MY LIFE, MY STYLE
At home in New York with Batsheva Hay
The fashion designer Batsheva Hay’s playful puff-sleeved dresses have made her one of the most exciting new names in fashion. Her eponymous label is known for the joyful, eye-catching prints that turn old-school charm into something modern and covetable. ‘The design process is very intuitive,’ she says. ‘For me, the main thing is putting on clothes that lift me up and make me feel good.’
Though she has no formal training, Hay grew up in New York with an appreciation for colour and fabrics. ‘Queens wasn’t a very glamorous neighbourhood,’ she says, ‘but I had access to great thrift shops and would find magical things such as old lace dresses, and pieces from the Twenties and Thirties.’ Initially, with a degree from Stanford, she embarked on a career as a corporate lawyer, but soon realised that it wasn’t for her. ‘In the office, I had to dress in a very particular way, in a suit and button-down shirt, and I hated it,’ she says. ‘Every day, I was putting on this uniform begrudgingly just to appear professional, but I never felt like myself.’ So she left, with no idea of what she would do next.
Hay’s remarkable ascent through the fashion world began in 2016, after she had her second child. ‘As a mother, I had been wearing all of these
grab-and-go vintage Laura Ashley dresses that I felt great in and gave me a certain confidence,’ she says. One in particular, a beloved corduroy printed smock with pockets, had been worn to shreds, so, as a 35th-birthday present to herself, Hay bought some fabric on eBay and found a patternmaker in the nearby Garment District to rework it. ‘It wasn’t meant to be a business, but I got so many compliments on the street and began accepting commissions from friends,’ she says. As the venture expanded, she made more dresses to sell online and eventually received a bulk order from a boutique in Japan that had spotted her dresses on Instagram when she had only 900 followers.
Today, the brand is sold at Matchesfashion. com and other such retailers, and counts Jessica Chastain, Natalie Portman, Amandla Stenberg and Erykah Badu among its fans. Batsheva is also partly responsible for the popularity of the prairie dress, one of the biggest revivals of the past few years. For Hay, informed by her Jewish faith, the high-necked, ankle-length silhouette also offered a modest way to express her personality. ‘It was about making clothes that worked for me in a religious context, for example a Shabbat dinner at the rabbi’s house, while also having an element of fun with florals and frills.’ She took inspiration from the quirky characters in her local community. ‘We used to live downtown, which is full of traditionally “trendy” young people,’ she says, ‘but up here you find an older crowd who’ve been in their apartments for decades, just cooking soup all day. It’s refreshing for me to see granny-type clothes and it makes me feel freer because they don’t care about mainstream style.’
The three-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that she shares with her husband, the photographer Alexei Hay, and their two young children, Ruth and Solomon, is surprisingly paredback in its decor. ‘I feel like because I’m such a fashion person and am constantly thinking about things to put on my body, that I actually prefer my space to be kept simple,’ she explains. There is a mixed-up assortment of family heirlooms (like the Ten Commandments etched onto a wooden
‘We used to live downtown, which is full of traditionally “trendy” young people, but up here you find an older crowd’
tablet that hangs on the wall), fleamarket finds and furniture procured from eBay: ‘I follow vintage dealers online but there’s nothing like going to a thrift store or an estate sale and finding that one magical piece.’
As well as her own designs, which she styles with Nike trainers or Miu Miu platform heels, piling on costume jewellery from Marni and Chanel, she also has a fondness for vintage, and seeks out labels including Vivienne Westwood, Norma Kamali and Zandra Rhodes. ‘There is just something so specific and singular about each of their visions, and they all love a bit of drama,’ Hay says. She is greatly drawn to fashion from Comme des Garçons, Simone Rocha and Molly Goddard that is adventurous in its approach to shape and pattern. ‘I like wearing clothes that people notice and that get their attention,’ she says. Much like her own dazzling designs for Batsheva, which are most assuredly the talk of the town.