Tanner Fletcher (Q8792)
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American luxury fashion house based in Brooklyn
- Tanner Fletcher LLC
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Tanner Fletcher |
American luxury fashion house based in Brooklyn |
|
Statements
When Tanner Richie and Fletcher Kasell began ideating their spring 2025 presentation, they thought of featuring the artist Jeanette Getrost, tasking her with transforming one of their white gowns into something new. “We really like her work, so we didn’t give much direction,” said Richie. What could Getrost do with a blank canvas, particularly one alive and on the influencer and model Dylan Mulvaney? What an artist’s dilemma.And that is just what the designers titled this collection: “The Artist’s Dilemma.” “It’s our own personal dilemma, in a way,” said Kassel, with Ritchie expanding: “We have so many ideas and now we touch so many categories that sometimes we have to pick and choose what we can do.” Since launching their label almost five years ago with a run of tote bags and tees, the design duo has rapidly expanded across lifestyle, bridal, menswear, womenswear, and everything in between. Such growth is certainly exciting, but it’s not an easy thing to pull off this early on.Kasell and Ritchie have, minus the usual growing pains hiccups, stuck the landing. “We’ve upped the quality quite a bit now,” said Kassel. Expanding their wholesale and direct-to-consumer business has increased their orders, which has allowed them to level up their production partners. This change was most noticeable in the womenswear, which this season seemed to find the sweet spot between what customers and retailers are asking for and what Kasell and Ritchie want to make. A prim corseted dress with a full circle skirt meticulously gathered at the hip was a shining example, as was a yellow checkered jacket covered in sheer sequins. “The main improvements of the season come in the women’s,” said Kasell. “We’ve had a substantial offer in menswear for a while, so it was a little unbalanced until now.”Most importantly, scaling has enabled Kasell and Ritchie to start drawing outside the lines some more. They faced white lace with PVC to make a fabulous trench coat, created a few playful bloomers (an ongoing trend, believe it or not, but one that worked well here), and rendered some of their signature silhouettes in swishy nylon, black and gingham, to give them a fresh spin. They were weird, fun, and effective. It’s this kind of thinking that will help them keep things interesting now they’ve built such a singular world.Today’s presentation was arranged as a series of vignettes.
Models polished silver, sharpened pencils, spun wool, exercised, or, in the case of Mulvaney, posed statuesquely. Her dress was covered in little black bows by the end of the show—a Tanner Fletcher signature. Sometimes the best way out of a dilemma is going back to the basics.
7 September 2024
“I don’t want to say it but it’s more…commercial?” said Tanner Richie at a preview of his and his partner Fletcher Kassel’s fall 2024 collection.The wordcommercialshould not be taboo, but it does carry a certain connotation among the fashion cognoscenti. Commercial often equates to boring and uninspired, overly merchandised, and even monotonous, but Tanner Fletcher is none of those things. The better way of describing where the brand is at the moment would be, as said by Kassel: “the business is business-ing.”Kassel and Richie have been watching their business experience growth while also witnessing a restructuring of the market. “We’re seeing growth because we only know this,” said the designers of the industry landscape today, explaining that they’ve also made sure to nurture their direct to consumer channel. Buys have shrunk for many independent designers and young brands of late. Chalk this up to an inevitable adjustment after a period of overzealous buying from retailers post-pandemic, or simply a reaction to the current wholesale landscape. Still, Kassel and Richie are full steam ahead, plotting to expand their so far successful made-to-measure business into the wedding space (“is it bridal if they’re not just brides?”), and looking to develop their vintage resale business, which they say has also been well received. “Our customers associate the brand with vintage,” said Kassel. “They will go to our website and buy a sweater along with some vintage candlesticks,” added Richie.Fittingly, this collection explored the theme of an estate sale. Kassel and Richie are amateur vintage collectors turned dealers. They source antique home wares or clothes, use them to inspire their collections, and then flip them by selling them on their website. It’s a clever system, with a decent profit margin depending on how they price each item. Where that applied to their ready-to-wear most literally was in a tailored jacket with vintage brooches. Each one will be different, the designers explained, as they’ll handpick which pieces of their collection to apply to each style sold.Picking up from last season, Kassel and Richie also took to building their catalogue of core silhouettes, expanding their denim range and knitwear selection. The couple’s bow suit from the spring 2023 lineup continues to be a bestseller: “We’re a bit sick of them, but it’s still fun,” joked Richie of the appliqués, which have also taken over TikTok with the now pervasive “coquette” trend.
