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S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 3I S S U E 1

A M A G A Z I N E F O RE M E R G I N G F A S H I O N D E S I G N E R S

M A S T H E A D

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L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I T O R

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C O N T E N T S

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Chapter II - Looking

Wayne S/S 2013 ........................................... XX15 Questions ................................................ XXSiki Im S/S 2013 ........................................... XXGlobalization ................................................ XX

Chapter I - Speaking

Wayne Lee of Wayne ....................................... 8Siki Im of Siki Im ............................................. 16

Chapter III - Reading

Style.com Review I ...................................... XXStyle.com Review II ..................................... XX

Chapter I

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Speaking Wayne Lee of Wayne ............ 8Siki Im of Siki Im ................. 16

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Wayne Leeof

Wayne

Speakingwith David Vu Van

Photographyby Anthony Duong

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Vietnamese-born designer Wayne Lee of Wayne was set to pursue a medical career before leaving University of California, Berkeley during her second year for a fashion-focused life in New York City. Lee’s cre-ative aspirations led her to Barneys New York, where she got her start in sales before quickly rising up the ranks to buyer. Soon enough, Bar-neys’ love for luxury clothing rubbed off, and the self-taught designer embarked on a design career of her own. Just a year after launch-ing her namesake collection in 2007, Lee was awarded the prestigious Ecco Domani Fashion Fund award, exposing her designs to the runway for the first time. Below, the mom-to-be describes her journey from selling clothes at Barneys, to having her clothes sold at Barneys.

DVV: How did you make the transition from buyer to designer?

WL: With a lot of encouragement from my peers and family. I’ve always had this sense of creativity in the back of my head and enjoyed making things. I come from a family of tailors and garment makers; my mom made clothes for me when I was growing up, so I was used to the idea of clothes being constructed. When I was working at Barneys, luxury clothing always surrounded me, which was a great stimulus for creating my own line. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at the chance to do something more challenging and creative.

DVV: Does your Vietnamese background influence your designs?

WL: My journey from Vietnam to the States inspires my designs more than anything. My family left Vietnam on a small boat of 500 people and landed on an island off the coast of the Philippines, where we lived for an entire year before being rescued. The experience has shaped the person I’ve become and who I am as a designer. Being on that island makes me think how I can make clothes that become a part of you, that are comfortable and durable, travel well, and have value and longevity.

DVV: Your recent collection draws inspi-ration from a recent trip to Anguilla in the Caribbean. What struck you about the island?

WL: While I was there I learned an important lesson about tropical dressing. I brought all of my black clothing and I was so out of place. In Anguilla you have to wear color, and naturally I began to notice the colors of the island itself, such as a neon green which I named “kelp,” like the seaweed. Memories of the sea also lent themselves to a blue and yellow print featuring sea anemones. For the silhouettes I worked with my signature sporty separates, such as a baseball jacket in a mesh combo and basket-ball shorts in a “denim” leather.

DVV: What type of woman do you design for?

WL: I design for the kind of woman who has her own sense of style and appreciates qual-ity and longevity in clothing. I try to preserve a classic look. I want my clothes to always stay in season and not just be a trendy thing. When you buy Wayne, it stays in your closet forever and you can wear it and make it your own.

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DVV: Tell us about the walnut jewelry collaboration with your boyfriend, artist Eric Fertman.

WL: We’ve always wanted to work together, and it just felt right with my design surrounding the Anguilla island. I wanted to work with natural elements, something that would be organic to the collection. Since Eric is a sculptor, I asked him to incorporate sculpture into a finer scale. He was able to translate his work into one-of-a-kind jewelry, resulting in these beautiful, little sculptures.

WL: I like science fiction novels, so Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson. Pair that with alternative and electronic music and contemporary technology and you could begin to understand my aesthetic.

beginning.

WL: I would have to say now will be my favor-ite memory. I am about to have a baby and it’s just going to be really nice to be able to see all of my family and friends after the collec-tion is presented. It will be a great moment of knowing that I just had a baby and a wonderful collection. I would say that will be my favorite fashion-related memory so far.

WL: I enjoy spending summers at Eric’s par-ents’ house at Cape Cod. They have this little cottage on the beach. I like to lull around the beach, collect myself and my thoughts.

