Hazel Brown: Creating Clothing With Art in Mind
Ali Blankley hung up her paint brushes and starving-artist lifestyle for a sewing needle and the warmhearted fashion community when she started her clothing line, Hazel Brown, last year.
Buyers recently got a glimpse of the designer’s art-inspired collection at the Designers & Agents Annex during Los Angeles Market Week in June.
“Fashion is really fun. People in fashion are really nice,” said Blankley from her home studio in the industrial area of East Los Angeles. “I have had lots of help. Art isn’t like that. [Especially as a woman,] I felt like I always had to prove myself.
“[In fashion,] you have a setup like Designers & Agents. All you have to do is have work good enough to be accepted, and you show up and you’re in the forum. If your work is good enough, you are going to do well and you’re going to be bought.”
Blankley first sold linen skirts at Minnie T’s in Los Angeles’ Venice district and currently sells her looks at Southern California boutiques Aero and Co., Diavolina and Patty Faye. In addition to boutique buyers, she cites shoe designer Calleen Cordero as a mentor for her growing business.
With two seasons under her belt, Blankley is still grasping what it means to put together a collection. There are paper cutouts with rough drawings of shirts, skirts, pants and jackets scattered across her coffee table to help her visualize how her designs look as a whole. She went through a quick bout of researching fashion magazines for inspiration but now trusts her instincts instead.
“If you go from fashion magazines you end up [with] replicas of other people’s clothes,” said Blankley, who said she was inspired by American colonial clothing and artist Lee Bontecou’s canvas paintings and welded sculptures.
Wholesale price points begin at $90 for a simple cotton shirt and go up to $400 for a silk and wool Victorian jacket with corset boning hand-sewn on the outside.
Blankley’s “peasantwear” silhouettes include a raggedly layered skirt, a blouse with slashes burned throughout the fabric, and a raw-edged ruffled jacket with rusted hook-and-eye closures. Details such as silk-screened line drawings and hand-typed classic poems sewn on the inside lining soften the look. Blankley uses natural fabrics—including linen, cotton, wool, flannel and leather scrap pieces—in neutral colors.
“I see other people make all these prints, and I love it. I think it’s fantastic, but I don’t think I can get my head around it. A lot of my clothes are sculptural,” Blankley said. “It’s about the shape at the end of the day.”
For more information, call (323) 263-3713. —Rhea Cortado
