Me and my trusty colored pencils, circa 2001

Nobody would ever say that my path to becoming a fashion designer was a straight one, but you could easily say it has been a circular one. Long before taking detours to study psychology, biology, creative writing, work in the insurance industry, and play bass guitar, I was designing clothes. Fashion was the first genuine interest I recall having as a child. I since developed a lot of other interests and have taken time to study them, or just taken jobs in other fields because I needed work. But every detour has been necessary so I could gain maturity, collect experiences to draw from, and learn the value of patience and persistence. These are all advantages I bring with me to House of Caswell.

Fashion was my first and most genuine passion, and now that I’ve circled back around to it, I find that a lot of the activities I do now bring me back to my childhood. It’s such a joy to rediscover my favorite childhood pastimes! My favorite thing to do was draw, and my favorite thing to draw was outfits.

It started as a plan to create a wallpaper border for my bedroom out of fashion drawings I had made. So I drew on printer paper in a landscape orientation, and I’d draw as many people as would fit on one sheet, each with a different outfit from my imagination. Then, when I reached the edge of the page, I’d tape another page to the side and keep going. Eventually I had a huge roll of pages I’d taped together covered in my fashion drawings, and I’m sure it was more than enough to border my bedroom, but I never actually hung it up. The fun was in the creation, not the end product.

Eventually I gave up on the wallpaper idea and switched to loose leaf notebook paper in a 3-ring binder for my fashion sketches. At first I used markers, but eventually switched to colored pencil. And almost every one of my designs was finished with glitter glue, because my idea of great clothes back then involved lots of sparkles (not that I’m opposed to sparkles now!). I copied the models’ poses (but never the clothes themselves) from catalogs, because I figured if that’s how models posed in catalogs to show off clothes, that’s how I would show off my designs too. Now that I make art as well, that ability to copy positioning but not always precise detail has really paid off. I didn’t know it, but I was training myself to do exactly what I do now.

I filled up so many binders doing this, I lost count. When my mom eventually moved out of the house I grew up in, most of them were thrown out, but I saved one and I still have it. The clothes in it are actually things I would wear again now, since fashion is cyclical and the designs I made in 2003-2004 are once again in style. They are mostly everyday clothes, just a few evening dresses, which is pretty in keeping with the House of Caswell aesthetic. I did a lot of t-shirts with catchy slogans (good practice for Berried Alive t-shirts), prints I designed myself, tons of denim and jeans, cargo pockets, casual dresses, and track suits. Funny enough, when I look through the book, I don’t think there is anything I wouldn’t wear now, except for maybe a few of the dance costumes, since I’m no longer on a dance team. I designed clothes I wished I had. I loved fashion so much, it wasn’t possible for me to actually own the entire wardrobe of my dreams. But if I could draw an outfit, it still felt like I was owning a little piece of it.

While I was drawing, I always gave the model a name. I kept lists of names in with my drawing stuff, unique names I’d heard or lists of the most popular names from various years and decades, and I would think about who the girl was and where she would wear this outfit. This was a helpful skill I didn’t realize I was teaching myself too. When designing for House of Caswell, I treat every collection like a capsule wardrobe, so every garment serves a purpose. It helps me to think about the girl I’m designing for and where she’s wearing the clothes, just like I did in my books as a kid. As an ode to the childhood drawing books, I’ve decided to name all of my garments in the first collection after one of the models in the book I have.

Kylee, drawn on May 9th, 2003

A sampling of my childhood fashion sketches from July, 2003, including an original repeating pattern.

Now I rarely draw my fashions by hand, and if I do it’s on an iPad with an Apple Pencil. Instead, I usually draw my designs in the form of 2D CADs using Illustrator, and then 3D renderings using Clo, but all of the principles are the same. While I’m designing, I still think about the girl and where she’s wearing this piece.

A sampling of my current 2D CAD drawing style

I didn’t know it all those years ago, but I was studying for my future brand as I filled my 3-ring binders full of fashion drawings. I was teaching myself so many of the skills I use today, and even though I took a non-linear route to get here, I’m prepared now because of the experiences I gave myself when I was younger.

A Circular Path to Fashion

A Capsule Wardrobe