WL: I don’t really have a particular one. My style icon is someone who is very independent. She knows what she likes and what she doesn’t like. She’s also very intellectual and spirited. As for collaborating I’ve been doing so with a lot of artists and I want to keep on going in that direction each season. Just continue with the collaborations, whether it be a print or jewelry as hand-carved objects. I know that next sea-son I would like to collaborate with someone on a different scale. This time I collaborated with a painter, last time I collaborated with a sculp-tor, so maybe I can find an artist who works in other mediums. I like keeping it interesting and refreshing.

WL: A long time ago when I was in grad school in San Francisco I had a part-time job at Club Monaco. With my entire first paycheck I went to Prada and bought a pair of shoes I saw from the window. It was one of those moments where I was like, “Wow! I just spent my entire paycheck on a pair of shoes.” That stood out as a big fashion-related moment for me in the

DVV: How would you describe your style?

WL: My personal style is very simple, com-prised of high-quality garments that last. I like things that are classic with a little edge. I tend to stick with a black, white and grey palette, and I wear pretty much the same thing all the time.

DVV: You’re a mom-to-be! Has pregnan-cy changed your personal style or your approach to design?

WL: I don’t like a lot of color, although my mom tells me to wear more color now that I’m preg-nant. She jokes that dark clothes will keep the baby asleep the first week after he is born! And my approach to design has changed a little bit; it’s given me more perspective into the body. I’m more conscious of comfort level and using fabrics for a range of people. Right now, all I have is my back; it’s the only part I like to show off; so next season you’ll see a lot of garments where we kept the back in mind.

DVV: What’s your best advice to moms who are hoping to maintain (or even en-hance) their style during pregnancy?

WL: Don’t be afraid to wear what you want to wear. Sometimes you think, “Oh, I can’t wear that, I’m a mom!” But you have to have fun and

enjoy your body as it changes. You’ll always find something that works.

DVV: Let’s talk Barneys New York. Tell us about your experiences there starting with your first position as a sales associ-ate. How was it? DVV: When you aren’t designing, what

do you like to do?

DVV: What is your favorite fashion-relat-ed memory so far?

DVV: Who is your style icon and would you like to one day collaborate with them on a project?

DVV: What is your first fashion-related memory?

WL: It was Barneys that showed me fashion. It was my first fashion job, and I was surround-ed by beautiful clothes and beautiful people. It was the best learning environment for a fash-ion novice. As a sales associate, I learned how to interact well with customers on a one-on-one basis and how to style outfits for them. I even helped Eddie Izzard pick out some Diane von Furstenburg dresses.

DVV: That is amazing. Fast-forward a few years and now you’re a buyer for Barneys. What was the experience like then?

DVV: Now Wayne as a designer, if you weren’t a designer, what would you do?

DVV: Who are your favorite authors if you have any?

WL: In the buying department, I learned about what sells well in regards to colors, fits, fabri-cations, prices and merchandising. I can never forget about my time on the floor as a sales associate, though. My sales-associate col-leagues used to address me as Miss Juanita Jenkins, a nickname they gave me. I’m not sure why they chose this name, but I still think it’s pretty funny.

WL: I’ve always wanted to go into writing short fiction novels. That’s something that I thought about in undergrad, but just never had the guts to pursue. For me it’s something I consider luxurious. Maybe later on in life I can do some-thing like that.

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Siki Imof

Siki Im

Speakingwith David Vu Van

Photographyby Anthony Duong

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Siki Im is a German-born graduate of Oxford School of Architecture. He moved to New York City in 2001 to begin working in the fashion industry for Karl Lagerfeld and Helmut Lang. In 2010 he won the prestigious Ecco Domani Fashion Fund award that provided his first fashion show at Bryant Park. In his recent collection, which he presented at Lincoln Center, Im commented on politics surrounding the Arab Spring by embedding the cultural elements of the region into the defining details of his garments. As in previous collections, his classic-yet-modern tailor-ing is still at the fore, and his reworking of a classic fabric like denim gives the collection a refreshingly casual vibe. Below, Im talks to us about his experiences as a designer of a menswear brand based in New York City.

