Colleen Allen is showing on the second day of New York Fashion Week; Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen on the penultimate day.
It’s not their only moment of mirroring. Both Allen and Whalen are Brooklyn-based. They spent time in-house at brands (Allen at The Row; Whalen at Eckhaus Latta, Bless and Interior) before launching their own labels. The independent designers are self-funded. And both are building their brands in a slow, careful manner that enables them to stay true to their craft and practices. All together, it’s earned them spots high on the radars of New York’s fashion scene.
Allen, who founded her label just last year, is hosting appointments throughout the day on 7 February, encouraging a granular examination of the clothes, as well as a chance to connect directly with the designer. “It’s been a really nice way to show the collection because people can see things up close, they can touch them,” says Allen. “We have conversations about the pieces and they can try things on.”
Whalen, on the other hand, is staging a show. (Having founded her brand in 2022, it’s not her first, but it is her first time on the CFDA calendar.) The idea is to build outward; to tell the story of the Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen emotional world. “Runway shows have this ability to raise emotional awareness in the room,” the designer says. “There’s a palpable energy about them.” Allen gets the appeal, but isn’t there just yet. “I would love that opportunity to be able to fully express the vision through music, through sound, through location, casting, all of those elements coming together. I’m really excited for when that comes.”
Whalen and Allen are part of a cohort of young New York designers who are uncompromising in their approach — to design, to craft and to business. The two emanate the shift Vogue Runway’s José Criales-Unzueta called in January: that luxury fashion’s next wave heralds a prioritisation of craft, quality timelessness and — most significantly — individuality.
It’s clicking. Both designers have become darlings of the New York fashion scene; known names to visit and see during NYFW (even off-cal, until now, in Whalen’s case). They’re building strong communities of repeat buyers, and have gotten stamps of approval from A-list stars (also repeat buyers). Charli XCX wore five custom looks of Allen’s for her stadium tour, while Paloma Elsesser just donned the brand on her AD cover. Rosalía counts Whalen as a favourite of hers. Industry buzz aside, both are head down and focused on the long game. “I kind of compartmentalise, to be honest,” Whalen says. “The stress of knowing about that momentum can become pressure to grow too quickly.”
Whalen and Allen may take different approaches, with divergent outputs, but both designers are building brands — and garments — to last.
Personal touch
Both Allen and Whalen’s brands bear their own names, which, for both designers, adds to the weight of what they’re doing. “I don’t know what the point would be if it’s a practice under my name if it’s [not] something that I believe in with my whole heart, body and mind,” Whalen says.
Each season is a way for Allen to emotionally process the world around her. “Ever since I’ve shifted into doing my own brand, the work has become very personal,” she says. This season, the designer is responding to what she calls the ‘cultural shift’ post-election. “There’s this state of shock happening and it led me to this place where I was looking for elders in my community to understand and navigate what’s happening to women in our culture,” she continues. Allen looked to portraits of artist Louise Bourgeois in her 90s: “She just has such a spirit and an attitude to her that was really inspiring.” The collection is a bid to capture this irreverence.
Skirts are slit high — “you can see butt cheek,” Allen says — in reference to Vivienne Westwood going commando to meet the queen. “There are pieces of theatricality that are inherent in these uses of historical silhouettes,” she explains.
Whalen’s work, too, is a personal response to her external environment — in the practice itself, which sits at the intersection of fashion and art, and at the shows where she displays her work. “The emotional theme is reckoning with bearing witness to tragedy and darkness,” she says, the underpinnings not unlike Allen’s own. “And within that, the space of community-building that brings forth.”
“Part of why I think being vulnerable and sharing these emotional concepts in community is important, because, a lot of the time, we share these common truths and experiences,” says Whalen. “To be able to share a space where we’re witnessing and coming together to acknowledge them can help spark change or healing or a way of relating to each other through a platform.”
Both hope that it’s this personal touch that will resonate with audiences (and customers). “The public is more than ever so informed and is so involved in this content that’s being created that they’re really perceptive to things that don’t feel genuine — and they will call it out,” Allen says.
