Denim Designer Opens Portland Store

Jeff Shafer, the founder and designer behind denim fashion brands Agave (Santa Monica, Calif.) and Bluer Denim (Ridgefield, Wash.), opened the brands’ first brick-and-mortar store in Portland, Ore., to sell his designs. The 700-square foot store, called Bluer Than Indigo, also offers locally-produced clothing, vegan shoes, recycled Levi’s, and some mid-century modern furniture, reports Women’s Wear Daily.

The store is primarily designed with repurposed and recycled items, such as using wood salvaged from barns for the store’s flooring.

Shafer said that the store is a way to more directly engage with customers as well as test the marketability of other green, sustainable and locally-made products.

For now, this is the only store Shafer plans to open. “I’m not trying to create a national point of view and a national retail chain,” he said. “I’m trying to create a concept that has an ideology and a point of view.”