Many years ago, Traci and I would use a different model for each collection’s run through prior to runway. This is the moment where we style the pieces, put them together like a puzzle to see what belongs in the show. If the collection had an edgier vibe, maybe we would use that chic white haired tattooed model from Norway. Or if the designs that season veered more feminine, we’d bring it back to the middle with someone decidedly more masculine - broader shoulders, a lanky gait. At some point, later than I would like to admit, I realized how flawed this system was. You see, it’s easy to make the designs feel “new” each season when you are literally putting them on someone new and different.
Have you ever watched Project Runway or really any reality show centered around fashion design? You can hear the rhetoric from the judge or the designer/store buyer mentor: “make sure you’re not designing just for yourself.” You were implored to understand “the customer”. And if you’re just out of school, in your early 20s designing for you and your friends, I get why they’re hyping caution. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for that, but it is super crowded and it can limit you to a collection of great tees and drinking with friends/club wear.
If you’re going to look inward for your design direction and the scope of your collection’s offering, then it helps if you’ve notched some life under your belt. Family, career, moving to new places, traveling and clocking cultural differences or similarities, having kids, raising kids, losing friends or family, financial disaster, rebuilding, discussions with people who’ve lived history rather than only tweeted about it, these all aggregate to help inform what you create. The beauty of it all is that if you’re curious, then the new experiences don’t stop accumulating, learning continues.
At some point, designing for “you” becomes relevant to a much wider set of individuals than what you were capable of reaching before you’d banked experience. Especially when “you” is no longer defined by a job title, a number in your bank account or your zip code but rather your mindset - scratching your curiosity and need to move forward, experience the new and yet, all the same, work for the life you have.
This represents my biggest challenge as a Creative Director, it’s what keeps me up at night. Sometimes it can feel so very fragile, understanding and maintaining who you are, keeping yourself from falling in to a rut and at the same time pushing forward without losing yourself in the process. You can see why this changing of model identity each season could never have truly worked. Instead of looking at the designs to help strengthen our individuality we were looking to an entirely new individual to do that. It’s not so simple as “do the clothes make the man?” or does “the man make the clothes?” As per usual, it’s nuanced, the grey to the black and white.
I find the answer to the chicken and egg dilemma in my own hand.
Anyone in a creative field has likely found the process for how they best work. Some writers have to hand write out in one particular type of notebook with one specific type of pen. Some artists need a blank canvas, others start with pencil on paper.
When I’m sketching, I can feel how an item will feel. I mean this literally, like right through my hand. My brain is connecting to where I’ll wear something, how I will want to feel.
Before we ever get to the photo shoot on the left I have to have felt it in my sketch. The clothing has to allow for a distinct slump of the shoulders, a relaxation that conveys confidence not (just) reticence. I always scream a bit in a photo shoot when the model hits the note so exactly, but reality is she’s hitting it because Traci designed the pieces with so much exactness.
I draw, erase, zoom in and out, making sure I can wear it with my favorite jeans and a blue tee and somehow feel new. That combo is my uniform, but it doesn’t mean I don’t crave to stretch it and give it new life. Same goes with the Nylon White Stella cargo pants. I’ve worn these a thousand times since we did them in 2019- it could seem impossible for them to take on new life. Yet they do, that smogy color gives new perspective, like having a dinner party with someone who unlocks another way of thinking about a subject.
Below are other ways the feeling comes through when exploring for a new collection:
Fall 24, I was trying to push for a big oversized heavy striped sweater - I’d bought a vintage one and thought for sure I’d wear - but when I sketched out in the collection it felt right only in a few instances and I couldn’t imagine where I would be needing such a heavy sweater but also not be outside in the cold. Too heavy for indoors, but not enough for the outdoor life. We dropped the sweater.
And for resort 25, when we had the collection ready to be styled, I needed Sarah to know that she was to ignore anything too preppy and literal - that we were to take the nod to prep and relax it in our vein.
And here we were building out shoot locales for Vienna, and I wanted to have some idea how the clothing would feel in different places around the city - so this was my directive to styling to help frame the outcome of the campaign.
Traci sketches by hand as well - when she’s done with a collection she will sketch out the next straight away to make sure that it stays fluid in concept but not repetitive - she did this for winter 23. This helps her block out the types of fabrics she’ll want and the number of styles we will propose to ourselves.
And sometimes the best way for me to imagine pieces is how they’ll be worn for the most mundane activities of my life - our fundamentals has to pass this sketch test.
And when we create a collection I think about the packing aspect of it all - how will the new summer pieces fold into the existing Main collection - here I folded summer 22 into our spring 22 collection to ensure it was contiguous in the luggage.
And when all the fabrics are chosen, Traci’s designed all the styles, I layout how I want the flow to be on runway - It’s not the lineup per se, this gives Sarah and Traci - and especially our sales team - an idea of the role color is playing. In this case, ring 4 colors were meant as accents not the foundation of the line.
And I use my hand to explore how many ways I can wear something and still have it serve a purpose rather than just to be a design trick for trickery’s sake.
And then I explore the color palette making sure that the vibe in the colors will match the vibe of how we stand and live in the designs - like here for spring 22.
Hands are still super useful. Right?