Collina Strada (Q2815)
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Collina Strada is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Collina Strada |
Collina Strada is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
At the Collina Strada spring 2025 show, held in a small private park in the East Village, a model somersaulted onto the runway; grabbed a chunk of grass with her bare hand; playfully threw it at Paramore’s Hayley Williams, who was sitting front row; and sauntered away in a mix of artful dancing, acrobatics, and death drops that were more akin to diving into the earth. Hillary Taymour had titled this collection Touch Grass.“I feel like everyone is a bit overwhelmed this season,” she explained a few days earlier at a preview at her studio. “There’s a lot of chaotic energy with everything that’s happening on the planet and the election, and so I’m just trying to be grateful that I have a small, healthy business; trying to find inner peace, keep a smile on my face, and not get overwhelmed.”Outside, the sun set on Manhattan and a gentle breeze began blowing exactly as the second model, in a diaphanous slip dress with twisting and undulating long sleeves in a print that could very well be called “colors of the wind” made her way down the runway, her long, crimped blonde hair with the ends dyed green dragging on the ground behind her. Groovy jazz music was on the soundtrack. A few minutes into the show and it was evident everyone was enjoying a genuinely lovely New York City day.Just as lovely, and also romantic, were the clothes. A plethora of ruffles decorated asymmetrical dresses, barely there slip dresses, and even the back of a terrific tailored black satin jacket worn as part of a suit. Shell tops in lace and mesh were decorated with gathers or pleats or even sculpted flowers; classic sweatshirts had billowing chiffon sleeves; and chunky mesh boots were worn with ruffly lace socks (the first from the designer’s own in-house brand). Even the less outwardly femme pieces still had a certain softness about them—see the plaid tweed jacket paired with a washed striped button-down shirt and a bubbly little doughnut pouf of a miniskirt.Prints were delivered two ways—in levels of brightly saturated color or washed as if they’d been picked up at the beach after being in the sun and the salt water, banging against the rocks for several weeks. Although the color palette was largely made up of pastels, it was grounded by a series of all-black looks at the end, as well as bold turquoise.
Halfway through the show, Ashlee Simpson’s 2004 song “Pieces of Me” started playing on the soundtrack, except this was a bossa nova version with the lyrics changed to be about Collina Strada and eating one’s vegetables. Everything about it was charming and, crucially, self-assured. “We’re still trying to have a fun, goofy Collina, but in a grown way,” Taymour said. She certainly accomplished it. There was a sense that after a few seasons where the designer seemed to be exploring the limits of a certain kind of maximalism, she’d decided to strip everything back and find the singular essence that makes Collina Strada. The closing model wore a black lace top with matching black bloomers and pushed an “analog” lawn mower while sporting a pair of glasses from the designer’s newly launched sunglasses line like he was breaking ground before planting a garden.
7 September 2024
“We are the women of Collina / Our strength reflected in Collina.” So sang a chorus of angelic female voices backed by a heavy-metal soundtrack—sprinkled in with the most iconic parts of Britney Spears’s “Stronger” for good measure—that opened the Collina Strada show. “This collection is about being a strong woman or a strong feminine power navigating the chaos that is going on in this world,” Hillary Taymour said at her new Chinatown studio a few days before the show. “We’re not casting any cis men this season, which I’ve never done before, but it just felt right.” The models included her usual diverse group of friends and collaborators along with a pregnant model (in a great pair of lace-trimmed shorts); another who walked with the baby she’d recently given birth to; and, crucially, a few bodybuilders. “It’s time we reshape that meathead vision into something closer to the reality of femininity, something altogether sweatier and more refined,” said Taymour. Models had wet, slick-backed hair and a general dewiness about them, and a few of the sweatshirts came with “sweat stains” around the neck (this wasn’t about athleisure, but about putting in the work).There was a slight sense of things being pared back this season, although the runway show was as playful as ever—some models carried dumbbells with squashes at the end; others wore fake-rubber muscle tops painted in matching patterns and colors. The double Collina walk this time included the models striding seriously toward the end of the runway, their arms bowed slightly away from the body as if their muscles wouldn’t allow them to rest comfortably, and then on the walk back letting their guard down, skipping or swiveling their hips in an extra-dramatic fashion.The first look was a simple draped black T-shirt paired with loose velvet trousers in an abstract print in shades of black, mint green, and mustard yellow with a black ruffle cascading around the legs. The pants had a double waistband that gave the appearance of the top of a pair of boxers sticking out from underneath, something that Taymour said was an important part of her approach to product development. “We want to be able to offer smart shopping for people who love the look but perhaps can only save up for one thing,” she explained. Similarly, a pair of cargo pants had a built-in belt-skirt of sorts with drawstring details that would further help the wearer customize the look to their body.
The shoes were done in collaboration with Ugg (made of a corn by-product) and Puma (made from mushroom leather).
