Presidential Power
For the 2013 presidential inauguration, Michelle Obama donned a navy dress and coat combination designed by none other than Browne himself. Browne had formerly dressed the first lady, but this ensemble carried extra weight. It was only to be worn once, after which it (along with any accompanying accessories) would be preserved by the National Archives. Unsurprisingly, the silk foulard outfit also garnered Browne extra attention. Suddenly, for example, there were many more invitation requests for his shows.
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Traina says the foundational items for any wardrobe are a great pair of blue jeans, a classic white shirt, a black cashmere sweater, cigarette pants and a little black dress.
VANESSA TRAINA
Assembled Brands
It’s the small details that make the space feel like a home—letters in a drawer or well-browsed books. There’s a Poul Kjaerholm table in the dining room. In the closet, a dress by J.W. Anderson keeps company with a color-blocked Reed Krakoff sweater and a Christophe Lemaire handbag. In the living room, a Mapplethorpe photograph on consignment from a private art dealer sits above a Clam chair by Philip Arctander that relaxes into the shag of a vintage Moroccan boucherouite rug. Welcome to The Apartment.
Curated by New York–based fashion con-sultant, stylist and creative director Vanessa Traina, it is the brick-and-mortar incarnation of luxury e-commerce website The Line. The site offers a comprehensive combination of fashion staples, furniture, housewares, beauty, books and art, and Traina has been with the company since its inception in 2013. The same year, The Apartment opened in a third-floor Soho loft, where Traina’s taut edits live in the context of a plush domestic setting. (In 2015, Traina and her partner, Morgan Wendelborn, opened an LA outpost, too.) Although residential retail is not revolutionary, The Apartment spaces elevate the showroom to a more interactive, multidimensional level, responding to the market’s craving for experience over consumption, stories over stuff. Like many, Traina is drawn to the notion that an object’s history can bring people together.
Having grown up in a large, close-knit family, she was quick to envision the detailed home retail concept. A San Francisco native, Traina has an austere beauty: barely made up, natural and understated. Avid readers of the fashion press know that she likes Mark Rothko, drinks Earl Grey tea with milk and honey and is a “moderate overpacker.” But she can be guarded, too. Traina is the daughter of romance novelist Danielle Steel, one of the best-selling authors in the world. Steel married four times and raised seven children. (Two of Traina’s sisters also work in the fashion industry.) Behind the artifice of privilege, it is a relief to discover honesty, clarity and accessibility in her work.
Traina spends the day moving between her in-house merchandising and store teams, photo studio and designers. She selects products, designs stores and works with graphic and interior designers from brand inception to runway styling. She still art directs the site as well, including editorial features called Explore the Stories, and oversees the design of an in-house line called Tenfold—cashmere throws, brass vessels, shallow horn bowls—that has all the earmarks of her lush minimalism: materially rich, but clean of line and unassuming, an emphatic understatement.
“I’m an editor foremost,” she says. But one could argue that her real skill is combining the building blocks of lifestyle branding into a covetable, consumable 360-degree productscape. Many artists recontextualize mediums from dance to haute couture. Traina’s vision, on the other hand, takes ordinary life (products she calls “the fundamentals of daily living”) and makes it extraordinary. Her medium is the everyday.
Admittedly, Traina’s everyday is privileged—European travel, boating weekends, glam parties, getaways to the Napa ranch, entire fall wardrobes ordered from Marc Jacobs in one sitting. But this means that for most of her life, she has been not just watching style but wearing it, eating off it, sleeping under it—practicing style until her choices became intuitive. “Creativity is so innate and personal,” she says. “I don’t think it’s learned [from others]. I think we develop it. As we gain experience and mature, it matures.” She continues, “I couldn’t tell you why I like the things that I like. But I can tell you that I’m decisive and direct and fast. And that has helped in working with designers.”
