TILLYandwilliam NYFW debut 2013

In the winter of 2012, TILLY and WILLIAM set to work on growing their budding transformable designs into a full runway collection. It took a village to breathe life into this opus. Tilly used natural dyes to color the collection, a skill learned from Isa Rodrigues at the Textile Arts Center. Lindsay Degen taught Tilly how to knit at TAC, and magically helped with the custom knits. Uncle Howard Lapidos, a true garmento, showed us the ropes of how to manufacture in the Garment District of New York City. The Sourcer's Guide helped us narrow down our search for the softest, most delicious and sustainable fabrics we could find - with no minimums, and the phenomenal sample houses that would be right for our creations - thank you Peggy, Nancy and so many others - for taking on our unusual patterns and figuring out elegant solutions for our minimal yet complex designs. We chose the venue as a love letter to Rad Hourani, who had shown there the previous season - Rad was the only designer we knew of at the time thinking about design in a similar way to us, and yet came at it from a wholly different angle. The way our garments can be worn in so many different ways, we knew we needed to work with dancers who could really show that throught fluid movement. We worked with choreographer Mia Orozco and dancers Marcus Braggs and Kayla Muses, to shake life into the middle of the show, turning Kayla's dress into Marcus's pants, and Marcus's pants into a Kayla's shirt. This midway point in the show segued the stoic black white and neutral first half into the reversed, flipped and turned colorful brilliance of the second walk.