How "Iowish" came to be and more about us...
Iowish - by Lauri Long
Hi, I'm Lauri Long and I've been creating decorator type items since 1983. My creative juices are churning all the time. By training, I'm a seamstress, but I enjoy creating all kinds of things to help make the world "a bit more interesting". Keep checking back with us to see what products - from ideas past to present - I introduce to the site.
While visiting Washington, DC in 2007, people would ask where I was from and I replied, "Iowa"! I often had to explain that Iowa is in the heartland and that we don't grow potatoes there.
The friend I traveled with had purchased postcards at the Des Moines airport to show people where we were from, but kept forgetting them in her suitcase. I decided, what better way to promote Iowa than by wearing a T-shirt as a traveling billboard! This experience inspired me to use the word "Iowish" and the phrase "Kiss me, I'm Iowish" on T-shirts, to let people know where I was from and remind them of where it is by using the State's outline in the design.
Originally, I told a bit about our wonderful state with historical information about several Iowa communities on the back of the shirts. Unfortunately, there were too many places to cover and not enough orders for each place to justify printing them all, so I switched to a simpler design encompassing all of Iowa.
"Iowish" is actually a word I used in the 80's by referring to myself as an "Iowish kind of girl". I liked the ring to that as opposed to being an "Iowan". As it turns out, someone else used the word Iowish as a focal point of a book about speaking "Iowish" in the late 70's. Suddenly, after a newspaper article came out in the Des Moines Register about my T-shirts, all kinds of shirts with "Iowish" started popping up out of the blue made by other folks. I decided to see if the word was trademarked to save my own interests in the word as well as to protect the word from defaming Iowa. Amazingly, it wasn't trademarked so I jumped at the opportunity and trademarked it in 2008!
Thank you very much for visiting! We hope you find something of interest and if you have something in mind for use of the word "Iowish" and don't see it on our site, feel free to email me at laurilong@msn.com.
If you would like to license the use of the word "Iowish" for a product that you make, feel free to contact me, again at laurilong@msn.com.
