Family

Katie King, the co-designer behind the cultish men and women’s label JF & Son, has whipped up something new, and all on her own this time: Using the tried-and-true sweatshirt as the line’s canvas, the Brooklyn-based whiz found an outlet for all her out- of-the-ordinary textile ideas. “Since we design so many styles for JF & Son, I loved the idea of having a fixed shape with an easy fit and applying various prints and fabric manipulations to it. Plus, it can be a little sister and steal fabrics and textile swatches from JF & Son,” the Parsons grad, who started out in the costume-design realm, says.

Katie groups her just-crazy, completely wearable creations into themes, or families, as she calls them—a concept that also points to the line’s name. “I liked the idea that there would be little groups centered around a visual idea or textile technique,” she says. But that’s not all: Each of cluster of styles is shot on a real brood, an idea that came from Family’s very talented photographer, Dan McMahon. “I liked that they could be worn by people of all ages, sexes, and sizes, and I think families are a great way to convey that,” Katie explains. “It also makes the shoots themselves really enjoyable because everyone is comfortable and has fun together.” That’s right: good, old-fashioned Family fun. —alisha prakash

wearefamily.us

In God We Trust

“I remember having a moment with myself, asking, ‘What do I like? What am I interested in?’” explains Shana Tabor, the brains behind the apparel and accessories line In God We Trust. “Designing was a choice I made when I was around 12, not something I fell into.” So, as a junior-high kid with access to thrift stores and a sewing machine, Shana started making her own clothes, which led to summer, jewelry-making classes at Parsons.

When it was time to determine her next move, Shana enrolled at FIT for fashion design, but it didn’t take longer than one semester to realize she wanted to switch her major. “Apparel was something I knew I wanted to come back to, but it needed to be on my own terms. On a technical level, there was so much more I could learn with jewelry,” she says.

“On her own terms” is a theme for Shana: After getting some industry experience post-graduation, she quit the office grind and started focusing on making her own killer pieces out of her sick Williamsburg apartment-slash-studio. In 2005, she opened up her first retail location on Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn, selling both accessories and apparel, and she now has three locations around NYC.

So what’s with the name? “It’s supposed to be a commentary on American commerce and the thought-process behind how people spend their money,” Shana says. “I was working with a bunch of coins. I sat there staring at them and thought it was so weird that it said ‘In God We Trust’ on all of our money. We do get a few people calling thinking we’re a religious institution, and the occasional missionary comes into the store.” —alisha prakash

ingodwetrustnyc.com

IMAGO-A

Yegang Yoo never intended to launch a handbag line. The South Korean-born, Brooklyn-based designer, who has worked with the likes of Hussein Chalayan and Rachel Comey, created her ready-to-wear label, IMAGO-A, in 2011, and she was perfectly happy sculpting bold, printed jersey dresses and angular sweaters. But then one day she found herself with a bunch of really rad leather on her hands.

“It was this calfskin printed with metallic silver so it had this mirrored effect,” recalls Yegang. “I contacted everyone who stocks leather in the city—old contacts, anyone I could find—to get this leather. And then when I got it, it was too stiff to use in the clothes!” So she began playing with the material, folding it in different ways. “I was trying to achieve these geometric surfaces to reflect the light at different angles, and it kind of evolved into a handbag.”

In less than a year, her one experiment expanded into an entire line—think city-friendly, origami-esque purses and totes in bright blue and red leather with braided straps. This sort of improvisational openness guides pretty much everything Yegang does, from becoming a designer (she abandoned her childhood architecture ambitions after seeing a Comme des Garçons dress in Vogue) to making patterns part-time for her friends at Vena Cava after graduating Parsons—so she could play keyboards in a band, where, by the way, she met her husband. As she says, “I’m about trying all these different things to see what works, and letting the design come out of that.” —raquel laneri

imago-a.com

Kaelen

Now a converted New Yorker, Kaelen Haworth claims that the culture shock was minimal when she first moved to the “big, bad city” from Canada, where she was born and raised, but the six-floor walk-up? That did take a little getting used to. “I knew I wanted to work in fashion—it was more a narrowing down of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go. It just made so much sense to go to New York,” she explains.

So she jumped from an English literature B.A. straight into Parsons and, a scant seven months after graduation, she showed her first collection at New York Fashion Week—yes, whoa. The decision to start her own line wasn’t an easy one to make, but her new home gave her a confidence that she could do, well, anything—even this. “There’s so much opportunity,” she notes. “Every single thing, every encounter could be extremely meaningful.”

At it since 2010, Kaelen says alluring for her isn’t your average bandage dress. “I like to be a little more modern and clean. I like things to have an interesting silhouette,” she says. And while she’s always been heavy on sophistication, her work has begun to take a more custom tone: She’s now working with a graphic designer to create prints, and she’s hand-dying fabrics and incorporating out-of-the-ordinary leathers to achieve what she calls “interesting sexy”—a vibe that would appeal to someone like Chloë Sevigny who really owns her look. “When she’s wearing something, it’s very natural,” Kaelen explains. “It never feels forced.” —jackie variano

kaelennyc.com

Meet K/LLER COLLECTION

The line started underground, but it’s officially emerged.

A dingy basement studio isn’t where most people find their future collaborator and co-designer. Yet, for Katie deGuzman (right) and Michael Miller, it’s where their 12-year-long friendship—the basis for K/LLER COLLECTION—first began. 

