For a soft-spoken Cali girl who based her last collection on the feeling one gets from being on a mushroom trip, Sarah Staudinger is a damn good businesswoman. The 29-year-old designer and entrepreneur has, since launching her label Staud in 2016, profited into the tens of millions of dollars in an impressively short amount of time. And this year, she was nominated in the Emerging Designer category at the CFDA Awards.
Staudinger began with an urge to fill what she saw as a huge gap in the marketplace between fast fashion and luxury fashion. Her price points are near perfect, and after a couple of years of tweaking her ready-to-wear model and design ethos, Staudinger now has a very full, very impressive lineup of clothes, bags, and shoes. As Staud investor J. Christopher Burch told Forbes last year: “Sarah has a unique point of view amidst a sea of sameness.” In a nutshell, Staudinger was a pioneer with the whole Instagram-first, influencer-marketed, direct-to-consumer fashion thing—and she did it her own way.
In fact, there probably aren’t many fashion designers with mass appeal that could pull off referencing a mushroom trip at a château in France. Staudinger, however, is continuing down this cool, psychedelic rabbit hole after touching on it in her Fall 2019 lineup. Because she’s now in Resort mode, the trip, both physical and mental, has taken the Staud girl to a faraway, romantic setting, a place where, as Staudinger noted while walking through the collection in her bright and chic new showroom in SoHo, “she’s exploring her balance and finding her yin and yang.”
The collection did feel like a push and pull, but in the best way possible. Staudinger mashed up feminine fabrics like organza with patent leather, faux fur–trimmed jackets against a beautiful opera coat with ribbon-tied sleeves. There were nicely tailored corsets and striped sequins, bucket hats and crochet and fringe. In a way, it was a little like Staudinger: at once a laid back, beachy Californian and a glamorous bicoastal fashion designer who is an all-around boss. It was all happy and playful, especially the cheeky blue toile print which was detailed with motifs of the various Staud “office dogs,” her little Yorkie puppy included.
It was clear that Staudinger had a lot of fun designing this collection, and she was visibly amped up when talking through the new textures and the small, quirky details. There were plenty of covetable new bags and shoes too, all of which will no doubt sell out the second they hit the Staud Insta feed. Some accessories were customizable, with removable flowers on heels and a bag with a front pocket that could be detached and used as a crossbody or a clutch. Staudinger is constantly studying what her customers want more and less of, reaching out to them directly on social media and taking what they say into account when designing. Staudinger is giving the people what they want.
