Makrame Green is the newest business set to open at the Brookfield Shops retail incubator program this spring.
The shop, which owner Fabiola Jimenez said specializes in handmade macrame decorations and houseplants, is set to open May 8 in one of the sheds at Progress Park, making it the fourth new vendor to open at the Brookfield Shops this year.
“One of the services we will be providing is almost a plant hospital, you could say. If people have a plant they’re worried for that isn’t doing too well, they can bring it in. We’ll take care of it, see what it has wrong and what it needs. We’ll also transfer it to another pot if they need,” said Jiminez’s business partner, Leo Navarro, translating on Jimenez’s behalf from her native Spanish.
Makrame Green was initially one of three runners-up after applying for the 2026 cohort that was scheduled to appear at Brookfield’s upcoming French market, but now it will join the cohort following New Book Joy’s departure for a brick-and-mortar location.
“We’re super excited to have Fabiola move in. She’s already had some experience at the Berwyn Shops, and then she was at [Berwyn] Sprout, and she’s done a number of different workshops and other vendor events,” said Libby Popovic, Brookfield’s community development director.
“She was our top runner-up,” Popovic added. “She’s coming in as a second-level cohort [member] because she’s already been through [a retail incubator] program once. She’s got a quick timeline, but she already knows what needs to happen, and her products are amazing.”
The business got its start in 2020, Jimenez and Navarro said.
“It was, to her, more like a therapy to get through COVID and the quarantine. After that, she started making more and more and started selling at pop-ups and markets. From there people started asking for plants [to go with] the plant hangers that she would sell, so she started bringing that in, too, and made a fusion of both,” Navarro said.
Jimenez said she heard of the Brookfield Shops through social media and felt drawn to the Brookfield community.
“She had a couple pop-ups around the area and in Brookfield around the first year of the Brookfield Shops, and she saw that the community was really homey and heartwarming, close together and respectful and nice, and she wanted to get into that community,” Navarro said.
Now that she’s been accepted to the program, Navarro said Jiminez is excited to share her wealth of green knowledge.
“She’s looking forward to being able to bring more green to Brookfield and share her wisdom on plants to the entire community, teaching people how to take care of their plants and how to recognize what’s wrong with them,” Navarro said. “She also wants to do a pop-up event she’s done with Morton College in Cicero, where she does a class on plants and transferring plants into pots. She has a group of people, and they pick out their plant, they decorate a pot, and she shows them how to transplant them into the new pot correctly.”
When she got the call that Makrame Green would be able to join the Brookfield Shops directly, Jiminez was equal parts happy and nervous, Navarro said.
“She was glad to see that she would be able to incorporate herself more into the Brookfield community, and she was slowly starting to see her dream of opening her store in Brookfield come closer to reality,” he said. “It is one of her dreams to open a brick-and-mortar, especially in Brookfield.”