As fast friends studying furniture design at Parsons, the duo honed their metal restoration, lighting design, and jewelry skills separately before eventually coming together two years ago to get their own line off the ground. They’re joined by not only the desire to make goods from scratch but also an obsession with materials: The two hand-cast crystals, feathers, and other natural elements in brass, giving their pieces a tough-to-achieve polished, earthy vibe.

And as on-trend as their current quill-filled collection happens to be, they don’t pay too much mind to those sorts of things—they’re all about emulating a lifestyle. ”We really look at this as, ‘What do i want to wear? What speaks about us?’ We’re similar in our aesthetic, so it works really well,” Katie explains. So well, in fact, that Helmut Lang boutiques are now carrying their work, and their following is growing exponentially. Looks like for them being stuck in the basement all that time was worth it. —carlye wisel

Don’t miss out on Katie and Michael’s edition. It’s a porcupine quill necklace that’s as cool as they are.

Supplies and Demand: Farah Malik and Dana Arbib of A Peace Treaty

As though the name A Peace Treaty doesn’t conjure up images of something worldly already: Best friends Farah Malik and Dana Arbib met in Rome, where they hatched the plan to start their jewelry line. Since 2008, the two well-traveled ladies have been working with local artisans from different regions to create pieces that are both lust-worthy and socially-conscious. Here, they talk about the things that inspire them when they’re working at home in NYC. —jiayi

Dana: I visit the Adam and Sophie Gimbel Design Library at Parsons regularly and get lost in old issues of American, British, French and Italian Vogue there. I turned to old magazines after oversaturing myself with the entire design section of the New York Public Library—in essence, magazines are the only things you can never finish looking through.

Farah: I close every night by streaming episodes of Don’t Tell My Mother, which is an off-the-beaten-path travel show about conflict zones. It’s produced and hosted by uber-hottie Diego Bunuel—filmmaker Luis Bunuel’s grandson. He’s traveled to some of the countries we’ve worked in.

We’ve chatted with some other crazy-amazing designers—check them out here.

Gigi Burris

Becoming a hat-maker is like falling in love—or at least it was for Gigi Burris. “When I went to Parsons, I studied abroad for a year in Paris. In the Marais, there’s this amazing millinery shop. When I went in, it was incredible—I was really inspired by the idea of traditional craft and beautiful materials,” explains the designer, wide-eyed.

Hats became a sort of outlet for Gigi. Up to that point, she had been focused on ready-to-wear and had been nominated for Parsons’ Designer of the Year. “I presented my senior thesis collection to a pretty large panel of fashion-industry insiders in 2009—it was really scary. And each look had a hat. Even though I was really about the ready-to-wear, the thing that people took away, I think, were those hats,” she says. “I got my first hat credit in Elle in September of that year and sold my senior collection at Debut—more and more customers were like, ‘Oh, I really need a hat for this, a hat for

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Anna and Aja Decide Not to Play Doctor

But both of the designers are holding onto some of their science-y dreams.

What did Anna Zeman and Aja Singer want to be when they grew up? Doctors or fashion designers. Though they settled on the latter—creating the structured, suit-fueled line Alex & Eli—they still welcome the opportunity to work the left sides of their brains. “When we were starting the collection, we were drawing pictures of constellations and talking about working them into the seamwork of our blazers,” says Anna. So don’t be surprised if their future collections take an astro-, geo-, aero-, or biological turn, and, in the meantime, take in the stories of their scientific backgrounds and the geeked-out images that inspire them.



Anna: “I grew up on a beach in the middle of nowhere—in Hansville, Washington. My father and my brothers are civil engineers. For my birthdays, my parents would get me biology books, and I would just love them. I went to the University of Washington, and, during my internships in college, I started to think that though I loved science, I didn’t necessarily love the people in the field. I just didn’t feel the passion. It was a sad realization—that maybe I was missing out on the creative side of things. My junior year, I made the decision: I said, ‘I’m not going to do biochemistry anymore.’ I had enough Spanish credits to graduate early, and I knew I wanted to go to Parsons.”



Aja: “I’ve always been an artistic person, but I’ve always had an affinity for math and science, too. Solving a really difficult problem is very satisfying. I was on a full-blown med school track—taking courses where you worked with cadavers and stuff at McGill University. I really enjoyed it, but I was spending all my time memorizing. I had no time to devote to art and fashion, and I just felt like this whole part of my life was missing. So I finished the degree and applied to Parsons. I was the only one in my college program who didn’t go on to do something in the medical field.”

The Alex & Eli duo created a bolo bow tie for Of a Kind! Clearly, you need to see it.

Alex & Eli

Anna Zeman and Aja Singer of the tailored womenswear line Alex & Eli take things seriously—which is, in fact, how they got to be friends. “We were always very early to school,” explains Anna of their time as grad students at Parsons. “I mean, we were still total art-school kids—we looked weird, dressed weird—but we were anal. And our work was always done.” 

When it came time to start navigating their post-academic fashion careers in 2008, they became obsessed with the idea of women’s suiting, which required a precision that appealed to their exacting natures. So they put their (big surprise here) prestigious internships and side-gigs to work—and quickly landed their new project appearances on Gossip Girl and in the pages of

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