Willie Norris’s experimental runway collections for Outlier go under the name of “Ideas,” which illustrates the experimental nature of these designs, which eventually trickle down into the mainline. But this season there was no theme or esoteric concept. Instead, said Norris, there were people.
“I’m having a real hard time grappling with designing things for the sake of it, or with any intention other than to get it on people and for their lives,” said Norris. She uses the Ideas program as an incubator for innovation, often letting her mind run wild with everything from tank tops made out of sand to paracord fringe dresses. For fall, the concepts were refocused to serve her deeply pragmatic approach at Outlier, which is a brand known for its considerate and everyday utilitarian menswear. “My nature as a designer and what I keep coming back to is what people are going to wear during the day, and how to make it as exciting and lightly challenging as possible,” she said. The challenge for Norris was how to make dressing, and undressing, a seamless and enjoyable experience.
“Getting dressed is a dirty, dirty job,” said the designer at her studio, pointing at a T-shirt featuring artwork by Yuki James incorporating those same words. “It can be hyper empowering and beautiful, but it’s a lot of work,” said Norris. The thought process here was that finding something to wear in itself is messy—the pile of clothes on your bed or desk chair can likely attest to that—but it’s also emotionally chaotic. Getting dressed is determining an image for the day, an identity; certainly a taller order than most are ready for each morning.
For this lineup, Norris cast eight friends with singular styles, who ranged from the stylist Ian Bradley and the DJ Oscar Nuñez to the actor Julio Torres (if you have yet to see his movie Problemista, this is your sign to do so), and created seven looks for each of them. The idea was to capture a day in their lives, starting from when they wake up to an imaginary party, hence the green festival wristbands. What drove the concept home, whoever, was Norris explaining that she was fascinated by the ordinary trials and tribulations of wearing clothes every day, like removing layers in a crowded bar or throwing clothes on while sitting in a car or a packed subway train. “I’m thinking of all of these socially informed circumstances and socially informed dressing,” said Norris. What helped make her point most successfully was the idea of feeling comfortable. “Are you looking at me because I look good, or because you’re intrigued?” Norris asked. “It’s that essential kind of social comfort.”
Norris is most successful when she zeroes in on a classic silhouette and reinvents it. Here, to simplify getting dressed, she replaced the buttons in shirting with tiny magnetic strips, and cut out the backs of hoodies and zip ups and turned them into halter tops for easy layering (“rip offs” is what she’s calling them). She also added zippers under the sleeves of jackets to allow for the most ordinary of silhouettes to be worn as glamorous capes, made reversible plaids to offer 2-in-1s of her favorite shirts, and draped an excellent pair of wrap pants. That’s the thing about Norris—no matter how outlandish her ideas, she can cut a really great pair of pants.
