The Darling Buds of MAE

by Stephanie Davis Smith | Jezebel magazine | February 6, 2012

When fashion designer Caroline Mae Heidenreich isn’t sitting at the drafting table in the sunlit front room of her 1930s whitewashed-brick bungalow in Buckhead, she’s pacing back and forth tinkering with racks of clothes and pinning parachutes on dress forms. By taking these military rations and fashioning them into couture dresses, Heidenreich, who goes by “Mae” like her great-grandmother before her, has been able to create unique, sustainable fashions out of a material that was inspired by her brother’s army service. “The history of parachutes is truly cool,” says the 26-year-old, who makes all of her pieces by hand in her home studio. “Some of [them] are 700 feet wide and strong enough to be used to drop Humvees. But really, it’s just great fabric.”

Heidenreich, who launched MAE Couture while still a senior at SCAD in Savannah, barely comes up to her mannequins in height. The petite beauty with short-cropped hair wears a long black sweater and black combat boots over her black tights and looks like she could hold her own in an East Atlanta alt-rock band. Instead, she makes gowns that hold their own at the black-tie events and society galas attended by Atlanta’s elite.

Members of the local social set like Linda Loudermilk, Mary Reynolds and Merry Carlos are already fans, and couture collector Su Longman was one of her first clients, commissioning a ball gown from Heidenreich after she spotted her work at 2009’s Jeffrey Fashion Cares, where the young SCAD grad was named the organization’s new talent of the year.

While gowns are her specialty, the designer recently took MAE Couture in a new direction, banging out gorgeous, silky parachute pants—oh, the irony!—with a boho, gypsy vibe that are garnering her serious attention on the street. She has now expanded further into ready-to-wear with intricate woven tops and shift dresses. “You’ve got to have a thick skin to do what I’m doing,” she says, about evolving and changing her craft. When Heidenreich met with Tim Gunn about competing on Project Runway, she found that “he was perplexed by what I did,” she says. “‘They don’t sell parachutes at Mood,’ he said to me,” mimicking his signature staccato. In return, she quipped, “‘Well, I can make outfits from other things too, Tim!’”

While Project Runway didn’t work out for her, Heidenreich has indeed proven she can make beautiful clothes out of other materials, Mr. Gunn. Take mosquito nets. She created a feminine, strappy gown made from the mesh material she found at an Army Navy Surplus store. She turned something officers sleep under at night in the desert into a gown that manages to be sexy, flowy and unique with sleek straps that adjoin via a large buckle in the back. “I got the hardware for the back off of some LBVs,” she says. “You know, Load Bearing Vests?”

Almost all of the pieces in her women’s line incorporate some kind of military-specific eccentricities. Heidenreich’s signature long skirts have drawstrings (the rip cords from the parachutes) running the length of the material and can be pulled up and tied to create different lengths. Because of this quirk, a long skirt can quickly become a bubble-skirt mini with just a tug, while a strapless long gown can become a short number in seconds.

It can take the designer three to 20 hours to finish a gown, depending on what the client wants and the detail required, but her newer, more accessible looks could easily be spotted on a hipster walking around Virginia-Highland or down Flat Shoals Road. With a parachute of talent keeping her safe, MAE Couture has nowhere to go but sky-high. maecouture.com