A Stitch in Time
Acclaimed American womenswear designer Gary Graham brings his coveted vintage creations to Asia through a collaboration with Joyce Hong Kong
Since Gary Graham’s eponymous label (now called Garygraham422) debuted in 1999, he has been known for reimagining vintage textiles into modern outerwear carried by stores like Dover Street Market and the now-shuttered Barneys New York. “I’ve always been very attracted to jacquards and tapestries,” he says. “I started collecting them whenever I would go on antique trips to upstate New York with my partner Sean Scherer. I saw them as textile paintings, in a way. Most of them came from France and Belgium and I’ve been told they were woven for the tourist industry in Europe.”
This fall sees the 2010 CFDA/ Vogue Fashion Fund finalist collaborating with Joyce Hong Kong on a unique capsule collection of cocoon coats and printed slip dresses using surplus and vintage fabrics, where patriarchal motifs like conquistador figures are embroidered over with delicate flower patterns. With the help of recent Parsons graduate Vera Powley, he and his team would blur the faces and “tag” the tapestry.
“There are only three of us making the garments, so we would often talk about the different scenes and characters in them and what we thought about them,” he says. “Whereas before the narratives on the tapestries were secondary to the design—like decorative elements that I either would cut around or use based on the design— given the context of the world today, I was forced to consider the imagery and its meaning.”
As per his brand’s tradition, each garment comes with a description of the labour that explains the textile’s provenance, giving insight also to the people who worked on it. “I would like whoever wears these to see them like a favourite jean jacket or family heirloom handed down over time,” he says.