LABEL TO LOVE: SANDY LIANG
ELLE meets the woman behind the effortlessly cool US label
‘I don’t have the budget of someone like Marc Jacobs, so I’ve got to get crafty,’ laughs Sandy Liang, sitting cross-legged on the floor of cult vintage store Procell on New York’s Lower East Side. The designer is installing a pop-up of her vintage-inspired pieces: a just-thrown-together mix of Seventies prairie dresses, Nineties teamstyle sportswear and bleached denim. It’s the perfect spot to showcase her style: ‘cool’ is a word that crops up often when you read about Liang. And cool she is, having earned a rep as the New York designer to know.
‘I like to keep things small,’ Liang says of the business she has built since graduating from Parsons School of Design in 2O14. She also prefers to keep things personal – enlisting friends to model for her and showing her SS19 collection at her dad’s Lower East Side Chinese restaurant, Congee Village. On that occasion, tables were set with fried rice, tea and take-out menu-style lookbooks. ‘We work hard and get excited because we know we are creating something magical.’
The native New Yorker credits her father for her drive. ‘My family wasn’t creative in a traditional sense, but my dad owns his business; he’s entrepreneurial, scrappy even… that’s creative,’ she explains. Her interest in fashion began when she was growing up in Bayside, Queens: ‘I was told, “Focus on your grades, your SAT scores,” and my mother shopped the clearance racks to dress me. Because I wasn’t allowed cool clothes, it drove me to see clothes as this element that would change my life.’ Though she interned for the likes of Jason Wu and 3.1 Phillip Lim, Liang knew she wanted to create her own label after graduation. ‘It came from naivety,’ she says. ‘I designed what I wanted to wear and then hunted for people’s email addresses, asking them if they would come and look at the collection.’
There’s an everyday pragmatism to Liang’s designs, visible in the distinctive ‘fraggle’ coats that have become her USP, picked up by Net-A-Porter, Browns and Opening Ceremony. ‘If I had it my way, I would make coats all day long – coats that aren’t “fashion” coats,’ she says. ‘Fun, fashionable but not serious.’ Her designs – cagoules with lace-lined peplums, fleece jackets with neon splices and hybrid nylon puffas with fuzzy sleeves – appeal to women who want to get things done without compromising character. ‘It’s how I grew up and what I see: Chinatown grandmas in their coats, getting groceries and not giving a fuck; New York messengers and how they wear their bags… it’s all inspiration.’
While her coats are what caught the eye of buyers and stylists, today, Liang’s cheeky take on the functional extends beyond outerwear. Vintage-inspired band tees and dresses with embroidery and sequin details are resonating with women from Eva Chen and Gigi Hadid to Kim Gordon and Paloma Elsesser. ‘What brings [the pieces] together is the attitude,’ says Liang, who topped off prim dresses with bucket hats, and tulle dresses with Teva sandals for SS19. As for what’s next: ‘I just want to keep having fun.’