WALTZ STUDIO’S COOL URBAN BEAT
Wearing simple blue jeans and a lived-in black cable-knit sweater, designer Danielle Colen epitomizes the San Francisco cool girl without even trying. Not surprising, considering her 3-year-old brand, Waltz Studio, caters to an urban cool clientele, offering tailored pieces in calm and collected shades of gray, blue and white.
Colen came to San Francisco in 2008, to get a master’s degree in photography at California College of the Arts. She planned to be an art photographer but eventually realized that her passion was in design. Colen returned to school to study fashion design at the Academy of Art University, and launched Waltz Studio soon after graduation in 2014. “Fashion school was a little bit challenging,” she says. “I’m such a practical designer and all about simplicity, while as students, teachers wanted us to get more crazy, imaginative and creative. A lot of times I was working from a place that wasn’t really me.”
No danger of that happening with Waltz Studio; the brand’s spring-summer 2017 collection is as stripped-down and no-frills as they come, and could be imagined on a busy Copenhagen street or at a laid-back Mission coffee shop with equal ease. There are washed denim separates and not-too-revealing bustier dresses, pencil skirts in delicate gingham and minimal wrap dresses in cotton, rayon and Tencel. In Colen’s words: “It’s all about reducing elements until it feels very pure.” Inspired by the practicality and simplicity of menswear and the work of such purist visionaries like
Christophe Lemaire and Jil Sander, Colen designs what she herself wouldn’t mind wearing. The structured bustier is, perhaps, the most feminine element in the summer collection, created out of curiosity; Colen noticed the summery trend and tried to put her own slightly more demure spin on it.
Designing in a Mission studio she shares with two fellow creatives, Colen produces in modest quantities and is often restricted by the fabric selection available to her as a small-scale designer. “It’s a lot of problemsolving,” she says. Unlike many fellow designers, she’s not much of a social media maven. She enjoys putting models in her clothes against landscapes she’d previously captured as a photographer for her Instagram feed. But Colen’s biggest source of pride is landing the pieces in boutiques that she admires. Her collection is currently featured in San Francisco’s Anaise and Voyager, as well as a handful of stores in Portland, Ore., and New York City.
“When a store you think is perfect recognizes your aesthetic and what you’re doing, it’s one of those moments you think you’re on the right path,” she says. Does she ever doubt it? “Yes, of course!” she says. “But then, I have no idea what I’d be doing instead.” Her minimal, cerebral pieces speak volumes of this determination.