Rachel Comey (Q8969)
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Rachel Comey is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Rachel Comey |
Rachel Comey is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Earlier this fall, Rachel Comey’s social media manager posted videos of women at the designer’s annual sample sale showing off their prizes. Coming across the images on Instagram, what was striking was not just the diversity of her shoppers—young and not-so-young, uptown and down—but also their purchases. There’s a cult of Rachel Comey, and what it comes down to is that she’s made a virtue of being most things to most women. She’s the designer you go to for a quirky shoe, an elegant printed dress with a vintage feel, hard-working but easy-wearing chinos, retro-ish bathing suits—the list goes on—and all at prices that are aspirational, but within reach for most professionals. So many other brands have priced themselves out of the realm of possibility.Comey’s pre-fall is organized according to this expansive principle. At a showroom appointment she showed off a group of sturdy canvas apron tops and generously sized tool bags “for women who work with their hands” and more corporate-ready monochrome knit sets, for example. Of course, all of us, whether we’re indoor people or outdoor people, are interested in clothes with a breezy, playful sensibility at the height of summer; that’s why you’ll find little crochet ensembles, a pair of printed harem pants, and a slip dress made special by a bejeweled bodice and contrast seam piping.
16 December 2024
Rachel Comey is of the only-do-shows-when-there’s-something-new-to-promote mindset. Last September it was her collaboration with the octogenarian artist Joan Jonas on the eve of her MoMA retrospective. This September it’s her new made-in-Italy handbag collection. Comey’s done bags for years, but never in Italy. She’s leveling up.“I was intimidated by working with these Italian factories because of the cost of development and [the work of] running the business. So it had to be the right partners,” Comey said. “I’m trying to ‘work smarter, not harder.’ Someone said that to me a month ago, and I’m keeping it in mind.” It’s hard to believe Comey is intimidated by much. Twenty-odd years in, she’s built a business not with advertising campaigns or magazine editorials, but with the support of stylish customers for whom her clothes are part of their real lives.I think of what she does as norm-core for women who don’t do norm-core. There’s usually something a bit off, a bit quirky, about a Comey design, but it doesn’t get in the way of it becoming part of an everyday wardrobe. She may put these clothes on a runway, and hire a musical act to perform—this season Mexico City’s excellent Mabe Fratti—but she designs the clothes for the street.Comey said the spacious tool-bag tote the first model carried was designed with her clients in mind; “they’re women who work.” The clothes targeted all aspects of their lives. There was denim tailored into non-standard shapes like slouchy tunics and swaggy full-legged trousers, and suit jackets paired with fluid skirts in midi and ankle-lengths. The latter was a quite covered-up, even modest proposition. For contrast, she also had a yellow silk floral jacquard jumpsuit with a black lace racer back. Whimsy was part of the story too. A little black shift dress was embroidered with swags of gold fringe and colorful hand-knits that looked like your grandma might have made them—if your grandma liked Patrick Nagel in the ’80s.
10 September 2024
Earlier this month, Rachel Comey threw a party for a milestone that snuck up on her, the 10th anniversary of her Crosby Street store. Comey is a New York fashion stalwart, nimbly tweaking and adjusting—and growing—her collections, as designers who’ve enjoyed more exposure and industry fame over the years have struggled in thispost-post-pandemic retail slump. The proof is in the San Francisco store she opened last year, and in the people who poured into the street outside of her NoLita shop on the evening of June 5. There are lines all over SoHo of shoppers waiting to spend money inside luxury stores; Comey’s crowd was there for the vibes.That’s much cooler, don’t you think? Comey has never lacked for cool, and her new pre-spring collection (the term she prefers over resort or cruise) has plenty of it. Consider a bolero-style jacket embroidered with flowers and chain fringe, or a going-out top in coral pink silk with skinny black paillettes stitched here-and-there, or a honey-colored shearling jacket (not pictured in the lookbook, unfortunately) flecked with silver leaf. On the more hard-working side, she showed pantsuits in an array of non-traditional materials, and said she’d be wearing the retro-ish brown striped version all season. There was also a lot of denim. Jeans were treated to a waxy finish, and acid wash shades of brown and gray-blue were cut into subtly sexy nipped waist dresses.Another thing that’s cool: booking models of multiple ages, making obvious signs of aging a focal point of your images, and not making a big deal of it, but treating it rather matter of factly. On the subject of growth, resort is the first time she’s designed and shown sneakers. Made in Peru, they’re a lo-fi alternative to the performance sneakers we see everywhere now. You’ll be seeing women padding around in them at her next street party.