10 February 2024
“Everything sucks. We’re all doomed. The world’s on fire, but we’re doing a fashion show because that’s what we know how to do.” So said Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour at her Chinatown studio a few days before her presentation. On the show’s soundtrack, Oyinda sang “Why are we here, the earth’s on fire,” and the models walked out, their arms clenched at their sides, forcing a wide smile. When they got to the end of the runway, they let it all out and assumed their “real” face, the face of young people who are constantly asking themselves “Why are we here? The world’s on fire.” It was brilliant. (At my appointment, Charlie Engman, Taymour’s frequent collaborator, had asked me, “Do you know the ‘This Is Fine’ meme? That’s the inspiration.”)Other than river temperatures rising so high that fish are boiling instead of swimming, or the torrential rains that have turned Hong Kong into white river rapids (or, or, or…), one of the current things making us feel “doomed” is the development of AI. Especially in the creative fields, there is a constant underlying feeling that AI will take our jobs. There’s been an AI Fashion Week and fashion shows in the metaverse. But no one had yet approached AI as what it is at its core: a tool for creativity.In April, Taymour and her team fed all of Collina Strada’s previous collections into the machine, and for seven weeks they worked on refining the results, a constant back-and-forth with the machine to teach it what they liked and what they didn’t, until they eventually settled on the final designs. “[The AI offered] different draping elements that kind of feel chaotic but also fancy and really fresh,” Taymour explained. “It’s all very edgy but also relaxed and super-femme; that feels new and interesting.” The process yielded a set of results that at first may seem like they are at odds: On the one hand, it distilled the Collina Strada essence into its purest Collina state, like exploding the atom and finding what’s inside, and on the other, it pushed the Collina aesthetic even further into the most Collina Strada it can be, imagining things beyond what we think is possible in the real world.
8 September 2023
Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour has been thinking about the economy. “I’m trying to balance the looming recession version of fashion,” she said at her studio. She was thinking of herself as a small business owner, but she was also letting that principle guide her when it came time to design the actual clothes. “How does my customer purchase one piece of a Collina outfit and have it last and be a part of their wardrobe so they don’t feel like they are overspending on all of these things?” She added, “What does the toned-down version of Collina look like while still being fun?”The “toned down” version of Collina includes models in animal prosthetics: Some were turned into dolphins or dogs, others wore cute ears or fluffy tails (the show was titled “Please Don’t Eat My Friends”). But beyond the runway spectacle, the real answer is that it looks like classic American sportswear processed through Taymour’s singular creative vision. Two suits, one in a brown and blue plaid cotton flannel, and another in a sage green Eco satin, had floral appliqué embellishments on the hem of the jacket and the trousers; and, keeping with the animal theme of the collection, a matching shirt had a collar in the shape of dog ears. Geometric print jacquard slim-leg trousers were paired with a burnout velvet spaghetti-strap long dress with a ruffled hem, which was layered under a matching sporty tank. It was accessorized with one of Taymour’s signatures, an olive green tulle “skirt belt,” perhaps the easiest way for any person to bring a bit of the designer’s universe into their wardrobe. A great oversized chunky sweater, a sporty quilted jacket in a ski-inspired silhouette, and a great indigo crushed velvet duster coat rounded out a collection of sturdy wardrobe basics.Another standout was Taymour’s take on animal print, which she interpreted in a quite literal way. A fur-printed denim strapless dress with inverted pleats worn with matching wide-leg cargo trousers from one of the show’s earlier exits. A delicate lace-trimmed biodegradable satin tank was a beautiful shade of green that upon closer inspection was a reptile-skin print (a gecko, to be exact). It was worn with matching trousers, and a terrific deadstock plaid wool overcoat. Even Taymour’s dog Pow made a cameo, his face was printed on a t-shirt (the model wearing this look carried him under her arm to the great delight of showgoers). Another lovely silk organza mini dress had a floral print that featured bees.
The more formal gowns are a bit of new territory for the designer, but she’s leaning into it. “We’re trying to do some more sleek things, and we’re using a lot of silk satin,” she explained. A chocolate brown biodegradable satin bias-cut dress looked classic, although it did come with horns (removable) on the shoulders. Tommy Dorfman closed the show in a white satin spaghetti strap bias-cut number with floral appliqués covering an elongated hem that trailed behind her like a train as she walked down the runway. Taymour added, “I’m figuring out how crazy to go with the gowns, but I’m excited about the way it looks.”
11 February 2023
At Collina Strada, Hillary Taymour was in a fanciful mood. Hari Nef opened the show, wearing a dainty, lace-trimmed slip over wide-leg plaid trousers, her arms fluttering up and down like so many butterfly wings. Bedazzled on the front was the phrase “Got milkweed?,” an environmentally friendly take on the classic Got Milk? ad campaign of the ’90s, which also happened to be the name of the collection. (Milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillars will eat.) Fittingly, the show took place at the Naval Cemetery Landscape, which is managed by the nonprofit organization Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, and houses a monarch butterfly preserve. Taymour’s signature playfulness and Y2K influence were certainly present, but there was also a tender touch (some of the models wore extra-long braids that dragged on the floor behind them as they walked, like a Rapunzel that never had to cut her hair off to find freedom) and a mix of romanticism that resulted in some truly elegant eveningwear options.A floral lace–crocheted long-sleeve gown was worn underneath a structured bustier minidress with an exaggerated balloon skirt—a fantastic continuation of the exploration of panniers and bustles that Taymour has embarked on for the past few seasons. A different version, in a printed floral organza and accessorized with flowers made out of shredded chiffon, was also a standout. “I just feel like now that we’re a ‘trend,’ I really wanted to push it and be like, ‘We’re not just [sportswear],’” said Taymour after the show. “I can make these dresses for you and elevate it.” A carnation pink dress made from deadstock chiffon that hung from bent-wire flowers that attached to matching airbrushed pink breasts and nipples proved she could do both. She added, “I just wanted to push myself to do that.”There was no shortage of beautiful dresses, including a delicately gathered and pleated one in a floral organza with an asymmetrical hem in tones of wines and reds (its toile version also made an appearance, and the sheer white fabric brought to the forefront all the details of Taymour’s handiwork). Another slip dress with an empire waist and spaghetti straps was worn with a matching shrug (real millennial-heads will remember the shrug!) under mint green jeans—complete with a tri-row studded belt. It was a great example of Taymour’s signature silhouettes and layering.But lovers of her signature pants should fear not; there were plenty of good pairs to be found.