Indeed, collaborations and friendships have offered rich veins of inspiration. Alexander Wang was a high school classmate. For her wedding in 2016, Riccardo Tisci made her dress; Joseph Altuzarra attended the San Francisco ceremony and Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez caught the bouquet.Before launching The Line, Traina did fashion research, brand building and styling for diverse designers and houses—she was a close witness to everything from Wang’s restrained urban tailoring to the folkloric collages of Altuzarra, from Reed Krakoff’s color-blocked precision to Erdem’s rebellion with lace and tulle. Versatile and pragmatic, wide-ranging in both her research and imagination, Traina can move from eclectic to layered to streamlined with ease. Her creativity is not bound by trends.
Having access to the industry’s catwalks and showrooms has also been a recurring source of raw material. Traina and her sisters grew up in their mother’s closets. Steel, who had once wanted to become “the new Chanel” while studying at Parsons School of Design, instead became a keen observer of fashion, exposing her daughters to diverse material cultures by living in them, often literally. During Paris Fashion Week, for example, Steel would rent an entire floor of the Ritz-Carlton. “Attending couture shows with my mother was formative,” Traina says. “She introduced us at such a young age to a world that we would not have been exposed to until much later in life. With my mother, I saw Ferre at Dior, Galliano’s Dior years, Versace shows when Gianni was there, Yves Saint Laurent when Yves was there, Valentino at Valentino, Oscar at Balmain, Christian Lacroix, Chanel. I saw a different world than the fashion that’s around today.”
Looking through Steel’s lens, her daughter began to develop an eye all her own. “Today, with new media, there’s so much access to the industry that many people are familiar with its inner workings,” she explains. “But 15, 20 years ago, no one really talked about [the vocation of fashion]. There wasn’t as much transparency, so a stylist was like an invisible hand. No one knew they were backstage at shows or so involved behind the scenes of the industry. But I saw stylists at work.” As a teenager, when she and her sister were photographed by Mario Testino for Teen Vogue, she had her first opportunity to watch a stylist on set. Camilla Nickerson’s work for The Face and American Vogue has been described as layered, cerebral, minimalist and “fiercely” modern. “I was so impressed at that moment,” Traina recalls. “It all came together. I had known that I wanted to work in fashion, but then I knew in exactly what capacity.”
In 2007, Traina met French fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra in Paris, just before he left Givenchy to launch his own brand a year later. Following her six-month internship at Vogue Paris under Carine Roitfeld in 2008, Traina and Altuzarra moved to New York at the same time and began to develop his label together. Altuzarra’s aesthetic is folkloric and funky, rife with unusually juxtaposed details—a tube top over a tunic, paillettes of flowers across an appliquéd bodice, hot colors mixed into neutrals. “To be involved in a brand from the start, to be part of that story, has played a major role in my career and vision,” Traina says.
Today, her creative vision doesn’t fetishize fashion; instead it sees people in products and elegance in the everyday. “There’s a sense of immediacy [at The Apartment] when customers interact with a product. They don’t know how they’ll translate it into their own lives, but there’s comfort and familiarity there,” she says. “They say, ‘I want to live here.’ And when we hear that, we know we’ve succeeded.” *
I’m an editor foremost.
PROTAGONIST
The first in the Assembled Brands stable, Protagonist debuted in 2013 as The Line’s in-house ready-to-wear collection. Founded
by Kate Wendelborn and developed in collaboration with Traina, the label has a decidedly modern mission: creating refined silhouettes that evolve from season to season designed to add character and relevance to classic foundation pieces—all with a keen focus on inspiring the woman who wears them. Now under the design direction of Georgia Lazzaro, the brand has gone from strength to strength, winning the adoration of the press and fashion insiders alike. As Vogue’s Emily Farra reflected, “The big difference between Protagonist and other minimal brands is that even the sparest pieces never feel cold or aloof; surprising colors and tweaks in fit and silhouette lend a bit of warmth and approachability.”
Traina’s workload is intimidating, but she relishes the challenge and keeps a solid routine: breakfast and Ballet Beautiful in the morning and a hot bath at night.
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Though he no longer lives in his hometown, Pilati thinks fondly of the city. “Milan is beautiful,” he says. “I recognize myself in its architecture, in its colors.”