17 June 2024
Rachel Comey’s showroom was busy with buyers writing orders. All those gloom and doom stories about retailers opting out of New York Fashion Week that we were hearing—they didn’t apply here.Maybe that’s because Comey designs for the real-life needs of her customers in a changing environment—meaning not just the ways in which we work and how we dress for them, but also shifting weather issues. Considering the primary role that climate plays in our clothing choices, you’d think designers would be talking about record-breaking heat and atmospheric rivers all the time. “Am I the only one?” she laughed, when altered to her one-of-one status. From other designers you tend to hear empty pronouncements about “my woman” and eye roll-inducing nonsense about “independence and strength,” as if those are rare qualities among womankind.Comey doesn’t bother herself with that kind of talk. Instead she said was thinking about how the summer humidity extended into fall here in New York last year, and about all the rain we got after that, as she was designing. She made adjustments accordingly, adding both sheer puckered separates (for staying cool) and waxed cotton outerwear (for remaining dry) to her seasonal mix. She’s also using more water-resistant moleskin than in the past. With a new store in San Francisco, she has even more weather and clothing considerations to address; for instance, the way the locals wear down puffers in the summer (see Mark Twain, if you’re confused).If all this makes Comey sound serious or boring, that’s the wrong impression, as the flower bedecked party pants in the look above make clear. Also fun: a flower print dress pleated Fortuny-style and a black and white fringed chubby jacket that makes a legit alternative to something we’ve already seen too much of this season: faux fur.
20 February 2024
Naked dressing reached new extremes in the summer of 2023. Here in New York, at least, it wasn’t unusual to see young women stepping out in boxer shorts and tanks, and in many cases bra tops were replaced by bras, plain and simple. Anticipating another hot one in 2024, Rachel Comey has put together a steamy lineup for pref-fall. With an eye to the thermostat, she’s added portholes to everything from ribbed knit sweaters to smocked cotton dresses, and otherwise zeroed in on abbreviated and body-baring silhouettes like undies with built-in belts and crocheted camis.Comey’s kind of sexy is oriented to the female gaze, however, and the quirkiness that has defined her work for more than two decades is still very much present. The portholes, for example, appear on the back of a little sweater and sundress, and for her contribution to the boxer shorts as outerwear phenomenon, she styled a white pair under a black midi-skirt with discreet potential.A “kitchen sink” skirt embroidered with all manner of holographic sequins and paillettes tapped into that eccentric streak, as did, to a lesser extent, the swirly knit jacquard separates with drawstrings for adjusting the amount of midriff or leg to show off. But the collection was well-rounded enough to include a linen knit dress in a tawny light brown and a three-piece pant suit in a certified viscose and linen blend, either of which would be suitable office attire for Comey customers with desk jobs. She also has an interesting take on “event dressing.” Instead of a cocktail dress or even a jumpsuit, which have become fairly ubiquitous, she proposed a matching off-the-shoulder top and pants set in a highly textured “foam” fabric; it looked like a lot of fun.
21 December 2023
It’s been two years since Rachel Comey put on a runway show. She’d more or less sworn them off, one of the few designers to commit to the alternate formats that so many talked about during the pandemic. But with a collaborator like Joan Jonas, the multimedia and performance art pioneer, a lookbook release wouldn’t cut it.A spry octogenarian in a pair of printed Rachel Comey pants, Jonas was stationed about midway down the runway that the designer had set up in Great Jones Alley, snapping iPhone photos of every look. “She’s lived and worked here a few blocks from our studio for 50 years,” Comey said afterwards of her attraction to the artist. “And she’s so brave, so dynamic in terms of the different mediums she uses, from performance to live drawings to installations.” (She credited Soft Network, an arts non-profit, for the intro.)Woman-to-woman inspiration is as good a reason as any for an fashion-art hookup, and the positive vibes were flowing despite the spirit-sapping late season heat wave. Maybe that’s because Comey and Jonas are such a nice fit, kindred spirits across generations, both reluctant to be hemmed in by their respective industry’s rules. One of the succinctest descriptions I’ve ever heard about Comey’s clothes is that they’re “basic without being basic.” Here, the pieces that lifted from Jonas’s oeuvre were special without being showy. Too much of the fashion and art scenes are pretentious.Direct nods were easy to clock: a miniskirt and dress were embroidered with fringe in the style of a gallery poster bearing Jonas’s name, and the silver foil separates could be linked to her penchant for mirrored surfaces. The model who wore the foil skirt at the end of the show carried a full-length mirror in the crook of her arm, a detail that seemed to give Jonas a kick. Abstract printed jersey pieces were apparently lifted from the artist’s video work, but could’ve just as easily come from Comey’s own colorful, irreverent playbook.“It was the first time I had this enormous archive of somebody’s life’s work. All of us in the studio were making textiles, embroideries, knit pieces, and embellishments of different kinds, all based on Joan’s work. And we just had so much fun,” Comey said. That may be the real lesson of this match-up: to commit to experiment, and to have fun.
6 September 2023
Let’s get something out of the way: Rachel Comey isn’t launching a maternity collection. The idea behind this season’s lookbook was to capture women in many phases of life; there’s a young Paulina Porizkova lookalike, a PR maven, and, yes, a pregnant woman in these pictures, each one of them looking like they could’ve stepped off the New York street into her studio for the photo shoot. Comey doesn’t concern herself with editorial messages, and her clothes aren’t costumey or performative. She’s got her eyes on her clients, and she’s focused on expanding her retail footprint. At a preview last week, she said was close to signing a lease on a San Francisco space.If that lease goes through, the store will open shortly before this delivery arrives there in a November timeframe. It’s a winter collection, and as such Comey devoted a lot of attention to sweater dressing. She’s got knits in all shapes and textures, from an office-ready sweater dress with a hitch in the hem that gives its skirt a gentle volume to an openwork crochet tank-and-tapered-pant set, plus matching scarf, that would be useful on the holiday party circuit. Comfort and mobility count for a lot here. Outerwear is another focus, given the season, but beyond the shaved shearlings that she brought back from last year (warm with lots of hand appeal), she took an all-weather approach to cocoon coats, cutting them not in wool or cashmere but tech satin or moleskin better adapted to a future when hotter, snowless winters could be the norm.As keyed to real life as Comey’s collections are, they’re not humorless. Fun and whimsy drive sales, too. Here they came in the form of polka dots embroidered on tulle and blush- and coral-colored sequins.