Big cargos came in hand-drawn floral prints, crushed velvet, and even organza. Decorated jeans were part of a collaboration with Unspun, a company that 3D-scans the body in order to create made-to-order denim. “I really wanted to make it for all body types; it felt really important,” said Taymour. She also debuted a collaboration with Virón featuring shoes made of upcycled materials, including ruffled velvet oxfords and chunky silver metallic boots, and a collaboration with Melissa on supercool and weird puffy sandals, which she paired with tiny satin ballerina-style socks that perfectly encapsulated the spirit of the collection. In the show notes, Taymour describes being inspired by “the butterfly’s symbolic cycle of life, death, and rebirth,” but with clothes like these, Collina Strada will live forever.
10 September 2022
Tommy Dorfman may be the girl who didn’t go to Paris in Hillary Taymour’s sendup of aughts reality TV “The Collinas,” but she is absolutely the girl who stole the show at New York Fashion Week. As a Lauren Conrad wannabe, Dorfman gets an internship at Collina Strada and fumbles the bag—all while carrying Collina’s new deadstock raffia tote. She is shamed by her peers for eating a meat-based sandwich, taking too many selfies, being bad at steaming trousers, and drinking from a disposable cup. Her performance is spot on—self-serious, absent minded, earnest, and heavily reliant on vocal fry—and leaves the audience inside the Angelika Theater cheering for more (a sequel, “The Stradas” please?). Dorfman’s star turn was complemented by a large supporting cast—Rowan Blanchard, Francesco Risso, Chloe Wise, Lynette Nylander, Jazzelle Zanaughtti, Ruby Aldridge, andVogue’s own Liana Satenstein among them. Angel Prost, designer Hillary Taymour’s partner, provided the soundtrack via their band Frost Children.The short film is the latest in Taymour’s pandemic wins. (Remember her video game, her animorphs, her rooftop farmstand show?) It illustrated, with a heaping spoonful of love, how ditsy and stupid and airless fashion can be. The irony—or maybe the genius—of it is that Taymour’s fashion is never stupid or airless. She is quietly thoughtful, making garments that flatter all bodies and all ways of life. Her well-executed projects, effectively seamless in their execution, may actually draw some attention away from the strength of her clothing, which, for fall 2022, looks better than ever.This season, she’s entered her ’00s phase, with pleated skirt belts that drip off the hips of many looks and low-rise cargo pants and shorts. Some ideas from spring 2022 carry over, like the angel-printed tee and meshy layering pieces that have long been a staple. Crushed velvet puff jackets stuffed with flower down are new, and they’re made with a zebra stripe or star seaming. “It is actually so warm,” affirmed Charlie Engman’s mother Kathleen, who appears in the lookbook and film. There is a low vibrating cake theme as well—Zanaughtti poses in a pageant ribbon top holding a pink cake, and a pair of jeans were dyed using melted sprinkles. Chiffon is shredded to evoke feathers and studio detritus is cut into fringe. The eclecticism of Taymour’s earliest collections persists, but here are dozens of wearable desirable garments presented in a lovable and laughable way.
Proof that being the girl who went to Paris isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We have great thought leaders right here in New York.
