If you follow Andrea Jarrett on Instagram, you’re familiar with her minimalist aesthetic. You know that she favors chunky knits, that she trims her own face-framing French girl–style fringe.
Like many influencers, Jarrett documents these, and other, details of her wardrobe—a thrifted top here, a cotton flax dress there—photographed against the exposed brick background of her Tower Grove East living room. Her look, she discovered last year, after a deep dive into Pinterest, can be described as “artsy, academic, Parisian.”
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“There’s a subcategory of the academic look that I [also] fall under: dark academia with deep plaids and a lot of black,” she says.
But when Jarrett isn’t engaging with her more than 17,000 Instagram followers, she’s entertaining an entirely different audience as a violinist for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
The Michigan native, and her husband, Ian Kivler, a trumpet player who is SLSO’s artistic administrator, moved to St. Louis in 2015 to play with the orchestra. She took up knitting in her spare time and shared her thoughts about it on Instagram. “Knitting a sweater for the first time made me realize how hard it is to [make clothes],” she says. “It took me a year to complete that sweater, but the experience gave me a profound appreciation for how things are made.”
With each stitch, Jarrett’s interest in slow fashion took more definite shape.
“The idea of slow fashion is to be intentional with your purchases,” she says. “Will you wear it at least 30 times? Who made it, and are they paid and treated properly? Are the textiles produced in a way that is kind to the environment? In turn, slow fashion helps me be mindful with everything in my life, including practice.”
During the past year, as Jarrett has spent more time at home waiting out the pandemic, she’s had the time to connect with her followers. “I don’t want anyone to look at how many followers I have and think I’m not approachable,” she says. Her goal is straightforward: “I want people to wear the clothes that are already in their closets.”
There are few clues in Jarrett’s background to suggest that she would one day dedicate much of her time to extolling the benefits of sustainable fashion practices. Music has been her world from age 3, when she began playing the violin. By middle school, she was dreaming of a career in music. In 2009, she enrolled at The Juilliard School, in New York City, and six years later she earned a master’s degree in music from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, in Houston.
The 29-year-old carries her Insta style into her workday—“I look for natural fibers whenever possible; if it’s polyester, I’m guaranteed to be a sweaty mess by the end of the concert”—as well as into her home.
“I avoid impulse purchases,” Jarrett says. “My husband and I keep a list of big-ticket items we want for the home and try to find them secondhand. I believe that patience really pays off.”
