NYLON - March 2009 - (Page 96) if, like us, you were depressed about the break-up of mooka kinney, you p can put down the prozac now. designers alison lewis and rachel antonoff are wasting no time to continue making clothing—albeit on their own terms. th i t photographed by carin backoff go your own way LEWIS by Alison Lewis Alison Lewis just introduced her namesake line last fall, and it has already been picked up by Barneys. Her comeback is sweet relief to NYLON writers like yours truly who lived to drop coin at Mooka Kinney sample sales. As with her former label, Alison’s latest is inspired by vintage. “If I could raid anyone’s closet, I’d probably choose Marianne Faithfull’s,” says the the Kansas City-born, New York-based designer. “With Lewis, I wanted to grow up and refine the aesthetic a little. Mooka Kinney was mostly cotton pieces. This time around, I decided to work with more luxurious fabrics, like washed silk. These are clothes that girls can wear to work, and then out in the city afterward.” The narrowly focused 10-piece spring collection evolved out of Alison’s obsession with louche antique photographs of ladies in their underwear. “It’s the time period from the ’20s onward, when women finally broke out of the mold of really having to be ‘dressed,’” she says. To that end, Alison studied everything from Man Ray’s nudes to Puce Moment, a short film by Kenneth Anger made in the 1950s, featuring a woman putting on a beautiful gown, set to melodic rock music. Her clothes are a coy mix of cutesy babydoll dresses, tapered, eyeleted, high-waisted shorts, and silky body-skimming blouses. It’s sexy but in a nerdy way (no surprise, since Alison, a graphic designer by trade, says she has always dreamed of a career as a librarian). For the color palette, Alison took a cue from her travels. “When I visited India recently, I was so impressed by the bright, rich colors everyone wore,” she recalls. She employed some of those evocative hues—deep purples, orangey reds, hot pinks—and mixed them with simple floral prints, for her own line. According to the designer, another difference between Lewis and Mooka Kinney is that the new label is “much less about myself,” another marker of a more mature aesthetic. As she puts it, “I have friends of all sizes and shapes. Even though I’ll definitely wear the clothes in my own collection, I started thinking more about what looks good on other people and what they would want to wear, too.” Allison proudly swears that her A-line silhouette shift dress—“a total classic”— flatters pretty much every body type. And although she’s still moonlighting as a graphic designer to pay the bills, she has zero plans to quit the fashion business anytime soon. “I was never ready to stop doing this,” Alison says. “And it’s exciting to have something that’s 100 percent from my perspective.” LAUREN CRAIG 096 stylist: robyn victoria fernandes. hair and makeup: tracy alfajora at workgroup for dior cosmetics. model: janelle fishman at q model management. all clothing by lewis, socks by miss sixty, bracelet and necklace by zoe chicco, charm necklace by lee angel. LEWIS
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