Whalen sources everything by hand; it’s all vintage fabric. This slow process reads into the way she engages with the people that buy her clothes, she says. “It’s a very relational process and that’s how I’ve been able to keep going. It resonates with my community of clients,” she adds.
Quality first
All of Whalen’s clothes are also handmade in her studio. Each collection builds on the last, in terms of silhouettes — it’s part of what makes the clothes so good, she says. “Every season I’m just building on top of the foundation that I’ve already placed. So with each thing getting produced in-studio, it becomes better and better.”
This year, as she looks to scale, Whalen’s searching for ways to either keep production there, or to ensure not just the quality of the garment, but of the process behind it.
Similarly, Allen wouldn’t feel comfortable creating something that’s not well crafted. “That’s really important for me in terms of what I can contribute by making physical things in this world,” she says. She credits her time working at The Row as a menswear designer with instilling this emphasis in her, down to every last detail inside a garment — which, she says, is typically of greater focus in menswear than women’s.
“I always use 100 per cent silk linings, even on tiny bound seams and things like that,” she says. “I think it’s got to feel as special on the body as it looks.”
Working the system
Both Whalen and Allen know the value of working within the fashion system, having spent time at other brands before launching their own. Each worked at smaller companies: Whalen at Eckhaus Latta, then Paris-based Bless and now-folded Interior; Allen at The Row. Still, the extent to which they’re willing to bend to the system varies in part thanks to the brands they spent time at.
Allen is grateful to have cut her teeth at The Row. “It’s such an important education. You learn all of the creative in school, but you don’t really learn the system that it lives in,” says Allen. Though she was designing, the teams were small enough that she got insight into the ins and outs of the business, from sourcing fabrics to the production process.
“You get the flow of a season,” she explains. “You’re on this timeline and you have to build the rhythm of anticipating the next moment. Once you get in that flow, it’s really helpful. [Working in-house] built that internal timeline for me for each season.”
Allen says she can’t imagine how people do it coming straight from university. Whalen agrees: “I learnt so much from just being in rooms where conversations were happening and seeing what it was like to actually prepare a collection — and then what happens after that collection is shown.”
Now, Allen’s approach to building her business is super structured, from her press to her wholesale strategies. Both are selective (her first collection featured in T Magazine and W), and grow each season. This time around, she’s launching with Moda Operandi. “We have a really nice balance of small boutiques where I think people can really touch the clothes, try them on, naturally meet the brand through being in a space — but then also to have these global online partners [is important],” she says.
It’s a carefully curated balance. “It’s hard being an emerging designer,” says Gregory Mitola, Allen’s PR. “You need to build your business in a way that’s thoughtful and strategic, but also in a way that’s going to benefit and grow you. It’s a really hard balance to find.”
This is what Whalen is navigating now. For a time, she eschewed the system almost entirely. Now, she’s prepping to go to market in Paris for the first time. “[I’m] thinking about how I use this value system and my mode of production right now that’s all in-studio, and how I could apply that to a space of slightly larger growth,” she explains.
Whalen remains cautious but optimistic. “I feel less angsty about the systems at play and a little bit more like they are a system of structure and organisation in order for people to better be able to function and do the job,” she says. “So how can I operate in these spaces and maintain my value system?”
As well as her time in-house, it’s her mentors and guides that have helped inform the way the designer straddles working within and against the overarching fashion system. Her mode of operating is informed by her time at Bless. She met her PR agent, Cynthia Leung, when taking a course from Leung at Parsons. Judy Collinson, former EVP at Barneys NY, as well as The Swedish Fashion Council — known for their progressive approach to fashion — have also been key advisors.
At this moment especially, there’s room for a degree of pushback, Whalen believes. “It’s been successful in the way that I’ve built it because fashion is in this moment of pivotal change with the way that people are relating to clothing.” Designers and industry insiders alike are beginning to open up to the idea that perhaps not everyone needs to show every season just because they did the one prior. That there does need to be some wiggle room in the rigid industry machinery.
“I feel really fortunate to be part of the cohort of people instigating the change on many fronts,” Whalen says. “I just feel like the fashion vibe is shifting.”
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