Neighbors: Mary Mitchell

She has thousands of them. They are the imaginative representations of clothes on hangers brought to life in a way that represents the romance a photo can’t capture.

“This one uses a No. 935 pencil on textured paper,” says Mary Mitchell, fashion illustrator, as she points to one of her hand-drawn illustrations of a model wearing a mink coat.

Her pencil drawing is meticulously detailed, revealing the garment down to each individual hair of the fur coat. The illustration is inviting, as if the viewer could feel the model’s reaction of euphoric, cozy, I-have-to-have-this-fur-coat-right-now bliss.

Mitchell has saved many of these drawings throughout the 30 years she spent as a professional fashion illustrator.

In 2009, when her friends from Omaha, Neb., Anne Marie Kenny and Mary Jochim, saw her hand-drawn representations of decades of fashion, they convinced Mitchell to have a showing. The ladies spoke to several venues, and Durham Museum of Omaha wanted to show 150 of Mitchell’s illustrations. The exhibit has been running since Jan. 27 and will continue through May 27. It will then transfer to the University of Nebraska.

When the idea for the exhibit was still being formulated, the group had the idea for Mitchell to create a book of her fashion drawings. Mitchell’s goal was to garner enough proceeds from the book sales to send art students to the University of Nebraska on full-ride scholarships. She is donating 100% of the proceeds of her book, “Drawn to Fashion,” to this cause.

“I know what I went through, not having any money and wanting to (go to art school) — I feel so strongly about that,” she says.

Rewind to when Mitchell was a little girl drawing women in beautiful dresses. She decided she wanted to be an artist, an idea her father did not agree with but that her mother fully encouraged.

When Mitchell was 17 years old, her mother died, and her father told her he wouldn’t pay for art school. He told her she would instead attend secretarial school so she could keep him company. Mitchell was devastated.

That was until she discovered a small booklet, something her mother had left her — a savings account book.Unknowingly to Mitchell, her mother had been taking the change collected from the jukebox at her family’s candy shop in South Buffalo, N.Y. She had been stowing it away in a savings account for many years.

“It was enough to get me through art school,” Mitchell said. Now Mitchell wants to return the favor.

Because Mitchell needed someone to authenticate her talent, Jochim made a brochure including Mitchell’s work and her charitable goal and sent it to fashion designer Oscar de la Renta. Mitchell had spent hours drawing de la Renta’s trademark evening gowns throughout the years.

At 12:30 p.m. Oct. 11, Mitchell received an unexpected phone call.

During the phone call with de la Renta, he told her: “You know, Mary, fashion illustration is a job that isn’t relevant anymore.”

It was a hard realization for Mitchell when fashion illustration took a backseat to photography in the late ’80s. The demand for the art declined, but that didn’t stop Mitchell from becoming a prime fashion illustrator in Nebraska. After four years working for Nebraska Clothing, she had secured enough clientele to work as a successful freelancer until 1989, until there wasn’t the same demand.

“It was very hard on me because I loved doing it,” she says. “It wasn’t work, it was a joy.”

And it was an art de la Renta appreciates; he recently hired a fashion illustrator to design ads for his fragrance, Live in Love. He also wrote the forward to Mitchell’s book after they spoke.

The book is dedicated to Mitchell’s mother. It reads: “To my mother, who clothed me in love and made my dream come true.”

With the book’s proceeds, Mitchell wants to pay it (one fashionable foot) forward at a time.