Regardless, here the design duo took to refreshing the style with ingenuity, adding wire inside each bow. They also expanded on their pinstripe tailoring story from last season, adding frilly laces to jackets and coats, and made a very covetable hefty puffer jacket out of sheer floral sequins. The niche they’ve built for themselves consists of adding these dainty delicate details to traditionally masculine fabrications and styles. It works, and there’s ample room to build on here, moving forward past the more straightforward juxtapositions.Kassel and Richie have been savvy thus far when it comes to their business choices. Now a few seasons into the wholesale of it all, they’ve resolved to be more authoritative with their offer rather than bending to retailers’ desires. “They ask us to do things and then don’t buy them, or then say the sell-through isn’t good,” explained Richie, “but now we’re listening to ourselves first.” Up next the goal should be to keep their focus without becoming formulaic in their approach. What has helped this label find its groove is its sense of whimsy. Even the most prolific of best sellers are born from a combination of instinct and a sense of play.
13 February 2024
“It feels good to be taken more seriously,” said Tanner Richie as he and his partner in life and business, Fletcher Kasell, walked through their spring 2024 collection. It’s been a whirlwind couple of months for the duo. In March, Bad Bunny coveredTimemagazine wearing their now signature bow suit, and in June their Tanner Fletcher label was announced as one of the 10 finalists for the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund. This has translated into both editorial and retail interest: Folks from Nordstrom, Bergdorf Goodman, and Neiman Marcus sat front row, as did editors from most glossies. Not too shabby for a brand launched only three years ago.But their debut runway show this afternoon, themed as a beauty pageant and featuring witty descriptions of each model contestant, was all giggles. Such is the Tanner Fletcher duality. It can be a serious brand without being self-serious; it can be whimsical and kitschy as well as wearable and sensible; and it can dress both the Upper East Side lady and the Bushwick enby.“I think that the cooler, younger people see it as more of a Bushwick vintage-y vibe, and our older customer sees the refinement and the richness in the fabrics,” said Richie. This kind of self-awareness will serve him and Kasell well as they continue to shape their label, and it had a welcome impact on their spring lineup. For starters, they continued to expand their assortment of dresses and more traditionally womenswear pieces. The frocks were pretty and well cut and teetered on the line between the pair’s retro-now aesthetic and the way the woman shopping for a sheath on Net-a-Porter or Moda Operandi dresses. A bias-cut silk floral number and a sheer black slip were particularly convincing here. “Our customer sees it as genderless, versus the [insert e-tailer here], which sees it as a very girly dress in line with other of their brands,” said Kasell.This season the designers also expanded on what constitutes basics in their world: a couple of slip dresses, a run of pinstripe tailoring, jorts with frilly lace and ribbon accents, a cutesy rib tank top, cozy grandma knits, and a run of fantastic white dress shirts. They got these just right and were smart to enhance them with some funkier pieces, like silk garter belts or knit floral brooches.The duo found more confidence to experiment with a variety of fabrications too.
Two suits—the most eccentric—stood out in the lineup: one with lacey and silky trims sewn on in a stripe pattern and another cut in a black-and-white floral jacquard with its edges frayed. Also cool: floral separates covered in sheer sequins. It’s these kinds of pieces that really hit the spot at Tanner Fletcher. They’ve found a balance between modern and retro; now to amp up the weirdness.
