal kids’ clothing for her new company, Haru Fashions.   

Simply put, Mastrocinque, a popular dance instructor at Dance Arts Centre in Port Washington, has a passion for “upcycling” – the art of converting old products into new ones that are not only valued but also good for the environment, as they conserve natural resources, and spare our landfills.   

The materials she works with – including wool and denim – “is a little more sophisticated” than what is typically used for children’s clothing, she said.   

Perusing local consignment shops is a favorite pastime for Mastrocinque. And once she finds the materials she likes, she thoroughly washes the garments, so much so that any wool material is soft enough for a baby’s skin, as evidenced from her newest collection of one-of-a-kind children’s wear. Next she re-cuts and re-sews the materials into sweaters, jackets and more. She also adorns them – sometimes with ribbon, other times buttons or felt. In fact, it was by perusing Martha Stewart’s website that inspired Mastrocinque too learn felting, which led her to launch Haru Fashions this year.   

“Haru,” Mastrocinque pointed out, is the Japanese word for “spring.”     
 
“It symbolizes renewal,” she said, adding that the butterfly, commonly seen in spring, represents the metamorphosis that her clothing goes through.   Mastrocinque expects to sell her clothing, which range in price $40-$120, mostly at artists’ fairs, similar to the ones in Sea Cliff and Northport. Still, she is not ruling out specialty stores that sell artisanal goods. In May, she said, she made some good contacts from vendors displaying their products at the Momtrepreneur Fair in Port Washington.   

Mastrocinque is in the process of developing a web site, harufashions.com, and can be reached at harufashions@gmail.com. 


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