Sunlight filters through the windows of Melissa Roth’s sewing studio in south Denver, where over the last couple of years she has become the go-to creator supplying aprons to many of the best restaurants in the state.
From this room, she has equipped the kitchens of elegant chef’s counters (Milpero, Margot, Bruto), foodie destinations (La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, Pig and Tiger, Potager) and entire restaurant groups (Gastamo Group, Fonda Fina Hospitality, the collective works of Tommy Lee).
Restaurant owners and auteurs have come to rely on her small business, Union Stitch & Design, for customizable aprons that look neat and can withstand the heat and messes of the kitchen.
“I think it can be way more than it is,” Roth, 50, said of her apron enterprise this summer. “Because I can go out every night and talk to people and drum up business, but I don’t think that’s how this needs to be scaled.”
Despite securing orders from more than two dozen of the restaurants on this year’s Colorado edition of the Michelin Guide, including most of the ones with Michelin stars, the seamstress and mother of two will have to find another place for her sewing machines, rolls of canvas cloth and many potted plants next year. The lease on the studio — shared with a leather artist and a maker of bike frame bags — is up in March and renewal is still in question, she said.
“Obviously I’d have to go somewhere else,” she said. These days, she appreciates the separation between her work and parental duties too much to haul her studio back home, she said. But home was where her business started more than ten years ago.
Melissa Roth sews aprons at Union Stitch & Design studios in Denver on Thursday, July 2, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Friends in the biz
Roth’s first order came from a friend who noticed a quilt she’d made for her newborn son. The friend was Jennifer Jasinski, the chef and restaurateur behind Denver’s Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Ultreia.
The pair met in the restaurant world. Roth was born in Denver, graduated with a psychology degree from the University of Colorado Denver, and held down jobs managing, serving and bartending.
That first order consisted of 30 grey aprons for Rioja, Roth said.
Jasinski estimates she’s ordered thousands of aprons from her friend since. “It’s been a slow growth, but Melissa is a single mom,” Jasinski said. “She had to stick with it. She had to be tenacious.”
As Roth experimented with sewing tote bags and face masks during COVID-19’s initial surge, she earned more contract work making aprons for other restaurants.
“This industry is really tight,” she said. “In the beginning, it was just people being there for me.”
She began taking commissions for aprons worn by chefs for special events and one-night-only occurrences. (This year, her roster included the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta and the Steamboat Springs Food & Wine Festival.) One came from Merlin Verrier, who caters touring artists at venues such as Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre under the name Hot Like Sauce.
“I still have one of my first aprons [from her] that I think is 10-plus years old and has zero holes, zero loss of stitching,” Verrier said. “The craftsmanship has held up impeccably.”
Last year, Verrier called upon Roth for his catering appointment for Phish, who was playing three nights at Folsom Field in Boulder. Her design co-opted the high-contrast “donut dress” worn by the band’s drummer, Jon Fishman. One of the aprons hangs near her studio entrance.
Mexican chef Jose Avila ordered from Roth for the staff at La Diabla and again when he opened Malinche Audiobar last year.
“In Mexico we have a saying: ‘Haz patria y consume local.’ It literally means, ‘Do your part for your country and buy local,’” Avila said. “The idea is that every dollar you spend at a local business strengthens your community, creates jobs, preserves traditions, and keeps money circulating where you live. It’s both economic and cultural patriotism.”
Melissa Roth sews aprons at Union Stitch & Design studios in Denver on Thursday, July 2, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Colorful choices, uniform design
On a weekday afternoon in June, Roth sat behind a table in her studio finalizing the order for Sheep, a pop-up restaurant from the duo behind two-Michelin-starred The Wolf’s Tailor.
Bluegrass tunes poked out from Roth’s Bluetooth speaker. She was focused on lining up and sewing front pockets to the aprons, occasionally interrupting her chatter with the rapid darts of her sewing machine.
Once the pockets were attached, she neatly folded the aprons and stacked them in a box. Her goal was to deliver the finished aprons to the restaurant, at the Clayton Hotel & Member’s Club, later that day.
Roth follows a similar procedure for every restaurant. The apron design is drawn on paper based on conversations with a chef or restaurant owner. Then she works with canvas cloth and canvas back straps, the latter adjustable low across the waist or in an ‘X’ along the back that’s preferable for long periods of wear. Restaurants can mix or match the color of the canvas panels and pockets.
“I’m very practical, so that has stopped me sometimes from doing certain things for people,” Roth said. She pointed to leather aprons as an example. “You’re going to be mad in two washes because that didn’t go how you thought it was going to.”
She continued: “I want people to have a product that hits all the marks. Looks really nice, but you can wash it and wear it and be a person in it.”
Though the canvas comes from China, Roth relies on local craftspeople for other tools and materials, such as the casts used to cut the pockets. When she began to get more orders than she could physically take on, she hired a seamstress, Huong Hong, for help.
Aprons made by Melissa Roth photographed at Union Stitch & Design studios in Denver on Thursday, July 2, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
The future of her studio is in the air, all the while business has never been better. Other contract work will place her aprons across the country, including at Johnny Curiel’s newest outpost of Alteño in Charleston, S.C.
There’s a “common thread,” Roth said, between people such as Curiel and The Wolf’s Tailor’s Kelly Whitaker, that compels them to showcase her works and those of other creative-minded people in the restaurant industry. Their attention to detail has contributed to their success.
“They don’t want to be like anybody else,” she said.
So the aprons at Curiel’s Milpero, the latest one-star Michelin restaurant in Denver, are a stark white slate that can be wiped clean with bleach. The ones at Sheep are off-white, Roth said. Other Michelin-starred restaurants have also commissioned white aprons for pristine elegance, such as chef Justin Fulton and his team at Margot.
These restaurant owners and others who have called Roth to outfit their staff celebrated another year of inclusion in the Michelin Guide the day it was announced in September. The honorees gathered for applause and a commemorative photo at a party that evening, surrounded by their guests.
After the party, Roth wondered what it took to be invited.
“I think I should be!” she said. After all, the journey to a Michelin jacket in Colorado is lined with her aprons.
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