KAPAA – Barbara Green loves to create. She knew that about herself while growing up on Kauai. “I was really bored in science class and sketched my own wedding gown in seventh grade,” Green remembered. In fact, come Saturday night,
KAPAA – Barbara Green loves to create. She knew that about herself while growing up on Kauai.
“I was really bored in science class and sketched my own wedding gown in seventh grade,” Green remembered.
In fact, come Saturday night, Topaz Fernandez, Miss Garden Island, will be wearing one of Green’s gowns when Fernandez competes in the Miss Hawaii Pageant.
Fernandez is one of dozens of pageant contestants who selected the ornate beaded dresses Green has custom designed.
The 1988 Kauai High School graduate began sewing when she couldn’t find anything stylish to wear.
“I was 200 pounds by the time I was 13-years-old, I couldn’t find clothing to fit me,” Green said. “The only thing I could find were old lady clothes.”
Green enrolled in Joyce’s sewing school and learned to draft patterns and sew styles to fit her then plus-sized body. She also committed to daily aerobics and counting calories to lose 65 pounds. After graduation, Green was off to Los Angeles to attend The Fashion Institute of Design.
“I always wanted to leave the island to see what it was like somewhere else,” Green remembered. “And I always knew I wanted to be a designer.”
Her goal was realized after graduation when she survived and flourished in the competitive world of fashion for 25 years.
“Kauai life is so much more centered around family and being concerned about other people. Los Angeles is all about career and being ahead of the game and constantly trying to beat the competition,” Green said.
One of Green’s designs at a showroom in Los Angeles caught the eye of a stylist working on the television show, “In Living Color.”
“J-Lo was one of the fly girls on the show before she blew up, she was probably 19 or 20,” Green recalled. “I got to deliver my tops to Fox TV for the show.”
But an even more exciting memory for Green was when she was home during the winter holiday season one year.
“We were all sitting around the TV in my parents’ living room and one of the episodes of ‘In Living Color’ came on and my designs were on it,” Green said. “It was special because they could all see my work.”
In 1998, Green got up close and personal with “The King of Pop.”
“Michael Jackson was coming to the studio where I worked and we were told not to shake his hand unless he extended it, and not to sneeze,” Green said. “By the time he got there, I was so nervous. He said, “Hi” to me and I was so nervous, I didn’t say anything. You could see the youthfulness in him.”
Green has designed for ready-to-wear companies that shipped to Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstroms and Macy’s. Her designs have also appeared in “Cosmopolitan Magazine” and music videos, including one with Ringo Starr and Hank Williams.
But when her mother took ill, Green returned to Hawaii. It was a priority.
“I flew with my sewing machine so I could be by her bedside and continue to work,” Green said. “She was in a coma for eight months and kept saying over and over again, ‘My daughter’s getting married.’”
Green was grateful she could be with her mother when she passed away peacefully at home. And now Green lives on Kauai to custom design clothing on a full-time basis.
“I like it when I can see that I’ve created something that lifts a person’s confidence when they put it on,” Green said.
When she designed a Hawaiian print gown for a petite-sized kumu who was always having trouble finding something to wear, she could see how her work made a difference.
“She put my gown on and it fit her perfectly, she cried,” Green said. “That’s the kind of stuff I live for.”
Green has also designed costumes for large hula schools on Kauai and on the Mainland and musical stage productions in Kauai, including, “My Fair Lady,” “The Importance of being Earnest,” and “Seussical.”
“For the hula schools, when I see everything on stage and everybody in their costumes, that is the reward for me,” Green said.
As for that wedding dress she designed during her seventh-grade science class, she eventually sewed the hand-beaded white satin and gold brocade gown and wore it at her fairytale-like wedding to Roderick Green, the man of her dreams.
“I was still beading it on the morning of my wedding day,” Green said with a laugh.
• This is an ongoing weekly feature in The Garden Island. It focuses on everyday people who reflect the spirit that makes Kauai the place it is today. If you know of somebody you’d like to see featured, email features and education reporter Lisa Ann Capozzi at lcapozzi@thegardenisland.com.