STEFANO PILATI
RANDOM IDENTITIES
YVES SAINT LAURENT
As former creative director at Yves Saint Laurent, Stefano Pilati is finally lying low, and loving it. “My experience gave me a lot, but it also took a lot away from me,” he says. “And that’s why I’m excited now. I don’t need those filters anymore.” Pilati’s passion for fashion design is undeniable, and he relishes the labor that goes into it. “When you work for a big company, you have less and less time to do your job effectively,” he explains. “Now I find myself doing more within the day-to-day design process.” Pilati exudes enthusiasm while discussing his current project, Random Identities, which he describes as “a combination of technical advancements for a new and personal way to approach fashion.”
Pilati is revered not only for his designs (like the highly sensational tulip skirt) but also for his unconventional yet elegant personal style. “People who don’t know me think that my style is a big effort, but it’s not an effort at all,” he muses. It is, he adds, always evolving based on his environment. His home and office share the same space, the two upper floors of a historical building in Berlin. (Pilati notes that the adjacency of his studio and living space is a conscious choice. “It allows me to isolate myself in my own creativity,” he says.) Having moved to the German capital several years ago, he has had to adjust his style to the “temperature of the climate, both literally and figuratively.”
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Pilati met Yves Saint Laurent only once, but treasures the letters he sent, signed with the word “amitié” (“friendship”). The designer passed away in 2008.
Art chooses you, not the other way around. I think fashion, in all of its forms, chose me.
Pilati’s fashion sense came to him early. “Immediately,” he clarifies. “When I was maybe four or five.” And from the start, he discovered that clothes were a means of communication. The designer, who was raised in Milan, acknowledges the importance of his roots. In the Italian city, he says, people were very stylish. “My own style was monitored and maybe, to a certain extent, even taught by those in the fashion environment I was drawn to,” he reflects.
Pilati entered the industry at 17, working as an intern for designer Nino Cerruti. “It wasn’t easy,” he recalls. “When you’re both young and talented, people become very jealous. The adult world isn’t very nice.” It also was difficult being gay in the ’80s, he remembers. “We were trying to shape honest spaces around ourselves—everybody was fighting for that.”
Following the internship, he received his first job, with a velvet manufacturer, before being hired as menswear assistant to Giorgio Armani in 1993. After a couple of years, he joined Prada as part of the senior design team. Then, in 2000, he moved to Paris to work for Yves Saint Laurent and was named the house’s creative director in 2004.
Reflecting on his career to date, Pilati expresses few regrets, save one: “I think that I could have been a good artist,” he says. When considering the life of an artist and fashion designer, Pilati makes a singular comparison. “Possession,” he reveals. “Think of the masters. You can’t produce any powerful art unless you’re possessed by it. Art chooses you, not the other way around. I think fashion, in all of its forms, chose me.”
Yet art is still a major influence, and he counts himself lucky to have had mentors who were collectors, offering him access to the “masters of the past and present.” In his spare time, Pilati prefers to “write or create,” but when he reads, he is particular about the books he chooses. “I need to learn something, be inspired,” he says. “Currently, I’m reading a book about how trees communicate.”
The designer has long looked to nature for inspiration. His former Paris apartment opened up into a large garden landscaped by renowned designer Louis Benech, and his home in Berlin borders the city’s largest park. “Nature reminds me that no matter how creative and successful I am, I can never achieve that certain level of beauty.
“Nature makes you feel very small,” he continues. “It’s a good way to get back in touch with your real inner self.” It is evident that Pilati is enormously self-aware, but he’s also constantly tuned in to the world around him. Such heightened perception has been a major factor in his decision to stay in Berlin. “Milan, Paris and London are cities where it is very difficult, in my opinion, to not be nostalgic,” he explains. “I believe we are in an era where we all need to look forward, and Berlin is a place that moves me to do so.”
