Dinner with designer Hillary Taymour

Hillary Taymour, the designer behind Collina Strada, does not treat sustainability like a topical discussion point but a large structural issue.

The fashion industry often laments the problematic state of affairs but drags its feet in actually executing forward-thinking practices, but Taymour puts her values where you can spot them: in her upcycled production values, in her careful collaborations, in the diversity of her runway casting choices (peopled by trans models, pairs of twins, and pregnant women). Distinguishing what is or isn’t a marketing ploy in fashion today is tricky, but Taymour has instated concrete measures of mindfulness and operates as locally as possible, circulating between her Chinatown design studio, her factory in Midtown, and her apartment in Williamsburg. She sources deadstock materials from a warehouse in L.A. and uses alternative fibers from which rose petals are spun and woven into cellulose. Her approach underpins that you can create anything out of anything if you’re strategic. Although her ethics are sound, Taymour doesn’t want her wares to exude a sustainable feel, which often are synonymous with beige, frumpy, righteous. On her site, you can buy things that showcase her playful approach, like a Comfort Is A Commodity tee and a rhinestone water bottle. Her print-heavy pattern-clashing bohemia translates into singular shows during NYFW, which have been based on everything from Tibetan sound baths to a tableau vivant farmer’s market of donated misshapen produce. The Collina Strada aesthetic and ethos garnered Taymour a 2019 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalist nomination. While visiting Paris to showcase her F/W 2020 collection, Taymour popped in at Maisie Café – a vegan-friendly canteen in the first arrondissement, adjacent to the Jardins des Tuileries – for an early evening bite. Shedding her pastel Collina Strada padded floral coat and sporting subtle copper eye shadow, she discussed the dangers of scaling up, the importance of putting best practices into effect, and the New York denizens who inspire her most.
SM

Cheers!
HT

Cheers!
Clink small glass bottles of Cucumber Detox agua fresca with chia seeds.
SM

Is everything you’re currently wearing something you designed yourself?
HT

Yes [nods]. Everything. Even my socks. They’re bamboo.
SM

Do your collections have more resonance in certain places? Like do you find people react differently to your designs in Paris than in New York?
HT

No. Paris isn’t just a French market; it’s international. I see a store that’s literally down the street from my apartment in New York, as well as people from all over the world. We do well in the Japanese market and UK market. We’re just launching next season in Paris at Printemps. America does well. China is starting to be a thing for us. It’s hard because buyers move around, but it’s easy because we’re in the best stores in the world.
SM

You started Collina Strada in 2009. How did you come to fashion?
HT

I just literally launched out of fashion school [Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing in California]. There’s no story.
SM

Is the name of your brand in reference to anything in particular?
HT

In school, my friend, who’s Italian, used to call me ‘little Collina.’ It means hill, a nickname for Hillary. It kinda stuck.
SM

How long has your brand been headquartered in New York?
HT

Since 2010.
SM

Do you consider yourself a “New York designer”? Does the city’s street style inform your design at all?
HT

I don’t really care; it doesn’t really make me spark. I’m more interested in the women in Chinatown walking around picking up garbage. That’s more my vibe.
SM

How has the brand evolved, in terms of aesthetics and values, over the decade you’ve been doing this?
HT

I guess myself, as a human, I’ve evolved in terms of what I want to stand for in the world, and what I want to say. It’s all relative to me, in the sense that... we started with handbags. Then I wanted to do ready-to-wear because I really didn’t want to work with leather anymore. I just phased into what I’m doing now. In 2014, I got an opportunity to do fashion shows through Milk’s MADE program – it was through Milk Studios; IMG bought it – the program was for smaller designers and they gave you space for a show. That forced me to be like: OK, what do I actually want to say with this?
SM

On your website, the shows don’t go that far back – there are only the two most recent seasons and resort.
HT

They’re all on Vogue. The brand has evolved into something else, so we don’t really show old seasons.

I work with conscious humans. I just want to have fun with fashion; I want people to enjoy themselves.

SM

Your shows have a strongly performative element, with lots of elaborate stagings. How do you conceive of these atmospheres?
HT

I just kind of do me; whatever I’m feeling, to be honest. I just want it to be true. I cast my friends or people I look up to for what they’re working on. They ‘get it,’ without explanation. I work with conscious humans. I just want to have fun with fashion; I want people to enjoy themselves. It’s more of a feeling than an actual physical situation. Have you seen the videos?
SM

Yes.
HT

It’s a performance, for sure... But I want it to feel like a lifestyle. Shopping isn’t good for the planet. I can’t sit here and honestly tell you: ‘buying my brand is going to make the planet better’ – no. Buying nothing is going to make the planet better! So it’s just, like, how do I advocate being different and being yourself? It’s giving people advice about how to live a better life but also, like, look how much fun you can have while doing that! And helping each other in a community way – that’s why I cast people that I hang out, who are even better at being more sustainable than I am. Everyone is part of the team.
Seed crackers with avocado dip and beet dip arrive in small bowl.
SM

It seems like part of the fun also comes from the playfulness you infuse into the clothes. Does humor fit in the design process?
HT

I’m not a serious person at all. I can take a joke, and it’s about not being so stuffy. How wacky and crazy can I be – without being wacky and crazy at all? That’s the vibe. It’s not designing for an imaginary woman who I think wants to buy a certain thing. I’m just designing for me and my friends, and it seems to work a lot better that way.
SM

But how much do you have to factor in what will sell? Does aesthetic have to be tempered by entrepreneurship?
HT

If you want to stay alive, yeah! [laughs] You factor in what kinds of items make money: dresses, pants, jackets. I have a line plan. I start with fabric, and go from there. We design looks for the show. It’s pretty simple. It’s business as usual, but then I put my twist on it.
SM