13 June 2023
Over a recent breakfast Rachel Comey was reminiscing about the Chelsea flea market. In the 1990s, before zoning laws made way for luxury high rises on Sixth Avenue, antique dealers and junk collectors turned the empty lots from 24th to 27th Streets into a weekend paradise for vintage-lovers. Comey once stumbled across a cache of printed textiles that she still uses as references today, among many other treasures fashion-oriented and not.Walking into her Crosby Street store in SoHo conjures something like the sense of kismet that a Saturday morning trip to the Chelsea flea market once did, the racks full of pieces with a one-off sense of the special, from a summery crocheted top with dragonflies knit into the pattern, to a poplin slip dress picked out in baguette-cut glass beads. They look like they could be vintage, only without all the tedious legwork.Not that Comey has anything against legwork. She’s been at this for 20-plus years. It’s a career stage when some designers (especially male designers, especially in Milan and Paris) retreat to ivory towers and lose touch with what women want. She’s still working on personal instinct, which in turn keeps her relevant with her customers. A black denim apron belt in the spring lineup is a nifty accessorizing piece with a zip pocket that eliminates the need for a bag, because Comey herself is happier when she’s hands-free.She’s also looking outward for ideas, of course. With an eye to summer weddings, she whipped up a one-shoulder peplum in stretch smocked cotton along with a matching skirt. Together or separate they have serious re-wear potential.
21 March 2023
Last month, Rachel Comey hosted an evening of readings at her SoHo shop. It was a dismal January night, cold and rainy, but you wouldn’t have known it from the crowd of authors, readers, and Comey customers that packed inside. Among them was the 87-year-old feminist critic Vivian Gornick, not the kind of celebrity other brands stuff their front rows with, but a star nonetheless. That’s the difference between Comey and so many of her designer peers: She rejects the fashionable—as in the accepted—way of doing things, and finds her own success.Fall, Comey says, is when her clients make big purchases. “It’s the time they invest, so they’re more thoughtful about what they’re buying. If you’re spending money, you make sure it works for you.” That means Comey was thinking more about versatility and longevity here, and less about impulse buys. It translated into easy tailoring separates in mix-and-match plaids, including a reversible car coat, and layerable sets like the Milano stitch alpaca knit tunic, tee, and pants that can be worn together or broken apart several different ways.A nipped waist denim button-down paired with matching jeans confirms that Comey gets something fundamental about how we dress now that none of the more formal pantsuits on the runways seem to understand: Pulled together is a big yes, but constricting uptight clothes are a no. This season’s gotta-have-it floral dress follows the same comfort-first rule. It’s made of printed mesh and draped through the waist and hips to flatter.Comey shot this lookbook during New York Fashion Week. She has a take it or leave it approach to runway shows; sometimes she’s on the schedule, other times not. At the moment, she’s more interested in building her retail network. Authors, readers, and Comey customers in San Francisco and Chicago should keep their eyes peeled; she mentioned those two cities as prime locations for RC stores.
27 February 2023
Rachel Comey was readingThe Candy Houseby Jennifer Egan when this pre-spring collection was set up in her Broadway showroom early this summer. We were talking books because she’d worked up a collaboration with theNew York Review of Books— “the country’s most successful intellectual journal,” according to the New York Times—splicing up and printing a handful of recent covers for a slip dress, a camp shirt and midi skirt look, a pantsuit, and, yes, a tote bag. Her friend Leanne Shapton is the art editor of the magazine, and the connection via which the project came about.Comey is a wardrober to New York’s creative class. Her name may not come up in discussions of the red carpet, but you’ll see her pieces in the closets and on the backs of writers, artists, and downtown performers. The author Sheila Heti’s name appears on one of thoseNYROBcovers and she’s a friend and client, too.Since this collection lands in stores and online at the end of the year—sales on her e-commerce site have never been bigger, Comey reports—she zeroed in on cold-weather knits and practical, but still statement-making outerwear. Sweaters run the gamut from pastel jacquard sets to cozy crewnecks and cardigans with a homemade feel. On the jacket front, there’s a glossy black puffer (don’t miss the pneumatic collar) and a hooded brown shearling.For the holiday season, Comey likes the look of lace, in the form of a plunge front maxi dress picked out in sequins and easy mix-and-match separates, which she showed with strappy slingbacks covered in tufts of black feathers. Even cerebralNYROBsubscribers need a pair of party shoes.
27 October 2022