When it comes to his biggest source of inspiration, the designer has no doubts: “It is the people around me,” he says. For much of his life, he worked with older people, but now, in his 50s, Pilati increasingly finds satisfaction in connecting with those who are younger than him. “I draw inspiration from being around people not of my generation,” he says. Though he moved to Berlin explicitly “not to be social,” Pilati discovered the city’s club culture, something he missed earlier in life. While exploring and talking with its regulars, he gained perspective “on the world, outside institutions, convention, genders and a new kind of relationship with sexuality that inspires style.”
Pilati’s enthusiasm for youth also translates to designers. “I moved to Paris in 2000,” he says. “And for more than a decade, the industry was about revamping big brands. I love seeing young kids putting something out there and believing in it.” In 2016, he made waves by sitting front row and showing support for designer Telfar Clemens. The following year, he walked the catwalk for emerging Berlin label GmbH.
Working on his own projects, like Random Identities, Pilati aims to “incubate and exchange, to create conversation with young designers, as well as musicians, DJs and other creatives.” He teases new designs with Instagram’s Stories feature. First testing the platform during Paris Fashion Week in 2017, he shared several looks—all black, genderless and seasonless—inspired by his friends and their aforementioned conversations.
“I do still believe in this job,” he says adamantly. “But the system, in my opinion, is in a crisis. I don’t want young designers to lose hope because in a sense, I did lose it. I’m pushing myself to create hope right now, and to tell you the truth, I don’t care about any other form of success.”*
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In 2017, Pilati told Vogue Italia that he sees his home country as one of “creative dreamers,” naming the likes of Gianni Versace and Giorgio Armani
CLARE WAIGHT KELLER
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Waight Keller cites music as a major influence. To celebrate the in-store launch of her Spring/Summer 2018 collection, she hosted performances by female musicians.
Givenchy
Chloé
Pringle of Scotland
Gucci
When it was announced that Clare Waight Keller would leave her post as creative director at Chloé and take over at much larger Parisian house Givenchy, eyebrows were certainly raised. Although Waight Keller had been lauded f
or transforming Chloé, imbuing her collections with a distinctive vision of redefined femininity, her appointment at Givenchy was seen as a departure. Having worked previously as creative director at Pringle of Scotland and as senior designer at Gucci and Calvin Klein before that, and despite that successful Chloé turnaround, Waight Keller was seen as something of a mystery. Looking back, this slight English woman, now in her mid-40s, is unfazed. “I knew there would be a lot of attention, but I didn’t really think about it,” she says at Givenchy’s offices on Avenue Georges V, where she commutes each week after weekends with her family in London. “As far as I was concerned, it was the start of a new journey.” And quickly, less mysterious but with serene determination, Waight Keller allows her own working style to be understood.
If there is an air of the unknown about the designer, despite her accomplished résumé, it’s perhaps due to her exceptionally rapid rise at a very early stage. “The biggest break in my career was really my first one,” she confesses, looking back to the early ’90s, when she was offered a design role at Calvin Klein before finishing her master’s program at London’s RCA.† That massive initial break, which allowed her to experience both New York and all the practicalities of working for an established fashion house, meant Waight Keller entered the industry almost by stealth, before devising her own creative identity. “At that stage I didn’t want to set something up on my own—I just wanted to get stuck in to the industry and get more knowledge first,” she says, recalling those formative New York years. “We learned to work really fast.”
Despite the pace of the city and its inspiring, gritty urban culture, Waight Keller found it lacking in creativity. “It was one of the main reasons I left New York. I felt stifled.” She moved on to Paris, where both her current Givenchy role and her previous Chloé position were intertwined with the very notion of Parisian style, and where she demonstrated an almost studious approach to interpreting the French capital. “You don’t really understand Parisian style until you live here. And then you realize that there is a quite clearly defined approach to the way women dress,” she says, adding that the Parisian woman is very edited and knows her own sense of personal style. “There is none of this metamorphosis that you find in other places,” she says. Can this sense of discipline define Waight Keller, too? Moreover, has an English woman really managed to crack the Parisians? This she jokingly refutes, as if keen to brush away any easy assumptions.
The Eye Page 2
