This Charlotte Teen Designer Went Viral for Her “Grandma” Crochet Fashion – Charlotte Magazine

More and more young people are taking up what social media has deemed “grandma and grandpa hobbies.” They’re gardening, baking sourdough, canning produce, and putting together puzzles, either as a reprieve from screens or to save money as inflation climbs.

DeJané Angel Cade inherited her “grandma hobby” from her mom, a Liberian immigrant who came to the United States as a teenager and settled in Charlotte, where Cade was born. “Sometime after I turned 11,” Cade says, “randomly one day, my mom was like, ‘DeJané, hey, I have this one craft that I kind of taught myself as a kid. Do you want to learn how to do it?’ I just started watching her and caught on quickly. And it was, like, love at first stitch.”

Cade started with traditional items like blankets and baby clothes. But after a while, and with the extra free time during COVID, she began to make women’s clothes and accessories. “I look at modern interpretations of fashion, and I create that with crocheting,” Cade explains. “A lot of people think crocheting is very limited, but you can make anything.” 

That same year, she turned her hobby into a business, Angel Love Crochet & Co. She was 14. But her intrigue had come at the right time. Social media and a resurgence of knit and crochet fashion, first popular in the 1960s and ’70s, made her business go viral.

“It was surreal,” Cade recalls when we speak via Zoom in June. “It was in the midst of the pandemic, which was a very depressing time. But having crocheting being my therapy basically—I had my hook and my yarn, and that’s what mattered to me.” Now 18, she’s wearing one of her dresses, and behind her is a wall of yarn skeins organized by color. She’s in her craft room at her parents’ house, where she lives. She’s bubbly, and confidently expressive in a way that makes her seem older than she is.

She posted her first TikTok video in February 2021. In it, she models her recreation of the plum-monochrome outfit that Michelle Obama had worn to President Biden’s inauguration just weeks earlier. It included all the elements of the original, by Black celebrity fashion designer Sergio Hudson: wide-leg pants, top, belt, and ankle-length coat. She gained followers and orders. Last year, she posted a video of herself in a dress she made for her junior prom at Charlotte Teacher Early College—a peach-colored, one-shoulder mermaid gown with a floral rhinestone applique. That video got 10.1 million views and landed her appearances on several television programs, including ABC’s Tamron Hall Show.

Then, this past spring, she posted a series of videos about her crocheted black-and-white, fit-and-flare senior prom dress, with a halter top, one off-shoulder draped sleeve, and rhinestone work. The two videos got a combined 23.1 million views on TikTok—and Cade got a whole lot of orders.

Cade’s made and sold around 200 dresses and outfits in the four years since she launched Angel Love Crochet & Co. Each takes about six weeks to make, completely by hand. She sells them through social media and her website for between $2,000 and $8,000. “You’re paying for my technique and expertise, knowing that when you get it, you’re not going to be disappointed—you’re getting what you pay for, something that’s luxurious.” She requests measurements for custom orders so she can tailor the fit, and she sources high-quality yarns from all over the world.

Cade estimates that she spends about 40 hours a week crocheting—the equivalent of a full-time job. She’s also still in school. She attends an early-college high school, a joint program by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and UNC Charlotte. She’ll start her fifth and final year in the fall, then graduate in spring with her high school diploma and an associate’s degree in elementary and special education. 

She’s also one of 130 students that the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Commission selected for its Teaching Fellows program. It will pay for her to complete her bachelor’s degree at UNCC. The program requires her to spend a couple of years teaching at a North Carolina public school. But after that, she plans to go to her mother’s native Liberia, one of the world’s poorest countries, to teach kids how to crochet.

“I just remember my mom’s dream of coming to the country,” she says. “A lot of dreams that she had, she had to sacrifice. She couldn’t become a crochet designer; she couldn’t follow those dreams that she had in Liberia. So that’s what motivates me. Like, hey, Mom—I’m going to get this done, not only for me but for you.”

Tess Allen is the associate editor.