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February 14, 2009 10:09 am
More than a few designers have elected to show their collections privately this season, Koi Suwannagate among them. But for Suwannagate, the decision is less a concession than a return to her roots, as she explained over dinner at-where else?-Koi. “There’s been a pressure to expand,” she said. “I was gratified to be a CFDA/Vogue finalist two years ago, but with that exposure came this
sense of, OK, I should do ready-to-wear, I should work with new fabrics, I should spend more time on my business and less time cutting and beading things myself. This economy,” she added, “has given me a good excuse to come back to my roots.” With that in mind, Suwannagate has scaled down her Fall ‘09 collection, which was inspired in part by artist Sophia Taeber, and has worked exclusively in cashmere. She wore two of her new pieces to dinner-a pair of cashmere pants with a tailored, almost legging-like fit, and a flower-embellished hand-knit cape-and was eager to show off the detail in each. “That’s the beautiful thing about a private presentation,” Suwannagate noted. “People can touch the clothes, study their subtleties. And I can talk them through the fact that we make our clothes for production in-house, the same way other designers make samples. I think that right now, that information is essential to buyers. They want to understand why the clothes cost as much as they do. I’m not sure you get that on the runway.”
tags: Koi Suwannagate