12 September 2023
Last season, Tanner Richie and Fletcher Kasell hosted a prom-themed presentation in the West Village. Fun as it was, the affair was a busy one—maybetoobusy—so this time around the pair opted for a night in instead. Rather than a presentation, they made a digital lookbook, and instead of a night out, their theme was a slumber party.“I think this season we discovered that people are really becoming so immersed in the world we’re creating, and we just want to create good vibes,” the pair said during a showroom appointment. And so, for this season’s lookbook, the vibes in question were captured at an apartment in Bed-Stuy that has been untouched since the 1950s, which the duo found online. It may very well be anxiety over the headlines in the economic section of papers, or the overarching feeling of exhaustion after the intensity of the September shows, but many designers this season are opting to stay off the runways and offer lookbooks and digital activations instead. Either way, there’s more to fashion than a show, and Richie and Kassell built a world that translated well through their carefully curated images.The duo finds inspiration in all things retro, and this season they doubled down on this approach with a collection instilled with a mixed bag of reimagined anachronisms: Art Nouveau-like rose prints decorated dresses and button downs, ’70s tuxedo ruffles were applied onto lapels and side seams of velvet tailoring, Victorian ruffles and animal embroideries decorated knitwear separates and dresses, and ’90s mini skirts and silky slips provided a hint of sexiness Richie and Kasell had not committed to until now. The pair also introduced a range of core items: Cotton tank tops, tees, and boxers with a velvet bow as branding. “It feels like the bow has become our signature, so why not just go there,” they said.“We tried to make this collection a lot cooler than in the past,” Richie said, as Kasell added that it’s “definitely more grunge, and a little less retro.” Mission accomplished. Fall had a slightly more grown up sensibility. Sexier, sure, with sheer tops, flattering vests, mini skirts, and leather outerwear, but also more contemporary, and more aligned to what the designers’ friends and cohort are wearing. The Gen-Z/Millennial cusp is big on thrifting and hodgepodge styling, and this is a spirit the duo captured well without losing their signature humor—peep the slogan tees and sweaters, and if you don’t get it, well,bless yourheart.
14 February 2023
It was all about the Spring Fling at Tanner Fletcher earlier this week, when the label showed its new collection at a prom-themed presentation in the West Village. The space was decorated with vignettes showcasing a progression of what would take place during an idyllic prom night: getting ready, posing for pictures, a bit of dancing, a bit of punch, and some postparty sleepovers.Tanner Richie and Fletcher Kasell started their label during the pandemic; they are both business and romantic partners. This was their second showcase at New York Fashion Week, and for such a young label, they have an acute awareness of their aesthetic and the opportunity and constraints it presents. The pair tends to complete each other’s sentences and have a thing for wearing matching outfits, often by their own label. Like many, they have a nostalgia for a time they didn’t live through, but rather than being fixated on the early ’90s, their obsession is grounded in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Hence a collection full of vintage prints, charming retro cuts in tailoring and eveningwear, and cutesy bows and feather trims, all reimagined through the lens of a genderless label from Brooklyn in 2022.Richie and Kasell also find inspiration in interior design, which explains the retro wood paneling that was translated into a seasonal print in tailoring, and the florals that looked lifted straight from curtains or couches of the ’70s. These worked best when they were employed unusually, as in a silky tie or printed over clear sequins in a tailored suit or a camp-collar button-down and shorts. The latter, in fact, felt like the best intersection between novelty and their label’s core commercial efforts.Some highlights from spring included denim, such as jeans with embroidered details or those with diagonal crystal stripes, and pieces on the sexier side, like a tiny slip dress and a sheer black set. There’s opportunity here for the designers to explore a sexier—albeit still intrinsically queer—edge to clothes that feel aligned to their whimsical design ethos. Likewise there’s space for their suiting and dresses, beautiful and well made as they are, to veer less closely to their retro references.Richie and Kasell have a primness to their work that is offset by their humor and quirk. Their slogans continue to get funnier season after season: A “delusions of grandeur” sweater and a “spoiled brat” baby tank added a satirical tone that the more serious parts of the collection benefited from.
As the duo moves forward, the trick will be to continue to find the balance between retro nostalgia and their more contemporary work.
14 September 2022