DVV: As an architect, how did the transi-tion to fashion happen for you?

DVV: You mentioned in an interview in 2010 that you felt trapped by literary ref-erences, and your recent inspiration was the topography of globalization. I think you signaled in your first season that books influence you. Did you come back to the literary reference again in your most recent collection?

DVV: It makes sense to me that an ar-chitect switched to fashion, because ar-chitecture is art and science at the same time, and there is a technical element to fashion. Did you learn those things on your own?

SI: I didn’t really plan to become a fashion de-signer. An architect, in my opinion, is a design-er who primarily designs spaces. So, physical-ly, they design buildings but they also design other things, like the program of the space, how spaces interact with one another, the movement, and how people inhabit the space or use it. They don’t just design mere objects but actually a concept more than an object. When I was a student in architecture, or may-be even before that, I was interested in a lot of things, not just buildings. But I knew on top of all that I would always love fashion. I never re-ally thought I wanted to do fashion, I just liked what fashion designers were doing and the ex-pression, and then I accidentally fell into it.

SI: In my opinion – and I teach now at Parsons – the only reason you go to a university is either to become more disciplined or to get a quali-fication. But there are architects like Tadao

Ando who didn’t go to school for architec-ture; you must be an alien to do so, kind of weird. Fashion is much faster, more emo-tional. Seeing that architecture projects take a few years, you produce a collection in fash-ion twice a year; it’s a whole different mind-set. The energy, the dynamics, it’s all very dif-ferent, but I learned proportions through my studies in architecture, and it’s so different, scale-wise, in fashion. There aren’t many ar-chitects that shift to fashion. It also has to do with being in New York City, people are much more open and you can change quickly. In Europe, it’s much more rigid, very structured, you can’t just move around. That’s the beau-ty of New York City. That’s why we’re all here.

SI: Yes, I was then reading The Cultures of Globalization by Fredric Jameson. I love the fact that everything is somehow related. Ev-ery collection is literary. I was also very inter-ested in anthropologists and philosophers like


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Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Fou-cault, and Fredric Jameson, all talking about contemporary culture. That’s why I read that book and used it as an inspiration. It’s very cool that you found that out. One of the rea-sons that I used the literature is because of what’s currently happening in the Middle East. My third collection, the “Isolation Immigration” collection, was based on the movie La Haine, by French screenwriter and director Mathieu Kassovitz. It was very personal because of the way I grew up as a Korean immigrant in Germany. I would listen to American hip-hop, I would skateboard and do graffiti, and these are all little references in my work.

was very short. I didn’t want to write a long text about the concept. It’s, again, another trap. People expect me to write a long concept and I just wrote two sentences about the collec-tion. It’s not about the concept; it’s just about the shapes, colors, and spirituality – that’s it. However, for my recent collection I wrote a long statement again. I want to get more ideas from what my inspiration is – the Middle East – but when I design, I guess I subconsciously use references from my own references, which I cannot control. I don’t think it’s just design that I like, it’s the sensibility, the culture.

SI: The hardest thing to design in menswear, in my opinion, is a tailored denim jean. The rea-son jeans are so difficult is because of all the washing processes, the chemicals, the shrink-ages and all these other things. People think, “they’re just jeans, right?” but designing them is not that easy. On the other hand, going back to the globalization influence in this collection, the indigo blue was a metaphor for western culture, and the black was a metaphor for the countries that have oil. I tried to put it together in a stylish way.

SI: I’m a huge fan of William Gibson and Wil-liam Mitchell, who both predicted a long time ago that virtual reality will become more and more real – which it is. The Internet is great and dangerous at the same time – we can lose our-selves if we’re not aware. It is a tool, not a sub-stitute. As long as we can use all our senses, we need to explore all worlds.

SI: I’m thinking of designing accessories again. I designed women’s wear for Lagerfeld and Lang, and I have clear intentions to do wom-en’s wear. Not too far from now, but also not too soon.

SI: I hope my customer is more sophisticated. It doesn’t mean intellectual, it doesn’t mean aca-demic except for an appreciation for more than what meets the eye. It’s deeper than what you see; even my clothes, like my blazers, are fully hand-tailored. The buckles are all hand sewn. There’s a reason you pay a certain price; ev-erything is made of natural fibers, no polyester.

