Fischer

Kristina Angelozzi was still in grade school when she was gifted her first sewing machine. The daughter of a self-professed flower child, she grew up messing around on her mother’s Singer until the exasperated elder Angelozzi finally got her her own. “I guess I was a bit of a punky, indie kid,” Kristina says, recalling her aversion to the mainstream and mass-produced. “By the time I got to high school, my friends and I started buying most of our clothing in thrift stores and then altering them ourselves.”

After high school, Kristina validated years of patching and personalizing by attending a small fashion college in Pennsylvania—an experience she chased with two years of commune-style living, designing costumes for a theater company. “It was very Dirty Dancing,” Kristina remembers. “We all lived on this property and did these crazy summer shows like the Wizard of Oz and Ain’t Misbehaving.” Eager to settle down in New York, the designer enrolled at Parsons, got herself corporate gigs at Gap and Hanes, and, when a craving to leave a personal stamp on her designs kicked in, launched Fischer in 2009. The his-and-hers label has a refined ease and folk-inflected aesthetic that makes it right at home in its Brooklyn surroundings, keeping Kristina plenty busy with all those things involved in running a growing business. “I don’t get to just design all day anymore,” she explains. Sounds like success to us. —mattie kahn

fischerclothing.com