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| Welcome to Originals Casual Wear Online!
| | A Note from Our President and Founder |
 When starting the company in my home over 20 years ago, I had no idea of the huge success that the "hand-stitched look" would be. We began by selling wholesale and eventually opened our own stores and kiosks. In 1997 we printed our first mail order catalog and in 2001 we created and developed our website. The catalog and website have been fun to develop and grow. It has also been rewarding for me to hear the enthusiastic and encouraging responses to the catalog, website, and product.
The success of Originals Casual Wear has been "Original designs with aunique hand-stitched look". Our main artist/designer, Joy Lavik creates beautiful designs that look like they were hand stitched or hand painted. She meticulously draws each stitch by hand and our skilled screen printers printeach garment with pride, right here at our Drayton facility. The results are beautiful garments that look like embroidery, hardanger, cross-stitching,tatting, and other forms of needle art. It is very exciting to hear all the great feedback from our customers. They tell us that they love wearing our clothing because they get so many compliments and people ask them if they have stitched them themselves. I am very proud of the great group of hard-working employees at Originals Casual Wear. Our goal is to produce quality garments that you will be proud towear for years to come. In additional we strive to give quality customer service and prompt shipping. Please feel free to e-mail, write, or fax me with any comments or suggestions that you might have. I would love to hear from you. God Bless You, | | 
Cheryl Gjevre
| Our President Cheryl Gjevre our president/founder feels that Originals Casual Wear is apart of the destiny that God has given her. She has invested a lot of herself in every area of the company and it has proved successful. She has been married to Wade Gjevre for over 40 years and they have three children: Clay, New York, NY and twin daughters , living in Minneapolis, MN; Jill who is married to Andrew Carter and Joy who is married to Satish Jayaram. They have one granddaughter,Thea Jayaram. | |
Our Main Artist - Joy Lavik
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Joy and Cheryl, preparing
for Christmas 2005
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Using pencil and paper instead of a needle and thread, our artist Joy Lavik creates original artwork that reflects her love of the traditional art of needlework. Intricate Hardanger embroidery, cross stitching, French knots, lacy eyelet - even the flower painting folk art called rosemaling - all show up in Joy's work.
For inspiration, Joy often looks to nature. You'll see graceful flowers, leaves, shafts of wheat, snowflakes and bright-eyed birds in her art. Our special puff ink process makes each tiny "stitch" and "brush stroke" seem real. It's nice to know that Joy and Originals are keeping ancient forms of handiwork alive...with today's marvelous screen printing. | | What Makes Originals
So Unique?
Originals is headquartered in Drayton, North Dakota, a small town, in a rural state. The entire state population is less than a fair sized city. Amazingly, Originals draws almost completely on local talent to produce and sell its products! Our models, artists, photographers and screen-printers are all local. | 
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| Also comprised of local employees, our Art Department creates and sets up our catalogs, our in-house Call Center happily sells you product and helps you find just what you're looking for, and our industrious warehouse crew picks, inspects, packs and ships our product nation-wide. The one thing we don't do locally is the actual mass printing of the catalog. Simply "frabjous", isn't it?
 | | | | If You're in Our Area
Visit our retail store, located at 104 East Highway 66, Drayton, ND. It's loaded with Original's product. If you would like to plan a factory tour and see our entire facility please call 701-454-3891 locally or 888-246-4411 from out of state. | 
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| "Frabjous" is a word coined by Lewis Carroll, meaning, "wonderful, magnificent, or splendid." |
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