SI: Everything is produced in America, mostly in the Garment District of New York City. More and more designers are depending on it.

SI: I think what I’ve learned from both of them is that it’s a business. You have to be smart and creative; you really have to protect yourself and your ideas as well. I’ve also learned to be-lieve in myself. There is a fine line between art and progress; you have to look at the numbers. They wanted to create something special, and I think both of them did that really well.

SI: When I was working with Karl, it was stress-ful because I was young and I wanted to do good work, so I worked really hard. It was in-tense, but both designers were really cool. That was the funny thing; it’s not what people think. People weren’t bitching, it was really creative and everyone really wanted the same thing.

SI: I didn’t have many Asian friends; they were mostly German, Eastern European, or Turkish. I grew up in a so-so neighborhood, but I went to grammar school. I was always in two dif-ferent worlds, there was always a dichotomy. I think you can see all of this in my collection. There is always a clash; that’s me in a way: a good clash. First was the “American Psycho” collection, in which you could see the downfall of Wall Street; that’s when the recession was really bad. In that same collection I was using soft materials with hard, strong lines, remi-niscent of hardcore culture. There is always a certain social dichotomy, which I’m really inter-ested in. Soft and hard come together and cre-ate a certain newness, and I don’t really know what it is. That’s what I love; I love exploring.

SI: I was going through a very spiritual time and I wasn’t thinking of a concept, or a book. I was just thinking of myself, and how I wanted to represent my spirituality; that’s why the text

DVV: How was it growing up in Germany as an Korean immigrant?

DVV: What has working with two major designers brought to you personally? Has it made you more sensible to fash-ion, or on the contrary, has it blurred your vision of the industry? What were your experiences like?

DVV: You also introduced denim. What is your thought process behind the Ameri-can sportswear references found in this collection?

DVV: A lot of your collections have been accompanied by films. Do you have an interest in the Internet as a presentation medium?

DVV: Do you have any plans to venture into women’s wear or accessories?

DVV: Would you say you’re trying to de-sign “smart” clothes?

DVV: Is it all produced in America?

DVV: Have you ever questioned your de-cision to work in this industry with these two designers, considering the fact that a lot of people have a vision of working with them as being very stressful, very impersonal?

DVV: Your last collection, “Silent Thun-derbird Prayer,” was very well received. What are your feelings on that?


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Chapter II

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LookingWayne S/S 2013 ................. XX15 Questions ...................... XXSiki Im S/S 2013 ................. XXGlobalization ...................... XX

I I - L O O K I N G

15 Questionsby

Wayne

Photographyby Jeremy Williams

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I I - L O O K I N G 1 5 Q U E S T I O N S B Y W A Y N E

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Vietnamese-born designer Wayne Lee of Wayne was set to pursue a medical career before leaving University of California, Berkeley during her second year for a fashion-focused life in New York City. Lee’s cre-ative aspirations led her to Barneys New York, where she got her start in sales before quickly rising up the ranks to buyer. Soon enough, Bar-neys’ love for luxury clothing rubbed off, and the self-taught designer embarked on a design career of her own. Just a year after launch-ing her namesake collection in 2007, Lee was awarded the prestigious Ecco Domani Fashion Fund award, exposing her designs to the runway for the first time. Below, the mom-to-be describes her journey from selling clothes at Barneys, to having her clothes sold at Barneys.


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15 Questions

Filmby Daniel Oh

FeaturingLily Pickett

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I I - L O O K I N G 1 5 Q U E S T I O N S

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TheTopography of Globalization

bySiki Im

Photographyby John Doe

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For his Spring / Summer 2013 collection, Siki Im was inspired by the topic of globalization and its political implication. The geopolitical cli-mate started to change rather quickly during the development of the collection and evolved into what we now know as the Arab Spring. This inspired Im to see his collection as a reflection of the motions in the Middle East. The silhouettes of this collection propose an inter-section of these cultures. The Middle East is referenced in draping, knotting, and wrapping of fabric. These elements are then integrated with the notion of the West, which can be seen in the constructed and deconstructed t-shirts, blazers, and especially in the jeans. This sea-son Im introduced DEN IM, a capsule of three different jeans that come in three self-engineered washes fabricated and produced with a sel-vedge quality from the states. The washes of the denim and the print of the fabrics are inspired by the deteriorating environments affected by war in the Middle East. The entire collection is made in the states with fabric from the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan.