16 February 2022
New York Fashion Week skipped right back into action after an 18-month pause with Collina Strada’s spring 2022 show tonight. Situated on Brooklyn Grange’s rooftop garden in Sunset Park, the show was a raucous welcome back to business as usual—although there is almost nothing usual about the way Hillary Taymour does business.A few days before the show, she was in her Manhattan studio, fitting Precious Okoyomon in a fuzzy purple dress for an MTV runway show and explaining the key looks of her collection: “We’ve got a farm queen, broken skater queen, prom queen,” started Taymour, “and a frog princess.” The simple message was that after a year of doldrums, we should all have the freedom to dress up as the queens we are.But this season, rather than go fullAnimorphsas she’s done in the past, Taymour has found a happy marriage between the natural world and the world around her. She’s deftly fusing literal garden references with real-world pragmatism: The actress Sasha Frolova walked in a macramé skirt and a hand-beaded bodysuit—Taymour’s take on a basket of fresh-plucked flowers—hand-in-hand with her grandmother, who played the gardener. The voluminous, wafty dresses, mostly layered over pants on the runway, were for those sticky summer days when you feel ick about your body, but you’ve got to go out. A new trouser style had a thong built in, for when you feel hot, and belts were made to look like crystal tramp stamps—for when you feelreally hot. There were tons of new layering pieces like upcycled tees, cargo trousers, bias-cut and draped midi skirts, and even swimwear, not to mention the sculpted horse and beetle corsets. The former was drawn from Taymour’s past life as an equestrian—she also made winning-ribbon bags—her four-year-old niece modeled the beetle on the runway, one of Collina Strada’s numerous chosen family members who have grown with the brand.Look even closer, and you’ll find dozens of new accessories too, like upcycled raffia bags and necklaces and straps made from studio detritus. The level of handwork in this collection was dialed up exponentially, with hand-beaded pasties and flowers accompanying more producible items like doodle jeans and a new collaboration with Levi’s that birthed star-studded straight legs and classic denim jackets.On the runway Taymour dialed the wackiness of it all up to 11 as well. Models plucked carrots, sprinted down the catwalk, waved, laughed, and hugged while two live performances took place.
The front row—composed of Kim Petras, Tommy Dorfman, Hari Nef, Aaron Philip, Camila Mendes, and Ella Emhoff—was eating it up, maybe even literally. An errant carrot on the runway, while rhinestone-studded, would have made a nice snack. That begs another question: The glitterati obsess over farm-to-table bistros, why not an equally sustainable approach to fashion? In addition to bringing the good vibes and high octane fun to NYFW, Taymour also brings a deep commitment to reducing waste, turning bottle caps into pieces of high fashion jewelry. As we return to Fashion Week “as usual,” more of her peers should consider doing things the Collina Strada way.
7 September 2021
Who hasn’t, at some point in lockdown life, began to feel like they were devolving—or maybe evolving—into another life form? Stress turning you into a snake? Anxiety having you wish you could crawl back into a safe little egg? For Collina Strada designer Hillary Taymour, the idea of turning humans into animals offered a sense of relief and joy. So she partnered with the illustrator of theAnimorphsbook series, David Burroughs Mattingly, and collaborators Charlie Engman and Freeka Tet to make graphics that transform her cast of star models like Aaron Philip, Ruby Aldridge, Jeremy O. Harris, and Kathleen McCain Engman into cats, peacocks, praying mantises, and even a balloon dog. The levity is hard earned; throughout the pandemic year, Taymour has not only continued to push herself to produce environmentally minded collections using leftover materials and recycled fabrics, but she was also one of the first to create masks for sale and for healthcare workers.Funny as her human-morphs might seem—and they are delightful—Taymour is dead serious about her business. For fall 2021 she has used leftover materials from previous seasons, incorporated toiles straight into the look book, turned past seasons into a new material, and repurposed tees from the Kantamanto market in Ghana into the collection. She’s also launched a partnership with TheRealReal where vintage pieces unfit for the site have been recut and made into crop tops, dresses, and trousers.Her silhouettes are perhaps her most honest yet, layered and slimmed down into the way Taymour herself dresses. Sheer stretch tanks are placed over voluminous dresses and button-down shirts—some primly paired with pleated skirts—for a sleek, comfortable style that feels just romantic enough without losing a sense of practicality. I know, I know—an outfit that morphs into a frog might not seem essential at first pass, but as we redefine our lives, why not redefine our essential wardrobes, too? Taymour’s lively, sustainably minded pieces are a great start.
17 February 2021
Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele handpicked the New York brand Collina Strada to be a part of his latest project. Today, designer Hillary Taymour and her collaborator Charlie Engman premiered their pre-fall 2021 collection via GucciFest, a virtual film festival headlined by a new miniseries co-directed by Gus Van Sant and Michele titled “Ouverture of Something That Never Ended” that showcases Gucci’s spring 2021 collection. Collina Strada was chosen to participate along with 14 other emerging labels from around the world.The task at hand? Create, with total freedom as per Michele, an imaginative fashion film. Taymour and Engman decided to translate their eco-conscious, psychedelic world into a video game. The idea was to create an interactive extension to their spring 2021 video and collection, which featured a fantastical farm world filled with animated 3D flower models and moving natural landscapes.For the video game, which they’re calling “Collinaland,” Taymour and Engman, along with multimedia artist Freeka Tet, dreamed up a farm world, an underwater world, a self-expressive world, and an ice world, all inhabited by plants and animals and, of course, video game characters: real models that the team digitally scanned so as to bring human beings into the virtual world, rather than create avatars from scratch. In the game, each character explores the digitized earth scenes with the ultimate goal of helping to battle climate change. The characters can pick up trash, put out fires, water cacti, and help build waterfall ice bridges for polar bears.The Taymour-designed clothes they wear provide whimsical armor for tackling the global warming crisis: The models are dressed like cool, otherworldly warrior princesses in hand-drawn prints and pretty colors like pink and icy blue. Thanks to the partnership with Gucci, Taymour had the chance to explore more elevated techniques and fabrics, such as micro pleating, delicate embroidery, and ruffles that add an element of femme to her otherwise playful repertoire. The most impressive piece was the floral-print bodysuit with ruffle embroidery and peplum, but fantasy cargo pants with a bold ink blot print also deserve a shoutout, as does a hoodie reimagined with puff sleeves. A low-slung skirt and a cutout dress were accessorized with visible thongs—a cheeky nod to Tom Ford–era Gucci.
