Studio Snippets: Titania Inglis

This past Sunday  had the pleasure of meeting Titania Inglis at her beautiful studio/living space in Brooklyn. A mutual friend of ours had suggested we have a meeting of the minds, and Titania was kind enough to open up her space and let me pick her brain about her design process. What Titania unpacked in our discussions was her vision to interpret the elegance of the natural world with the technical execution of working with textiles, furs and skins. I came by her apartment just as the sun was starting to make its way down towards sunset. The color of the light in Inglis' studio bounced off of the contrasting surfaces and I was drawn to everything around me.

What's perhaps most notable about Inglis' work is that she is committed to keeping her craft ethical, locally made and eco-friendly; all of her sourced materials low-impact, vegetable dyed and/or made from deadstock textiles. I was geeking out when she pulled showed me three full reindeer hides as she was explaining how the fur has a multitude of spots, stripes and fur gauges. She then gave me a preview of some bags she's been developing with vegetable-tanned lengths of leather,-which she had hand-dyed and molded into a stiff 3-D shape (see the last 3 images).

The word "Landscape" kept creeping back into our conversation as we went through her past collections, and I'm absolutely intrigued by how she's been interpreting the contrast of nature and technical structure. To say the least, I left her apartment with questions about my own closet and how far-removed from the craft process a consumer can become. With Titania's work, the transparency of the process with married with exceptional quality and thoughtful, beautiful designs.

I had a few other questions for Titania, so I hit her up earlier this afternoon to get some last words on her upbringing and other bits of thought:

1. How did your upbringing in Ithaca affect your sense of space? 

Having grown up there, I find the upstate landscape both magical and welcoming, with its deep gorges, breathtaking vistas, and peaceful woodlands. The woods reveal so many subtle wonders: tiny mosses hiding under the bark of a fallen tree, birds nesting high in the branches, the textures and subtle colorations of fungi and lichens and bark, a waterfall that appears just around a rocky corner. It's that sense of quiet and wonder that I try to convey with my designs.

2. I was intrigued about our brief conversation about your labeling stamps. Could you remind me what your stamp acronyms stand for and what inspired you to make that facet of the process visible to your wearer?

The stamps carry the initials of the sewing house where the garment was made: either my studio, or one of the small, family-owned factories I work with in the garment district and Brooklyn. I've been working to add a new level of transparency to my production process, and part of that is to give the factories ownership of the pieces they bring to life, and to pass that along to the customer.

3. Do you feel like you have conflicting tastes or preferences sometimes, or does everything end up seamlessly connecting in one way or another?

My taste is nothing but contradictions, which I find brings an interesting tension and balance to my designs. If I were to go only for black and hard and geometric, there's a certain customer for that — but contrasting those tendencies with soft and pastel and ethereal makes it so much more compelling. 

4. Would you want to get lost in a landscape or become a part of it?

I'd prefer to get lost — maybe it's because I'm an introvert, but I always like to maintain an outsider's perspective. I think that's why I enjoy taking photographs... to appreciate the situation, while always being able to extricate myself.

5. Finally, could you tell me more about your collaboration with the jewelry designer Nettie Kent? The "slice of sand" concept was so cool and I feel like it harks back to your notions of landscape, would love to know what you think about that as well.

I worked with Nettie Kent for my Fall '13 collection, and she was sweet enough to let me repurpose some of her designs — including the Slice of Sand — to make the exquisite brass buttons for this season's clothing. Nettie's work takes a lot of inspiration from her seaside childhood on Cape Cod, and we bonded instantly over our love of handwork and nature.

A Bundle

Vintage Max Mara sweater, Asos skirt, vintage mowhair scarf, Coach Heritage backpack, Jeffrey Campbell Perfection boots, Vera Meat Mystery Hugs/Twisted midi rings, De Lune x By Boe Odyssey ring, By Boe ear cuff

Sometimes I'll look back on outfits like this one and realize how much my hair distracts from a neutral ensemble. Sometimes I'll wish I could easily go back to blonde just so that the stuff I'd wear would look more "clean" but eh, I can't yet. And yeah, a red bag kinda clashes with my hair but I care not 'cause I feel weird just wearing something that looks like I threw a bunch of sepia tones + navy.

But other than that, this scarf you guys, this scarf.
Along with a proper pair of black jeans, a leather jacket, a striped long sleeve tee shirt and ballet flats, I consider a giant knitted scarf to be an absolute closet staple for a lot of reasons. For one, it's dramatic and a little mysterious to wrap around you in the winter; I like to let it cover my face enough to just have my eyes peek over when it's especially friggin' cold out. But also, it's a great way to add a little texture here and there when you're all bundled up. I found this particular scarf in the dead of summer at an antique furniture store in Brooklyn, of all places. I knew I wasn't going to need it for a few months, but I had a hunch I'd keep it in heavy rotation. And here we are, 4 months later talkin' about scarves. It's cold out, put your scarf on.

