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Dressing Philly Up in Style

Dressing Philly Up in Style

Philadelphia's fashion industry is in continuous evolution and development, and it incorporates new and promising talent with each new “stitch.”

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The portrait of Philadelphia as a city with the fashion industry as one of its focal points began to be sketched out a couple of centuries ago by John Wanamaker, a businessman born in South Philly who is credited with the creation of the city’s first department store at the end of the 19th - beginning of 20th century — one of the first department stores to open its doors in the nation.

The pattern of today’s city — in terms of fashion — has been shaped by both local designers and large companies, such as Urban Outfitters or Lilly Pulitzer, who decided to make the City of Brotherly Love their headquarters. Another influence have been the educational institutions in Philadelphia from which great names in industry, like Ralph Rucci and Tory Burch, have emerged.

The fashion industry itself is in continuous evolution and development, and it incorporates new and promising talent with each new “stitch.”

One of those promising talents is Ivy Aristy, a young Latina born in Queens (of Dominican parents) who is one of the current class of students at the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator, located in Macy’s department store.

Aristy’s first contact with the fashion world was approximately 12 years ago when first started sketching. By the age of 14 she was already creating designs for both her Barbie doll and her dog, though it wasn’t until she began high school that she learned to sew a pattern in the fashion design class there.

Her passion became her profession in 2010, when she graduated from Moore College of Art and Design. But finding a job as a designer in Philadelphia was more complicated than she expected.

Ivy Aristy (Yesid Vargas/AL DÍA News).
 

“It is quite difficult because even though I had worked at DKNY and Yigal Azourel it was still difficult to find a job. I went to many interviews. A lot of people wanted more experience and I had just graduated,” Aristy said.

She brought her design sensibilities to other, non-design jobs until 2012, when she submitted her first application to enter the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator. Though she was not accepted that time, she subsequently reapplied and was accepted. That’s how she began the one-year course known as Designers-in-Residence (DIR), focused more on developing business skills than on design itself.

“There’s a lot about business, an area I didn’t know much about. I am more the creative type, more into design and the incubator helped me a lot to learn about the fashion design business,” Aristy said. 

“This is helping me meet a lot of people, helping me be more specific regarding what I design — and produce — as well as helping me make those connections one needs in order to succeed,” she said.

As part of the program she can count on the help of students from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who are completing studies in areas from marketing to creating a business plan that best adapts to each designer and company.

Aristy is clear about one thing: “I want to design for the Latino body.”

She said that thanks to this year, in which she worked on developing her brand (she expects to be able to launch her first collection in Fall 2016), she has seen evidence that what people really care about is that their clothes feel good on their body, and Latinas are no exception.

Since she is aware that there aren’t many firms making garments with the Latina shape in mind, she has decided to focus her work on the community she knows best.  

(Yesid Vargas/AL DÍA News).

 

“I want to be specific and look for someone who can help me create patterns for that body type. I am going to dedicate myself to that, to making my basic shapes,” she said.

As for her sources of inspiration, Aristy said they vary depending on the season and the collection. “It can be something from nature, a song that I hear,” she said. The ocean and the sand were key in developing her spring/summer 2016 collection, for example.

Her mother, who she says is her main inspiration, is a more unchanging influence. “My mother came to the United States when I was 11 years old. We are four siblings. She was alone with the four of us. She has her own business now; she has had her own business for a long time, and has given me good values. My mother has always supported me in everything”.

Her advice to those young people who like her wish to become designers? “I would tell them to follow their dreams,” she said. “With motivation and effort one can achieve a lot. Don’t give up if it is difficult at the start — especially when you’ve just graduated from the university and think you’ll find something, but it’s difficult because you don’t have connections. You must continue doing what you love.”

Aristy also recommends “trying to do freelance work, which is good because you can always include it in your resume and it helps you meet people. It can also end up being a full-time job.”  

 

Incubating new local talent

If there is something that both Aristy and Elissa Bloom, the executive director of the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator, can agree on it is that the city has talent and a lot of it; talent which is osften shaped at the various design schools in the Philadelphia area.

A few years ago, however, a group of fashion industry venues realized that there was an exodus of young talent. The majority of students, after graduating, left the city and transferred to places like Los Angeles or New York, looking for jobs in the fashion industry there.

“We became aware that there was no one to motivate or support designers who wanted to stay in Philly and establish their business here,” Bloom said. And that is how the project which Aristy is a part of, the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator, took off in 2012.

The project is defined by Bloom as “a collaborative creative effort between civic corporations (the city of Philadelphia and the Center City District) and academic communities such as Drexel University, Philadelphia University and Moore College for Arts and Design, and launched with the mission to support designers starting off in Philly and helping them develop sustainable and successful businesses.” Since it was launched almost two dozen designers (like Aristy) have participated in the program in which Macy’s is a collaborator. 

Philadelphia Fashion Incubator, at Macy's. (Yesid Vargas/AL DÍA News).

The idea, according to Bloom, is to “unite (all this talent) in one space in which everyone is inspired and motivated by the others. It is not a competitive environment, they all support each other.”

At the moment the formula of the local fashion talent incubator is providing good results. Bloom says that of the 15 companies created by designers during the program in 2012, 11 are still in business.
“At the end of the day I consider it a success that these designers continue to be in business and continue to grow and expand,” Bloom states.

Eight of the 11 brands she is referring to decided to join together once their year at the incubator had come to an end, and formed the Philadelphia Fashion Alliance, an organization with which they intend to continue collaborating and supporting one another as they did during their time at the fashion incubator.

“It is about a very difficult business and one must have not only talent, but also contacts; and and those are  things that the fashion incubator provides. We connect designers with influential industry leaders to help them develop their businesses,” Bloom said. She also highlighted the fact that Philadelphia Fashion Incubator is seeking new talent. The submission window to submit applications ends January 15. For more information, please visit www.philadelphiafashionincubator.com/application-process.

This call for applications goes out especially to young Latino designers in the city who largely remain in the shadows of the fashion industry of the city.  

 

A week of their own design

Kevin Parker and Kerry Scott, founders of Philly Fashion Week.

Almost as important as talent and network is having the platform through which the designer can make work known to both the public and the industry. Philadelphia lacked such a platform until 2006, when Kevin Parker and Kerry Scott decided to found Philly Fashion Week.

“Philly has so much fashion history and at that time not much was happening in terms of events,” Parker said. “No platform existed on which to exhibit the work of the people of the industry and that was one of the reasons that we decided to create Philly Fashion Week. To highlight all the work of our local designers but also to attract people from abroad.”

Since its foundation, local artists as well as designers from India, Great Britain and from the cradle of fashion, Paris, have paraded up and down the runway. Almost a decade after Philly Fashion Week was founded Parker asserts that the city’s fashion scene “is definitely growing.”

“We have a large number of very talented designers creating marvelous things as well as people of the industry… A whole lot of brilliant things are happening,” he said.

When asked about the small number of Latino designers established in Philly, Parker said, “there are Latino designers in Philly, but I do not know many. And this is something we are always on the lookout for, different designers with different backgrounds.”

From left to right, different designers show their collections at Philly Fashion Week. 
(Mikhail Veter).
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