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TheTopography of Globalization

Filmby Robert Hamada

FeaturingRJ King, Louis Mayhew, Berthold Rothas,

Jesse Shannon, Bradley Soileau

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I I - L O O K I N G T H E T O P O G R A P H Y O F G L O B A L I Z A T I O N

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Chapter III

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Reading

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Style.com Review I ............ XXStyle.com Review II ........... XX

I I I - R E A D I N G

Style.comReview:Wayne

Textby Jessica Minkoff

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S T Y L E . C O M R E V I E W : W A Y N E

Wayne Lee is still thinking about a trip she took to the Ca-ribbean a year ago. Perhaps it’s because she learned an impor-tant lesson there about tropical dressing. “I brought all my black clothing and I was so out of place,” she said. “In Anguilla you have to wear color.” Her new collection follows that guideline. Her hue of choice was a fluorescent green—on an inverted-pleat miniskirt, a boxy tube dress, and a button-up tank. “Kelp,” she called it, like the seaweed. Vivid memories of the sea also lent themselves to a cobalt blue and bright yellow anemone print that appeared on a short-sleeve shift dress and a “peekaboo” skirt with an extra, “just for fun” flap in the back. Also in the mix: Lee’s signature sporty-chic separates, most notably a white cropped mesh baseball jacket and “denim” leather shorts.


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S T Y L E . C O M R E V I E W : W A Y N E

Wayne Lee can’t seem to kick the memories of her trip to the Caribbean last year. Her Spring collection found her diving deep-er into the ocean. Her dream has always been to be a marine bi-ologist. The under-the-sea theme was most evident in the prints. Lee incorporated four into the latest range. One was inspired by the Portuguese man-of-war, a jellyfishlike invertebrate that has 30-foot-long tentacles. (“I had them cut shorter for the clothes,” she joked.) Another print was a digital rendering of a coral reef. It showed up on tanks, slouchy boy-fit pants, and a baseball-style bomber jacket. The wares were more colorful than what we usually see at Wayne. “Maybe it’s because I had a kid,” she said. “I have been reading a lot of children’s books, and it definitely changes the way you think.” Cobalt blue, conch pink, and a neon yellow were mixed in with the line’s signature black and white palette. Shapes and silhouettes stayed true to the Wayne DNA but were updated with cool details. Racer-back tanks got side zippers, mini skorts (and skort dresses!) were lined in contrasting colors, and flaps on cropped pants were strategically placed to create an apron effect. It’s pieces like these that we’d like to see more of next season.


Style.comReview:Siki Im

Textby Emily Cronin

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S T Y L E . C O M R E V I E W : S I K I I M

When Siki Im revisited Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler for the first time since his days as an archi-tecture student, it struck him that the pomo masterwork was ripe for reinterpretation into clothes. Calvino even wrote para-graph-long outfit descriptions into the book—as ideal a prescrip-tion for an intellectual menswear collection as ever there was. If the book set Im a riddlelike challenge, then August Sander’s photographic taxonomy of the German working classes clarified his brief. Together, these reference points guided Im to create a sleek, balanced menswear collection. German rail-conductor pants and workwear informed extreme drop-crotched trousers and stripped-back blazers. Cashmere scarves that wrapped around the body so as to bind arms to torsos had a self-comforting yet


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S T Y L E . C O M R E V I E W : S I K I I M

utilitarian air. Most looks incorporated multiple textures, under-lining the richness of the materials: a gray corduroy “gas station jacket” came over a light flannel shirt, sleeveless merino sweater, and slim corduroy trousers in a narrower wale. For the finale, Im’s models emerged en masse after strapping “apron vests” over their outfits. “In the Sander images, you see a lot of these very dignified proletarian people who have these aprons,” Im said backstage. “I thought, why not revisit this in a more staple menswear way?” In gray flannel or metallic gold leather, the addition of these garments brought a waistcoated pro-priety—and a hint of abattoir menace—to every look.

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