Did you work for any other designers before you started your brand?
HT

No. I worked during fashion school for some brands, but that’s it.
SM

How did you decide on that path straight off? That’s pretty bold.
HT

I just made a bag for myself, and everyone wanted to buy it.
SM

What did it look like?
HT

It was this weird hobo bag, and everyone was like: I want that! It was when boho was chic. I just lucked out on that. It’s been pretty up and down valleys since then.
SM

What’s an example of a valley you’ve had to navigate?
HT

A valley is: you’re a kid and you’re trying to do production on your own, and you don’t produce a collection well, and you mess up with your biggest client and they don’t come back for three years.
SM

What’s your studio like?
HT

My studio? It’s pretty small. It’s just, like, some tables and some racks [laughs]. And a looooot of shit. It’s just a bunch of us kids and fabric.
SM

Who are the kids? Who’s your team?
HT

I have one assistant. There’s Charlie [Engman], who I make prints with. And then we have a revolving door of six to twelve interns. So, whoever comes that day. I have a freelance marketing, PR and sales team. I have a tie-dyer in Bushwick and they also hire artists to do freelance hand-painting.
SM

How do you orchestrate collaborations? When someone else is in the equation, how much rethinking to your approach do you do?
HT

You try it once. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
SM

Are there certain characteristics you work well with?
HT

Freedom. Trust. If someone micromanages me, the end product is worse. People have their vision of what they want me to do but that’s not always the right thing. If I don’t want to do it, I won’t do it. Not in a bitchy way, but like: you should pay the person who does that well, because that’s not what I do. Stylists will show me a picture and say: ‘can you make a dress like this? Like in this color and in this way?’ And it’s like: you should totally ask that designer to do that dress. If you want me to make a dress for your client, you have to let me make your client a dress. People ask for crazy things.

We need to start thinking about how to make clothes differently. It’s really important to go out of the box and relook at: ‘why am I making this?’ It’s not just a business anymore, in that we have a social responsibility to move forward correctly.

SM

Who is the person you would aspirationally like to make a garment for?
HT

Tilda Swinton.
SM

Ugh, yes. That makes a lot of sense.
Salad arrives.
SM

You use rose silk. Would you experiment with making textiles yourself?
HT

Yeah – I mean, it’s really expensive, but worth trying. It’s a process! We’re using a lot of waste fabric right now from markets in Ghana. It’s the last place where all of our trash ends up. Like t-shirts that would be thrown into the ocean. I’ve seen videos – the ocean is, like, full of clothes. We’re making a whole program for Brown’s for their 50th- anniversary out of old t-shirts. We tie-dye them all the same color to make dresses.
SM

So you use the material as a canvas and then override it, in a way.
HT

Yeah. It can become more uniform and you put your vibe into it. It’s like customization, in that sense.
SM

Are there any pop cultural references that you go back to regularly?
HT

Never. I don’t look at anything to make what I want to make. My biggest inspiration is seeing my friends wear something I like, or if I figure out a way that I want to wear things differently.
SM

What were formative references that shaped your style?
HT

I guess the early 2000s – naughties – are references throughout. That’s when I became interested in fashion. Collina is a vibe and an energy. It’s just a pant or a shirt, but it has a crazy print on it. It’s pretty much basics in the weirdest fucking way. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel.
SM

Do you have other creative practices outside of fashion?
HT

Clothing is my art. Performance on the runways is art, for sure. The marketing, the photography is the art. I like installations; I like to tell stories in general. I do everything. I love my job. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I get to hang out with my friends and my dog and make cool shit and do whatever I want. I do in-store installations – at Shop LCD, I actually designed the interiors for the whole store. For a while, I did have an interior brand where I was making mirrors and stools and plates out of marble. I didn’t make them – I just designed them. I couldn’t carve marble, although I have tiled a kitchen before.
SM

Impressive! You’re making clothes that – as you state in your brand bio – double as a “platform for social issues and awareness.” Do you think the industry can implement an ethical strategy more systemically?
HT

We need to start thinking about how to make clothes differently. It’s really important to go out of the box and relook at: ‘why am I making this?’ It’s not just a business anymore, in that we have a social responsibility to move forward correctly. It’s about focusing attention on the whys. At the end of the day, we all have to keep our jobs, but we can be smarter about it. It’s the designer’s responsibility to do that. I think the reason it works for me is I’m a small brand. It’s really one voice. No one is telling me I can’t say something – ‘That’s too much this.’ ‘That might ruin the customer this.’
SM

You’re unsupervised.
HT

Yeah. I can do what I want and it’s very much art in that form. I can speak freely. At a corporation, you’re never gonna get one honest voice because there are so many fucking people in the room discussing it, and it’s gonna get watered down. They can try, but it doesn’t feel as authentic or organic.
SM

Right; it’s operating by consensus.
HT

In the retail industry, everyone’s trying to scale up. But there’s actually no more room in the luxury market to continuously grow and grow – all of these old stores are closing. There’s no room in the market for these products. Instead of grow-grow-grow, how much money do you need to fulfill your goals? We can’t all grow that big. It’s not sustainable for anyone. I get it: you grow a brand in a store, and you spend more on the brand because you develop their customer for it. But at the same time, maybe it’s perfect the way it is? You don’t have to have a ton of merchandise. You don’t have to buy 100 pieces. Where are those sweatshirts gonna go? For me, I love the way it is now: We have the best stores, ones that I want to be in. We don’t need to get bigger and bigger to justify an ego. It’s much more grassroots than that.