Loretta Pettway Bennett and Claudia Pettway Charley—fifth- and fourth-generation Gee’s Bend quilters, respectively—are dreaming up dazzling designs beyond the quilt tops for which their Alabama community is famed.
The clothing and lifestyle brand Ralph Lauren has tapped the two Southern textile artists for its fifth Artist in Residence collection, an initiative that collaborates directly with American design pioneers rather than simply referencing them.
The vibrant heritage of Gee’s Bend, whose centuries of quiltmaking has inspired artists around the South, first gained international recognition with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s 2002 exhibition The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Now, blocks of railroad ticking stripes, soft chambrays, ditsy florals, and indigoes will grace Ralph Lauren’s throw pillows, workwear-inspired jackets, slouchy handbags, and painted ceramics (and, yes, quilts).
The materials, including scraps of Ralph Lauren cottons and denims, echo the rural Alabama community’s tradition of reusing worn-out clothing material. Historically, the women of Gee’s Bend sewed quilts simply to keep their families warm, not for decoration. In the hands of generational quilters, ribbed corduroys, polka-dotted dresses, and tough workwear denims, retired after tears and stains, found new life in patchwork. The women reconfigured and abstracted the world around them as they pieced together each design, working from a foundation of basic compositions like Birds in the Air, Housetop, Checkerboard, Basketweave, and Star before allowing the “improvisational” process to guide them.
And even though the quilters, including Bennett and Charley, learned from their own mothers, grandmothers, and aunts, each artist’s style is highly individualistic. Bennett, who told the Souls Grown Deep Foundation that quilting “was implanted in [her] genes,” has a distinct hand: For the Ralph Lauren textiles and home goods, her Housetop compositions showcase slanting planes, uniting denims of different tones with measured white lines of visible topstitching. Her trademark pops of eye-catching red patches, a repeated symbol nodding to her sons, make a delightful splash on the monochromatic blue surfaces of pillows, quilts, and serving ware.
Charley, who played under the outstretched quilts on her grandmother’s quilting frame, sews under the guidance of her senses and emotions; the day’s temperature and light inform material and color choices. And rather than following a premade sketch, Charley finishes a section and decides what the next needs—whether it’s more contrast or a juxtaposing shape—as she cuts and sews linear, straight-edged blocks.
The collection is available on Ralph Lauren’s website until sold out. Five percent of each sale goes to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, and specifically to the EJI’s hunger relief program, which combats food insecurity for low-income families in the state.
Gabriela Gomez-Misserian, Garden & Gun’s digital producer, joined the magazine in 2021 after studying English and studio art in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. She is an oil painter and gardener, often uniting her interests to write about creatives—whether artists, naturalists, designers, or curators—across the South. Gabriela paints and lives in downtown Charleston with her golden retriever rescue, Clementine.