Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez (Photo from Fashionista/ Steve Zak Photography/Getty Images Entertainment)
BRAND BUILDING
Good Advice for Young Designers
Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez sat down on April 15 at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York with Vogue’s Sally Singer and dished out some solid advice for budding designers.
Some of the advice was pretty obvious. They said designers need to stay true to their consumer, but noted that the playing field is far more crowded these days:
"We’ve been doing this for almost 13 years, and when we started, we would look on Style.com for the shows of the season and there were, like, 40 people—now after a Fashion Week there are 400 people," McCollough said.
But designers also need to stay true themselves, the Parsons grads said.
"It’s always good to piss some people off; our teachers hated us,” Hernandez said. “They were like, 'You guys have to stop making clothes for art girls.’”
Fortunately, McCollough and Herndandez didn’t take that advice themselves.
There's more from the event at Fashionista:
