Tanya Taylor could not host a presentation this season due to the coronavirus pandemic. In these extenuating circumstances, Vogue Runway has made an exception to its policy and is writing about this collection via photos and remote interviews.
Tanya Taylor had already started designing her resort 2021 collection when New York entered lockdown in mid-March. In the weeks that followed, her team quickly learned how to design, render, fit, and sample the clothes virtually, though they likely didn’t anticipate they’d still be working from home when it came time to style and shoot the look book. Maybe Taylor could have booked a studio and attempted to photograph a model with social distancing measures in place, but she found an easier—and more relatable—solution: She shipped the clothes to a handful of artists, stylists, and friends to shoot in their own homes. The photo crew was replaced by self-timed cameras, and in lieu of carefully prescribed looks, Taylor asked each woman to simply add whatever shoes, accessories, and makeup they liked. Unsurprisingly, the results feel a lot more alive than a retouched look book that’s simulating life.
“I’ve never loved styling our customer,” Taylor says. “I prefer seeing what they do with our clothes and how they add their own personal twist. That’s where the look book came to life. It felt like these women were telling us how they want to feel in their clothes.” Diamond Mahone, a stylist based in Texas, cuffed the pants of her fuchsia jumpsuit and added sculptural earrings, printed gloves, and pointy pumps. Artist Camilla Engström used her own paintings as backdrops, mixing Taylor’s ruffled minidress or pleated lamé skirt with simple espadrilles or sneakers. Model Yasmin Geurts changed up the sash on her miniskirt and reclined in the bathtub; Taylor’s friend Mosha Lundström took her satin party dress to an abandoned racetrack behind her house; and Renata Zandonadi styled a lip-printed blouse and skirt with bright red lipstick of her own.
Flipping through the photos feels akin to spending a few minutes on Instagram. That wouldn’t quite gel for other brands, but for Taylor it feels natural and genuine. She’s a designer who had an engaged, active community before that became critical to survival, and it hardly seems out of the ordinary for her to cast them in a look book. Taylor said she was thinking about the joy her customers take in dressing up, a concept that evolved and took on new meaning as the pandemic wore on. To her followers spending their days in leggings, the clothes she’s proposing might be startling: puffed-up bubble skirts, neon knits, polka-dot bustiers. Interestingly, the impulse for most of her remote models was to tone those pieces down, either with sneakers and messy hair or silly, unserious poses. They offer an optimistic glimpse of how we might look and feel when we do finally re-emerge: grateful, happy, and dressed to stand out.