There is certainly a new element of sexiness to the collection, but one of Taymour’s best qualities is that she never skews too far in one direction. Even with shiny new Gucci-provided materials, her point-of-view is still wonderfully out-there.Taymour and Engman’s rather novel idea this season was to create clothes for customers and fans of the brands to interact with, without having to buy them. Yes, you read that right. They don’t want to keep putting more and more products into the world, contributing to our planet’s waste crisis. “We’re exploring different concepts around who a designer is and what a designer can be,” Taymour says. “We’re still artists and people are still looking at what we’re going to do next. But how do we create a different experience? There’s a way to create a more educational model or expressive model, rather than a product model.”Is virtual fashion a viable new strategy for fashion brands? Could it be a legitimate revenue stream? It will be exciting to see what Taymour and Engman do next because as they’ve proven the last two seasons in Collinaworld, it’s game on and all systems go.
16 November 2020
How did Hillary Taymour come to name her brand Collina Strada? Collina is Italian for “hill,” and it’s what her Italian friends call her, and Strada translates to “road.” She says she likes the way the two words sound together, but there’s more meaning to derive from the moniker. It could mean walking up the side of a hill, or perhaps facing an uphill battle, which in Taymour’s case is the fight against climate change. Sustainability is the focal-point of her brand and while she is certainly doing her part, she is honest and straightforward about how far we have to go.Taymour’s calls to action are simple: shop locally, grow your own food, don’t use plastic, and DIY your clothes, even if they’re based on her designs. She’s been transparent about the fact that while the majority of her collections are upcycled; she isn’t 100% sustainable yet (though she’s pretty damn close). Most importantly, she doesn’t speak about the climate crisis through any sort of doom and gloom narrative. Her approach, in terms of both design and activism, is one of hope and optimism.So it was fitting that in a moment when climate change is literally lighting fires in our faces and there’s a pandemic still threatening our lives, she forged ahead with humor and lightness. Instead of a traditional runway show, Taymour and her collaborator Charlie Engman created a virtual candyland, mashing up clothes with art and 3D animation. The video, dubbed “Change is Cute,” stars a mix of old and new Collina Strada friends, including professional track athlete Ce’Aira Brown, poet Precious Okoyomon, and disability activist Emily Barker. There are flower models too, illustrated by the artist Sean-Kierre Lyons. Set to a bouncy soundtrack by Angel Emoji, the 11-minute film features the diverse cast of humans running and jumping at several different farms upstate, as well as at the seaside. Cows and frogs swirl in and out of the frames, and the flower characters dance. It’s trippy and weird and wildly.As are the actual clothes that Taymour designed for spring 2021, which nicely balance novelty and practicality. A floral print slip dress with crystal straps was a standout piece, as were sweats and hoodies featuring playful hand-drawn prints. Taymour collaborated with Cosabella here on comfortable, quirky printed underwear that brings new meaning to the WFH ’fit (if you’re someone who has been dressing from the waist-up only, that is).
As conceptual and offbeat as Taymour’s garments may appear on the runway or on screen, she’s savvy when it comes to understanding what people actually buy and wear for everyday life. She’s a smart businesswoman, but her artistic integrity, sustainability, and dedication to providing platforms for her community and those who are often overlooked in fashion remain front and center.Towards the end of the film, a line in the soundtrack resonates: “Frogs are cute but change is cuter, I wish it would get here sooner.” We all wish and hope for change. In this industry and in this world, Taymour is wholeheartedly dedicated to making it happen, no matter how steep the hill.
16 September 2020
Hillary Taymour asked everyone to a concert on Sunday night. Inside a small, dark basement-level joint that looked like the kind of bar one goes to for an all-nighter in New York in one’s 20s, people stood tightly packed, waiting for her fall 2020 Collina Strada show to begin. The crowd was a mix of Collina Strada fangirls, the designer’s close friends and their kids, and editors who have become captivated by the 2019 CFDA/VogueFashion Fund finalist’s fantastical approach to design. As the last of the crowd careened in, a woman stood on stage, spouting off random facts about fruits, vegetables, and harmful carbon emissions. Taymour’s singular approach, the one that many have come to love over the last two years, was on full display once the lights came back up and the music began to play. The opening song was from the ’90s Danish pop group Aqua called “Roses Are Red.” As the tune bopped, out came model Hanne Gaby Odiele, followed by photographer Charlie Engman’s mom Kathleen McCain, who has really become the face of Collina Strada, sashaying down a grass-covered runway and carrying a bedazzled gardening tool like it was a royal scepter. Taymour titled her collection “Garden Ho,” and in her show notes, implored everyone to “get outside and be a garden ho.”As was her plea last season, Taymour is using fashion design as a motivator to get people not only to think more sustainably but also to actually do something to change their lifestyles. Grow more food, she says; shop locally, she says; be mindful of harmful packaging, she says. What’s special about Taymour is that she isn’t preachy or pushy in her pleas. She is a realist trapped in the mind and body of a flower child. Her personality is woven into every single part of the clothes she creates, and for fall, she showed more confidence in her own narrative than ever before. The models who followed Odiele and McCain were like fairy princesses for the new decade, gliding and voguing and sauntering and stomping on the grass dressed in scribble-print Victorian-silhouette frocks, neon lace leg-of-mutton sleeves with silver slip skirts, and rainbow pussy-bow blouses. She cast trans models, artists, a pregnant woman, and two toddlers. Taymour has clearly evolved her brand past the DIY tricks. Her tailoring was strong this season in terms of the corset jackets, the pink garden rose-printed coat, and the hot fuchsia deadstock faux-fur trench coat.
