Tyler McGillivary Made New York Fashion Week Fun

Hi Tyler — congratulations on your first show! How are you feeling after it?

I'm feeling good. I'm feeling like it went as we hoped, which is really all one could ask for. And I feel like everyone had fun, so the energy of it was really strong. All the models seemed to really feel good in their clothes, which to me was really important. And I'm feeling ready to do the next one, too, which is really a good feeling to have right after it happens.

She’s feeling motivated and inspired! You've been around for a minute and have amassed such a following. The girlies love you. Why a runway show now?

The reason we did it now is we were in a place financially, and in terms of creative and design, where we felt like we could really execute or show at the level that we wanted to do. I'm a perfectionist, but in a kind of messy and energetic way. I've talked to friends about doing the show since like 2021, and each season we would kind of tip-toe up to it. Then I would be like, I just don't think that we're at a place where I'm gonna put on something that I feel good about. This season, I feel like we had a really strong vision of what we wanted the show to be, and we're in a place, in terms of production and team and skill level and financials, that we could pull it off at the scale that I wanted to make it work.

It's nice to hear that you listened to your instinct and observation, as opposed to feeling pressured to do it when you weren't fully ready.

Part of the reason that we did the show was to elevate the brand and generate excitement around it. There have been times when we wanted to do that, but I felt like if we did that and we weren't ready, then it wouldn't do what it needed to do for us. It was a difficult decision to even wait this long. My team really wanted to do it, but I felt like this was the right call. And I am really happy we waited. It was definitely the first time we were ready to really do this.

Tell me about the clothes and the inspiration. It was all so fun and so wearable, like I can see a lot of people wearing it.

We're known for being a more direct-to-consumer brand that feels kind of commercial, in a certain sense. For this, I was really trying to have those pieces that were really wearable, but also pushing us to have sort of more editorial pieces. It was really inspired by classic depictions of New York in film and television, so Party Girl, Sex in the City, Felicity — the sort of iconic portrayals of these messy New York women and their friends that live in the city and inhabit it and really grow throughout the course of the series. The idea of it is this imperfect woman who's letting her personality lead the way that she dresses, and is really focused on feeling like herself when she goes out. A lot of the clothes were gonna fit into that narrative.

Then with the wider idea of date night, it was like, What is a perfect date like? How are we going to tell the story of this great date in the context of New York City? So we built the collection around a story. It starts off with Katie wearing this jacket that matched the yellow skirt perfectly and had a little cropped button down with it — reminiscent of these ‘90s runway shows, like Todd Oldham and Betsey Johnson, where all the pieces are hyper-coordinated. Then we have the taxi cab skirt, and we go into this Martini skirt and this kiss print, these flower pieces. It was this print-focused narrative of what a night would be told through these images.

When I was watching the show, I felt like I was in an episode of Sex and the City.

I'm so happy that it felt like that, because I've been obviously thinking about this a lot and thinking about who I would want to wear these clothes. The answer is, of course, Carrie. She has a style. It's about finding those pieces that fit into your wardrobe and elevate your personality with style. Such a big part of that was the models we chose. They really showed through the clothes. Each of them have their own personalities so intensely. Each one of them has entirely their own identity within the outfit that they're wearing.

One of my favorite costumes is on the two men that carried [one of the models] offstage at the end. It was inspired by this one clip of Brittany Murphy walking in a Dsquared2 show in gloves and a little tiara in the late ‘90s, early 2000s, where the two designers come out in top hats. We were putting on a show, and we wanted to end it with this hilarious, theatrical moment. The dress is covered with engagement rings and fake diamonds, and I was like, I don't want people to think that the end goal here is to get married. I wanted the message to be: Wear whatever you want. You're getting carried out by these two gorgeous men, and that's the point. You're still having fun, no matter what.

What did you tell the models when you were coaching them for walking?

My brand director did a lot of it. We played all of them Kylie Minogue's “Can't Get You Out of My Head” as a sort of inspirational beat for them to walk down the runway to, because it’s the energy of somebody having a really good time, but also in the throes of romance that's taking over their system. We gave them a mix of that Brittany Murphy clip, played that song and then talked about watching Shalom [Harlow] and Naomi [Campbell] and Kate Moss. That really informed a lot of their walks of embodying that classic energy of walking down a runway and really selling it, taking the runway by storm and making it yours. Pretty much everyone rose to the occasion.

Your show was one of the only ones where people were lively and cheering. It was special! Last thing that I wanted to ask you is what is your intention with wanting to do a runway show?

We inhabit this interesting space, because we're not currently in that capital-F fashion space in a certain way. Our community feels very grounded: It's very accessible, and we have a lot of community events, where it feels like everyone's included. We started the brand and have this community that we built online since 2019, and it really took off during COVID. We work with so many artists, designers, photographers, stylists in our everyday shoots, and it was time to bring that community into a physical space and make it into something that felt like exciting for us and exciting for the people that we work with. The creativity that goes into it is so fun for us — so much more fun than I was expecting. To put it together and to work with new people and to bring this world to life even for 20 minutes. The next day, everyone was texting me like, “What's next?” It was a celebration of our brand, of these people that we work with, of these models, of the representatives of the brand and representatives of New York culture, to a certain extent.

I love that answer because who wants to be a part of “fashion” anyway? The industry always will, follow or take from designers who are just doing what they want to do and having fun and celebrating.

We are a brand that has established a following, regardless of whether that is in this specific fashion realm. There are people that are craving that type of fashion, in a sense. The people that came to our show are so indicative of that. I think of them as fashion girlies, but I think of them as fashion girls that really just want to have fun with getting dressed. They're not so serious about the way that they put themselves out in the world

Photography: Matías Alvial