I won’t tell you why Jay Godfrey is our défilé du jour, you’re going to have to read it for yourself to find out. Just know, a wise man once said,”In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Tell us about this collection because it differs so much I think from last season.
It’s funny; on the surface it certainly does. We did a very colorful collection last time, and this is obviously an all-white collection. As a brand we always try and espouse the notions of clean, modern, sensual, and I think we did it again, in a different way. This collection was inspired by the work of David Collins, who was a interior designer in the United Kingdom, who unfortunately passed away last year, and his work was so exceptional that you could do 15 or 20 different collections inspired by different aspects of his work. I chose specifically his white spaces, and that’s what inspired me to create a collection all in white, to embrace different textures, to make a sensual collection, but that also was very architectural, and it’s certainly the most architectural collection we’ve done to date.
Why that work specifically?
It’s interesting. When he actually passed away this great coffee table book on his life and his work came out, and his work was so beautiful that everything jumped off the page to me, but what especially jumped off the page to me was his white spaces. It is so easy to do something that’s incredible and noteworthy that’s in color because color in itself is something that wows people, but it’s much more of a challenge to do it in a way with all white.
And I noticed the models?
That’s the other thing that I’m very proud. The fact that we’ve decided to do an all-white collection with 100% with women of color, and that’s something that I think the fashion industry has been way behind on, and I trying to send a message in a small way to the rest of the industry to tell it to wake up. How do you like them apples?!
Race has been a huge topic with people, in many industries with what’s going on right now, and people are afraid to talk about it. Do you think that something is going to catch on, or are people still going to retreat on it?
We’ve come so far in such a short period time, and while there’s certainly a lot of work to be done in that realm, and by no means am I trying to be a beacon of race relations. That’s not what I intend to do, but at the same time what’s important to me is to make a statement. And I had a unique opportunity with this collection to make a statement. I think I’ve made that statement, and my three-year-old is talking (turns to talk to his daughter) hi, pretty girl! (returns to conversation) and it was a perfect opportunity to show the beauty of women of color.