Custom-made fashion in downtown Modesto? New studio brings big city design to valley
Look, you’re already trying to eat local and shop local, why not wear local too?
A new storefront in downtown Modesto is helping area residents do just that with custom-made clothing. The Taste Studio opened on Small Business Saturday, over Thanksgiving weekend, last year. The tiny shop on J Street, a few doors down from Preservation Coffee & Tea, sells custom women’s and children’s apparel and accessories, as well as a small selection of ready to wear items.
The boutique is the culmination of a decade of blood, sweat and stitches from owner and fashion designer Stephanie Oyervides. In 2011, the Modesto-raised clothier graduated with a degree from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Francisco. Then, when she moved back to Modesto with her husband about six years ago, she began making custom clothing out of her garage.
About two and a half years ago she started leasing an upstairs studio space in the Beaty Building in the heart of downtown. That one space grew to four adjoining suites where Oyervides does her hands-on work and production. Then during the pandemic the opportunity to take over a small storefront on the building’s prominent J Street side came up.
Oyervides and her family did extensive work on the small, about 450-square-foot former barber shop, taking out drop ceilings and lightening up the space. You can find a selection of Oyervides’s basics in the shops, from pants and simple dresses to tops and more. And she is happy to introduce people to the process of making and buying custom clothing.
“I feel like this is something so different for Modesto. I see a lot of people walk by and sometimes they’re too scared to come in. And I get that,” she said of her new shop. “I just want to show people, ‘Hey, this where this is made and designed and now I’m bringing it here to you.’”
Oyervides’s dreams of fashion design started years before she opened her studio doors. Her mother, Edith Rodriguez, emigrated from El Salvador when she was 20. As a single mom raising Oyervides and her older sister, Rodriguez made all their clothes by hand growing up.
That, coupled with a love of Barbie, got Oyervides designing from a young age.
“As (my mom) was making clothes for us and other people for some extra income as a single mother, I would pick up the scraps and start hand sewing. I sewed all of my Barbie clothes by hand,” she said. “When I got older I thought, ‘This is so much work, I’m never going to sew for a living.’”
But she couldn’t give it up, and dreamed of fashion while going to school and graduating from Davis High in 2007. After graduating from the Fashion Institute she looked for work in corporate fashion. But she said working and living in the Bay Area didn’t leave room for creativity so when the opportunity came up to move back to Modesto with her husband, they took the chance.
“When I ended up moving to Modesto I said, ‘I can’t make a fashion career happen here.’ And my husband said, ‘Then you don’t want it that badly.’ And I was like, ‘Excuse me?’” she said.
Now, she hopes to bring some big city services and ambiance to downtown Modesto through her studio. Besides her own ready-to-wear line, she also carries work by other Central Valley makers and designers she met through social media. Oyervides has built up her brand through her Instagram and other social feeds over the years.
She hopes to help introduce Modesto shoppers to the custom-clothing experience. Which, of course, begs a few questions for those accustomed to buying things off-the-rack.
Like, how much do custom designs cost?
As with any clothing, it varies. Oyervides can make anything from a simple summer dress to an elegant wedding gown. Fees range from maybe $150 for a simple casual piece, to $300 for a formal gown to $1,000 or more for a wedding dress.
The fees pay for Oyervides’s design, custom fitting and production. Materials and fabric are extra, and charged at actual cost. So depending on the kind of fabric used, that could add another $20 to hundreds. But, again, it’s all custom and the customer makes the final choices.
While she is mostly a one-woman band — designing, fitting and producing her clothing herself — she gets some help from her mother and sister, Jessica Conzet, with production. And her husband, who works for the Modesto Irrigation District, helps handle the digital side of her business and website.
Oyervides works most days in her upstairs workshops, and is still figuring out the best hours for the street-level shop. For now it’s open Thursday to Saturday, from about 1 to 5 p.m. But people are welcome to message The Taste Studio Instagram (www.instagram.com/thetaste.studio) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/tastestudioca) accounts to be let in during off hours or make an appointment.
More events, like headband and bow-making workshops, are planned in the new year. She hopes, as more people find her shop, people will become more comfortable with the idea of knowing where, and who, makes their clothes.
“I wanted to introduce the people of Modesto to a different way of shopping and a different way of buying clothes, and to show appreciation for everything that goes into clothing, because it’s all hand made,” she said. “Everything still requires human touch, and I wanted to make people aware of that.”
For more information on The Taste Studio, at 1016 J St. in Modesto, call 209-496-8784 or visit shoptastestudio.com.
This story was originally published January 4, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