Also, the majority of the collection was made using rose silk and deadstock fabric.And accessories? Taymour styled some of her looks with more bedazzled gardening gear, like a sparkly watering can and fork. Her crystal water bottle, the one that nearly went viral after Maggie Rogers brought it to the red carpet at the 2019 Billboard Women in Music, made an appearance too. The show concluded with a performance by the artist and Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams serenading the crowd and the gaggle of Taymour’s nature sprites who danced wildly onstage. More important perhaps than how good the clothes were this season was the fact that everyone in the room was dancing too, and with giant smiles on their faces. Taymour is talking about sustainability just like everyone else, but she’s also having fun with it, lightening things up a bit. These are dark times, and we’re working in an industry that struggles every day to become more forward-thinking, as well as one where promoting cancel and callout culture on social media can get you million-dollar deals and a front row at the top luxury shows in Europe. We should all follow Taymour’s lead and come back to some optimism in fashion. She’s tending to a beautiful, hopeful garden, and the seeds are only just beginning to grow.
10 February 2020
As we approach the end of this decade, there is a lot to be angry about. People are pissed off, exhausted, and intensely nervous about what’s next after so much of our country’s dignity and integrity has completely gone up in flames. Collina Strada designer Hillary Taymour has felt the panic for some time now, but like the most anxious and sensitive among us, she has had a difficult time finding peace and sorting out the answers to the unknowns. Through her previous collections, Taymour has tried chakra balancing, meditation, and sound baths. Her designs have explored existential themes like self-love, self-preservation, and community healing. But beginning last season, she has focused her energy and her point of view on a much bigger crisis than that of, say, a barbaric, probably senile president. Taymour has always been passionate about sustainability and disturbed by the fact that the world is facing climate change. It’s here, it’s real, and as a designer, her vision for how to help—how to try, however small the steps—has crystallized after groping around in the dark for answers.Yesterday, she and her usual nonmodel cast of mothers young and old, LGBTQ+ friends, survivors, and small children gathered at a produce stand set up on the block that lines the west side of Stuyvesant Square Park. This was the set of her Spring 2020 runway show, and it drew a crowd that was probably triple the size of the attendees just two seasons ago. On each show seat, there was a reusable produce bag and a page explaining “Ways to Help Me.” It read:Eat less meat. Eat more plants. Start a garden. Grow your own food. Cook at home. Plant a tree—plant many trees,among other requests. The title of Taymour’s show was Thank You Very Much for Helping Me, and it was a humble plea for all of us to be kinder to our world and to aid in patching up the daunting, dangerous holes we’ve helped burn into it. Taymour’s collection this season was also about love and creating a safe space for those of us, like her, who wake up every morning scared to death. What forest fires will we see on the news? How many more ice caps will melt? How poor will the air quality be today? Instead of these questions, Taymour prompted the show guests to ask simply: How can I help?As the singer Zsela began to serenade the audience, Taymour’s support system of free spirits began to saunter slowly, purposefully down the tree-lined concrete runway.
Some danced and chomped on apples they grabbed from the produce table; others tossed kale in the air. One woman carried a baby, and another dragged a wire shopping cart filled with discarded fabric behind her. Almost everything they wore was designed using upcycled fabric, and it was one of the most extensive and streamlined collections Taymour has ever produced: mashed-up pastel fabrics, soft painterly prints, and tie-dye turned slip dresses, skirts, jeans, tunics, and bodysuits into uniforms for the New Age, DIY-motivated flower children. She is dressing the hippies walking barefoot through the park today, in an era not dissimilar to that which caused a movement of free love back in the 1960s. On that quiet sidewalk near the urban green, it was an emotional, powerful thing to take in during a week when looking at clothes over and over again becomes a glaring reminder that the fashion industry’s dirty secret is how incredibly wasteful it is.
