Richard Haines on Being a “Flaneur at Warp Speed” Outside the NYFW Shows

September 20, 2023

You might have noticed a bespectacled gentleman with a white beard busily sketching away outside of some New York Fashion Week shows. He is Richard Haines, a designer-turned-illustrator, who started a blog, What I Saw Today, in 2008 and has since amassed a following of tens of thousands on his namesake Instagram account. This season he offered an alternative view of street style for Vogue Runway. This ever-popular genre has changed alongside the industry. Where once photographers gathered at the races (as in horse races) in Paris to capture couture in “the wild,” now they gather at events dedicated to fashion and display.

Vogue did have artists capture the sartorial caprices of cafe society back in the day; these drawings usually illustrated points made in the accompanying text. Street style as we know it today, post-dates the golden age of illustration by decades and decades. Haines’s blog was effectively a love letter to New York City; his remit here was to be “a flaneur at warp speed,” in short, people watching with an eye for style. “There’s always something to look at in New York. I mean, it’s just endless,” Haines muses.

While certain individuals were named, or identifiable, in the resulting drawings (we’re talking about you, Phil Oh!) Haines’s illustrations didn’t speak to the cult of personality, or consumerism so much as capture a mood and document how chicness is distilled through posture, gesture, and the thoughtful way colors and shapes are combined. Likewise his work recorded the distinct style identities of three different fashion communities in New York. I spoke to the artist on how his hand moving across paper captured their distinct personalities.

What does fashion illustration have to offer in a digital age?
I am always going to be an advocate for it because it’s my passion and it’s what I love. When I started blogging and I started posting illustrations, I thought it was so refreshing. There’s so much photography and so much digital imagery [around] that I think it kind of serves as a break and a relief to the eye. And there’s always a new generation that isn’t as aware of fashion illustration, and when they see it, they really respond to it. [When I started blogging] social media was really new to me and I was really taken aback by people’s reaction to it; that sense of connecting with people who love drawing everywhere. It was really eye-opening.

How do you approach to your work?
For me, drawing—especially at that kind of speed, in that moment—is really just about elimination. It’s like, how much can I take away from this? How much can I strip out of it and still communicate something? [The drawings are] sparse; really a few lines and color. I mean, I always use the same medium; it’s either wax—which melted at Helmut Lang—so I just switched to charcoal paper. I would do the sketch and then I usually would put a few notes, like V for Violet. It’s not about getting into the details. I would take everything back, clean it up a little, and then just throw down some color. I’m always working on simplifying; it’s a suggestion.

I’m always looking for silhouettes…. I’m always in motion; the people are moving and I’m moving along with them.

You were recording the scene outside of Peter Do’s debut at Helmut Lang, at Michael Kors Collection, and Luar. How were they different?
They were so different. The Helmet Lang/Peter Do show was really what I think of when I think of street style. It was that energy, it was so many different types of people, it was very eclectic. It was very much about the shape and the energy. Michael Kors was just a pivot. It said so much about the designer and their vision because it was very controlled. It was all celebrities, it was all head-to-toe Kors. It was very, very carefully orchestrated. But then that’s the designer, all these things represent the culture of the designer. Luar was young and Black and brown and just the most beautiful. It did not disappoint in terms of creativity. There was one woman who had the most beautiful Afro and was wearing a kind of a stretch jersey with a big number on it. It was almost a little Geoffrey Beene…and then these high, over-the-knee shiny boots. It was a little 1970s, it was very New York. I don’t know if she was aware of it, but I was getting so many signals from her. Between the shape, and the references of sports, New York, and the hair, I was just like, ‘This is everything.’

Did you make note of any trends?
At Kors there was that box structure that was very American. And because I designed clothes for years, I really get it. I think between Helmut Lang and Luar, there was almost a kind of Balenciaga bubble shape happening, but in a very, very different kind of construction. Even what José Criales-Unzueta was wearing at [Lang], that kind of purple shirt with a deeper violet bottom skirt—I’m not sure what it was— but I couldn’t wait to go home and put color on it because that shape was delicious.

When I first moved [to New York], I took a friend of mine who just got a job as the New York Magazine fashion editor, and we went to Charles James’s Atelier. He had those incredible shapes, and he was putting them on these beautiful Latin guys. I will never forget that juxtaposition…and there was a little bit of that energy happening [at fashion week] also.

What in your opinion makes a successful drawing?
If it resonates with the viewer: mission accomplished. Then I feel that I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve, which is communicating something and having the viewer look and also bring their own experience to it. There’s space for that. I don’t think they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to fill in the rest of the story here,’ but I do think that there’s an engagement they don’t get with photography. One doesn’t cancel out the other, obviously, but there is an engagement that I think people really respond to, an interaction that I really love and I think is really valuable.

Profile in style.

Illustration by Richard Haines

What do you love about New York?
The beauty of the streets. That’s why I continue to live in New York, because it’s always giving me something. It might not be the most elegant or beautiful—whatever that means—but it’s a thought, it’s a gesture, it’s something different. Someone somewhere is making an effort. And I think that needs to be acknowledged. That’s part of the beauty of street style, it’s people making an effort in lots of different ways, different budgets, and different visions. It always goes back to humanity. It’s really the energy and the vulnerability of the way people move.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.