THE MAVERICKS

Three designers, three different playbooks. Jeffrey Yan speaks to the women rewriting the fashion narrative for this decade

WHO: NICOLA GLASS

WHAT: THE GUARDIAN

WHERE: KATE SPADE NEW YORK

One of the most striking things about the spring/summer 2020 show was the incredibly diverse cast. Was that decision made very early on in the process?

It was. Even when we were casting last season’s show, we thought about it, but we did it too late, so we didn’t have all the right sizes. This year, we planned it from the very beginning. Kate Spade as a brand has always portrayed many types of women—different ages, sizes, walks of life—but this is the first time we did it in a fashion show setting. To me, when you do a casting like this, it brings the clothes closer to real life—a broader reflection of the women of the world. We wanted this true feeling of individuality, so we really looked at each woman and thought about who she is, where she’s going and why she’s wearing that outfit. We wanted you to feel that you were sitting on a park bench watching real women going about their lives. We even thought about the plants they carried. For example, there’s a woman out and about on a Saturday morning, buying a potted plant. One woman is on her way home from work and she has grabbed a bouquet from the bodega. Karen Elson is on her way to a dinner party and she has picked some flowers and put them in a jam jar as a gift for the hostess.

So the individuality of real women was the starting point of the collection?