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Scanning Fashion: How Looking Back Helps us Look Forward

Ann Demeulemeester Fall/Winter 2000 

Ann Demeulemeester Spring/Summer 1998

Marithe + Francois Girbaud Spring/Summer 1998

Objetstandard Fall/Winter 2001

Yohji Yamamoto Fall/Winter 1999 // Kosuke Tsumura Fall/Winter 1999

Styles of New York Fall 1998, Sarah T. photographed by Rowland Kirishima for High Fashion Magazine 8 August 1998

Hermes Spring/Summer 1999

Balenciaga Fall/Winter 1999

Kostas Murkudis Fall/Winter 1999

Link: 20471120 Fall & Winter 1998-1999, Telma Thormarsdottir and Joanna photographed by Masashi Ohashi for High Fashion Magazine 8 August 1998

Sharon Wauchob Fall/Winter 1999

Martin Margiela Fall/Winter 2000

Shimura Fall/Winter 1999

Link: 20471120 Fall & Winter 1998-1999, Telma Thormarsdottir and Joanna photographed by Masashi Ohashi for High Fashion Magazine 8 August 1998

Irregular by Alfredo Bannister Fall/Winter 1999

Junya Watanabe Comme Des Fall / Winter 2000 Boys

Junya Watanabe Fall/Winter 1996

Upon Anne Demeulemeester's announcement that she would be departing from her namesake house, my reaction came as a duality: I knew I enjoyed her work, but I realized I didn't know just how far she had come as a designer and how much of an impact her work had on per peers in the industry. Sure, I knew she was important and that her collections were consistently beautiful in their dark, secretly structured whimsy, but my understanding wasn't rooted very deep.

I started digging for her past collections. For some reason I haven't felt compelled to do this with any other house who has experienced a departure from its head designer yet. This, for some reason, felt different. I started looking for archival images- and that's when I found Archivings.

This brilliantly beautiful site is an unbelievable resource of late-90's/early aughts fashion scans; mostly of runway images with a sprinkling of editorials, all done by a Fashion Communications student in Toronto named Shahan Assadourian. These are the images I watched my mom scour in our apartment while I was growing up, ripping out pages for her mood boards and binders. These are images of presentations and shows that are the ancestors to the spectacles and media circuses that fashion shows have become today. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy NYFW, but I barely ever watch actual shows anymore, I prefer to stick around backstage so I can actually see the clothes.

Thanks to sites like Tumblr and Buzzfeed, a lot of kids my age and younger are able to re-live their childhoods and really look at the media they experienced all over again. I can't go on Tumblr anymore without a bunch of nostalgic cartoon throwbacks or appreciation posts for Jelly sandals popping up on my feed. It's being able to look at this stuff anew that makes it great, and while everyone has been enjoying revival-style appreciation for grunge and minimalism, we sometimes forget why silhouettes changed and how the economic upturn in the States and the rise of the internet affected people's understanding of the world in the nineties. 

Man, we take the internet for granted these days, and folks of my generation probably don't remember when all one had access to was a physical, spine-and-page runway report or periodical if they wanted to see the latest season of collections rendered in detailed images. Now we have live streams of the shows themselves that anyone can view; we barely consider the clothes or the collections as a whole, but it's nice to have things archived neatly and on such a massive scale. What really stands out to me is this: these here scans are images that were going out to a much different audience- one that was in the industry, not entirely around it. Consumers were less connected to Fashion week and the educated press were the absolute authorities in commenting on collections and bringing their comments and postscripts back to the consumer.

The historical imperative is something I wish consumers looked into a bit more deeply when getting into vintage or fetishizing it. It gives the clothes more meaning. The collections and editorial snippets shown here were produced when the internet was rising, not a full-fledged resource for absolutely everything. The world had just become connected, and the future was on a glittering horizon. What was the future going to look like? How was technology going to change our lives? How could simplicity not only improve utility but also allow us to step back in the face of mechanical change and appreciate such a human craft? These were questions that designers were answering with their garments, and putting their answers into perspective makes their designs more profound.

Anyway, these particular scans stood out to me- just look at how designers were experimenting with the clothes themselves and using a minimal line and/or palette to trace the body. Designers were also trying to break down notions of how things were supposed to be worn by reconstituting pieces, making their consumer and audience aware that the world was changing, and that we needed to look in to look out onto that glittering horizon.

Check out the Archivings archive (I really just wanted to say that) to see the extent of the hard work put into scanning such a massive amount of lovely, lovely images. Anything strike you?

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Back/to/Front

Vintage Max Mara sweater, BDG jeans, Seychelles boots, Kimberly Ovitz Kiva cardigan (via Bib+Tuck), Vera Meat Mystery Hugs ring and Mom's signet ring

My grandmother never believes me when I tell her I'm not cold, and when I arrived from the airport this past week wearing this magnificent cardigan as my sole piece of outerwear, she nearly had a heart-attack. But lemme tell ya folks, this thing has saved my life many a time since I acquired it from Kimberly Ovtiz herself via Bib+Tuck last year (if you haven't made an account, you should, it's impossible for me not to find great pieces on there).

Made with merino wool, this cardigan is a portable blanket of loveliness. I love a garment that requires a bit of handiwork on the part of the wearer, so the time it takes to put the cardigan straps through the cross loops is a welcome ritual. Although it's implied that it's meant to be worn with the 'X' in front, I like to flip it back when I'm indoors or too warm. Then, when I head outside, I cross it back to the front. 

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Like Wearing Air

Reformation tee, vintage sweater, Rich & Skinny jeans (I added the knee holes), Seychelles boots, Calvin Klein bra

Being back in my adolescent home means back in the attic, where this blog began.

To me, dressing in the winter- or dressing well rather, is a matter of careful, thoughtful layering. I acquired this totally amazing disintegrating tee shirt from the Reformation sample sale earlier this summer, and I'm absolutely in love with how incredibly delicate it is. There's something elegant and noble about wearing something that reminds you of how fragile and truly material things are. You could say it's an existential garment.

Anyway, although it's gorgeous, it's the closest thing you can come to wearing nothing, so I've been using it as a little textural additive. Under a sweater with some boots has done nicely.

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Holidaze

Happy Thanksgiving/Hanukkah everyone!

I'm freezing my ass off upstate, but enjoying myself nonetheless.

Cheers to everything we have to be thankful for.

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