9 September 2019
Hillary Taymour has a close-knit pack of friends, most of whom are makers, healers, poets, musicians, activists, and artists. In the past, the burgeoning fashion designer has cast some of them in her runway shows and lookbook shoots, highlighting their creative gifts through her own chosen medium. It’s a big part of what makes Taymour’s Collina Strada label such an impactful one on the New York fashion scene right now. She builds community through her craft and makes the rest of us rethink what clothing can say about who we are and what we do day-to-day. With her Resort collection, her most varied and wide-ranging yet, Taymour pushes this thoughtful outlook on fashion even further through a collaboration with one of her oldest compadres.Ten years ago, in the midst of kickstarting Collina Strada, Taymour went on Craigslist in search of an intern. Photographer Charlie Engman was the one who replied and, after he got the gig, the two became friends. He eventually started shooting Taymour’s lookbooks, this one included. Dubbed “Radical Transparency,” the designer’s Resort collection features collage prints of Engman’s work and that of his mother, Kathleen McCain Engman, who is his constant muse and the subject of his first book of photography, to be published next year. She also stars in the lookbook (along with a few of their other friends).With sustainability at the forefront of Taymour’s work, the clothes are all made from dead-stock fabric and recycled materials, including some one-off items like sneakers, and underwear that is embellished with small charms and pins that the designer’s grandmother left to her after her passing. Almost every piece is printed with original motifs designed by Engman and Taymour using mashups of Engman’s work, one of which they dubbed “Sistine Tomato” for its psychedelic, romantic visualization of the vegetable. The silhouettes this season were quite impressive, especially the skirts and dresses designed with a paneled train at the side. The button-down top with shoulder pads was a highlight, as were the ’80s pastel tie-dye pieces that felt separate from the increasingly ubiquitous tie-dye trend that’s taking over fashion. Taymour also injected a bit of humor with her “grandma couch”–fabric puffer jacket, which is soft but slightly structured so that it can be turned on its side and carried like a suitcase by the top handle, which she fastened to the waist.
Playful as Taymour can get, this collection was a clear indicator that she’s evolving as a designer and Collina Strada is advancing as a brand. Engman is the ideal collaborator for her, not only because they understand each other’s points of view regarding clothes and art and the environment, but also because they’ve built a community together.
13 June 2019
As a designer, Hillary Taymour is multidimensional. In the past, she has used her clothes to speak poetically about social media and society, energy chakras, and marrying one’s true self. As a person, Taymour is straightforward. She is honest about herself and her abilities, about the pressures of commerciality in fashion, and the need to make money as a young designer so that one can see their passion through to its fullest potential. And she isn’t afraid to admit her faults. This season, Taymour is being open about the fact that, hard as she tries, she isn’t completely green. As written in her show notes, she still buys plastic water bottles at the airport, orders Seamless instead of cooking, and is an avid Amazon user. So in 2019, using her Fall collection as a jumping-off point, Taymour has vowed to change her ways.Her show started off today with a “mini TED Talk,” as she referred to it a couple of days beforehand, given by environmental activist and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. He spoke at length about protecting life and Mother Earth while models (including one very adorable baby) came down the runway. Taymour used 75 percent deadstock fabric, some of which she playfully called “granny couch fabric,” made into very cool trousers and tops in swirling hand-painted prints and a daisy motif. In addition to those reused materials, Taymour also partnered with 4ocean to utilize beads the organization makes with recycled waste. These were incorporated into straps for a beautiful blush-pink dress that closed the show.Overall, the collection felt like one of Taymour’s fullest and smartest yet. There was something for many different shoppers, from chic outerwear to a covetable new minidress silhouette. It was wearable and sellable, but as she gets to be a bigger presence on the global fashion industry scene, Taymour’s main concern is staying true to her craft and staying on course to becoming a fully sustainable brand in the near future.
7 February 2019
Designer Hillary Taymour started her Pre-Fall 2019 collection asking some profound questions: What mistakes would you make again? How do you stay true in a chaotic world? How can silence speak? She came up with these queries while thinking about the fact that in a social media–obsessed culture, we may slowly be losing our ability to appreciate person-to-person interaction. To pose another existential question: Is human contact on an emotional level becoming obsolete? Taymour is passionate about reaching people through her clothes. She wants to attract her customers with cool, sometimes experimental garments, but also via the ethos of her brand as a whole. Collina Strada is about youthfulness, humor, and the ability to look inward, even when we’re wearing something loud on the outside. Her Pre-Fall lineup was successful because it showcased her messaging in a straightforward way, i.e. through brightly colored tie-dye T-shirts with the aforementioned quandaries scrawled across their fronts.Elsewhere Taymour showed pieces that were pared-back for her, like a black slip dress with thin tassels dangling from the straps. More vibrant were the striking deadstock fabric printed with a rainbow sheen on top of florals she used for a sheer lace dress and top, and a specially tie-dyed velvet. An uncharacteristically preppy checked jacket stood out, as did a simple pink frock with a slightly billowed skirt.
6 December 2018
Everyone needed a heavy dose of Zen today. Temperatures rose well into the 90s in New York, and from the bowels of the subway to the crowded streets above, it felt more like the depths of hell than a dog day of summer. Thankfully, the Collina Strada show provided an air-conditioned safe zone of solace. For Spring 2019, designer Hillary Taymour treated everyone to a sound bath. For those who don’t know, a sound bath is, according to Taymour’s show notes, “an ancient Tibetan practice in yoga where one bathes in healing music, often generated through singing bowls and gongs.” The idea is that the sound reverberations help calm your nerves and balance the seven chakras in the human body. At the onset of the show, a parade of young children dressed in white walked around the square-shaped runway clinking chimes. Each one eventually sat at a bowl, situated in a semicircle, and began to play. The child at the center was Virsaviya Borun-Goncharova, a little girl Taymour found on Instagram who was born with a rare condition in which her heart grew outside her chest cavity. The designer chose her as the primary fourth chakra.Taymour’s shows are deeply personal, thought-provoking, and poetic. In the past, she hasn’t always been able to connect the dots as far as making the fantastical wearable, but this season she bridged the gap. The minute the first looks started coming down the runway, it was clear that Collina Strada is really evolving. The opener, a white slip skirt and matching blouse tied just below the bust, felt undeniably sophisticated. So did the silk minidress fitted with a cape at the shoulders and a touch of diamanté fringe at one side. Taymour introduced texture in the pony-hair skirts, trousers, and jackets, and added a nice checked fabric to her typically monochromatic palette. Her most alluring technique this season was definitely the tie-dye, which she did in bright lime greens and deep blues among other hues.Feelings of peace and serenity were felt throughout the show, not only because of the children seated at the bowls, but mainly because of Taymour’s slight but important shift as a designer. She’s growing up, she’s stepping up, and she’s moving in the right direction. Her chakras must be aligned.
6 September 2018
Being a young conceptual fashion designer in New York is a balancing act, or at least it should be. There is a lot to be said for someone coming out of the gate with a distinct point of view and a deeply inspired, artful collection. These kinds of runway shows can be riveting, moving even, and the clothes are often so out-there that they make you think about fashion in an entirely new and wildly refreshing light. At the end of the day, though, designers have to make the sale to the buyers seated in the front row. If it’s too avant-garde, they can alienate themselves from the retail market. If it’s not avant-garde enough, they lose their pride and purpose. Hillary Taymour is learning as she goes at her Manhattan-made label, Collina Strada. Taymour’s Fall 2018 collection was heavy on concept (her runway show was staged as a wedding, featuring actress Sasha Frolova marrying herself) and overtly crafty clothes, but her Resort pieces offered something a bit more streamlined and relatable.She showed a new range of her popular T-shirts, stitched with puns likeChakra Khan, and embellished hoodies, but the main line was the draw. Taymour’s best pieces included multicolored and striped corduroy trousers and a minidress with a zen garden–inspired print, both made using deadstock fabric. The brown “Disney princess” dress was a playful yet accessible look, as were the pink and purple pencil skirt and lime green and yellow peplum top. The crystal-embellished wide-leg jeans were also brilliant. The items all touched on mass trends—crop tops, nostalgia, slip dresses—but without feeling like Taymour was sacrificing her humor or her singular aesthetic. She did a fine job harmonizing her designs this season, and it seems as though others are starting to get on board with this talented up-and-comer, too: Collina Strada has just been picked up by Lane Crawford and Harvey Nichols.
12 June 2018
What do you wear to marry your higher self? In designer Hillary Taymour’s universe, the attire has a baby-soft, childlike craftiness to it. Collina Strada’s Fall 2018 collection was built around the idea of looking inward and learning to love yourself as you leave the naive and youthful state of childhood and enter into adulthood. The show was set up like an intimate wedding ceremony, complete with a stage decorated in white draped fabric. Sachets of confetti and tiny mints were placed on each seat. The bridal party was made up of Taymour’s eclectic group of male and female friends, one of whom was a toddler, while another was old enough to be his grandmother. The clothes they wore were a far cry from the typical matching bridesmaid dresses and included a beautiful burnt orange crushed-velvet slip and an appealing yellow skirt worn with a matching ruched crop top (modeled by “flower girls” and influencer twins Reese and Molly Blutstein).Generally speaking, Taymour’s designs can sometimes come off a little too strange—if we’re talking about mass retail appeal, anyway—and, in this lineup, that was true of the leopard-print skirt and poet-sleeve top with a sheen fabric overlay. Similarly constructed pants that had cheap-chic looking crystals at the cuff could also be interpreted as too literal when considering Taymour’s use of craftiness to make a point. But she’s still growing as a designer and a person (she just turned 30), and as odd as some of the pieces appeared when they first came down the runway, they all made sense together in front of that fake altar. Taymour may not always hit the nail on the head with her fabric choices or her construction, but she knows how to design a cohesive collection. Among others, the buyers at Selfridges and Ron Herman happen to agree. They’ve recently started stocking Collina Strada. This new lineup was well edited and, even though the self-empowerment theme might have sounded trite or repetitive if explained ahead of the show, the message and the presentation were powerful.The final look was the bride, and actress Sasha Frolova wore all white. She had on a pierced-nipple T-shirt, denim cargo pants, and a silk ruffled apron skirt tied around her waist at the front. Her bouquet was an oblong orb of mismatched crystals. As she stood in front of her guests, the music stopped and the higher-self officiant, musician Bunny Michael, began to recite a poem about pussy power and self-respect.
Next, Frolova took out a sheet of paper on which she’d written vows to herself. It was weird and wonderful and after she said “I do” and promised to love herself for all of eternity, the audience cheered. The ceremony was a lovely sentiment in a turbulent time where so many designers are angrily (rightfully) responding to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. It was a celebration, pure and simple, and Taymour’s clothes made the moment even more of a sight to behold.
9 February 2018