Rachel Comey is of the only-do-shows-when-there’s-something-new-to-promote mindset. Last September it was her collaboration with the octogenarian artist Joan Jonas on the eve of her MoMA retrospective. This September it’s her new made-in-Italy handbag collection. Comey’s done bags for years, but never in Italy. She’s leveling up.
“I was intimidated by working with these Italian factories because of the cost of development and [the work of] running the business. So it had to be the right partners,” Comey said. “I’m trying to ‘work smarter, not harder.’ Someone said that to me a month ago, and I’m keeping it in mind.” It’s hard to believe Comey is intimidated by much. Twenty-odd years in, she’s built a business not with advertising campaigns or magazine editorials, but with the support of stylish customers for whom her clothes are part of their real lives.
I think of what she does as norm-core for women who don’t do norm-core. There’s usually something a bit off, a bit quirky, about a Comey design, but it doesn’t get in the way of it becoming part of an everyday wardrobe. She may put these clothes on a runway, and hire a musical act to perform—this season Mexico City’s excellent Mabe Fratti—but she designs the clothes for the street.
Comey said the spacious tool-bag tote the first model carried was designed with her clients in mind; “they’re women who work.” The clothes targeted all aspects of their lives. There was denim tailored into non-standard shapes like slouchy tunics and swaggy full-legged trousers, and suit jackets paired with fluid skirts in midi and ankle-lengths. The latter was a quite covered-up, even modest proposition. For contrast, she also had a yellow silk floral jacquard jumpsuit with a black lace racer back. Whimsy was part of the story too. A little black shift dress was embroidered with swags of gold fringe and colorful hand-knits that looked like your grandma might have made them—if your grandma liked Patrick Nagel in the ’80s.
