Images by Kate Sims

Rachel Antonoff, a petite New Yorker known for creating vintage-inspired wearable and feminine pieces, sat down with us before her ballet class and daily macrobiotic lunch to chat about her current collection, her love of Pippin and her unconventional entry into fashion design.

Pamela Castillo: Your collection for S/S10 is inspired by ballerinas. Can you tell me more about that?

Rachel Antonoff: In general, my clothing is very costume driven. That’s what drew me to fashion design in the first place: the whole element of dress-up, playing pretend, characters and all of that. Clothing has a very transformative power. You can be anything. Specifically, in the past year I’ve gotten really into ballet and went through that phase that I never went through as a child, where I think ballet is amazing…and subsequently kittens, which I do think is related.

Pamela: Kittens?

Rachel: Yeah. All of these interests that have popped up for me this year are things that people love when they are five through nine. It sort of got me thinking, like, ballerinas are the human versions of kittens: insanely graceful creatures—in sort of an inhuman way. And stickers, I’m really into…so many things I never realized are awesome. I started going to the Ballet, and I saw the Nutcracker. The amount of magic that happens in The Nutcracker is obscene, ridiculous! I got really inspired. Also, Sarah Sophie Flicker, who is a ballerina, is in my lookbook. We do a weekly ballet class at her house, which is where I am going after this. We just got really into ballet and ballerinas.

Pamela: So you never did ballet as a child?

Rachel: No, never. And our teacher is an ex-NYC ballerina. She’s exactly what I would picture the stereotypical ballet teacher [to be] if I were five. Her name is Miss Mary Helen, which is very beautiful, and she wears her hair in a bun. It’s really fun.

Pamela: So other than the Nutcracker, are there other plays or movies that inspired you in the dress-up aspect?

Rachel: My S/S10 presentation was supposed to look like different people rehearsing for a play. The fictional show we were putting on was called Magic To Do, which is from Pippin, my favorite musical. The first scene of Pippin is a song called Magic To Do, which is about a bunch of characters putting on a play. So that’s what it was about, a weird amalgam of Pippin meets ballet.

The whole set was an enchanted and disenchanted forest made of cardboard cutouts. You walked around and saw different scenes, like two ballerinas rehearsing on point, both from the NYC Ballet. Around the back was an acrobat walking a balance beam and another girl judging her with numbers. There was a whole musical section with a big cardboard cutout piano, and Diane Birch was pretending to play. We had a conductor and the star getting ready, putting her makeup on at a vanity. [She] was played by Alia Shawkat. There was definitely a lot of props. I really like the idea of doing something outside the box and themed. It was held in the stage of the Henry Street Playhouse. I later found out that my great-grandmother put on plays there as a teenager. And randomly enough, my grandmother gave out birth control there for free when she was young, which was really progressive for that time. My whole family is from the Lower East Side, back when it was Jewish settlements, and I guess the Henry Street Playhouse was a big place at the Lower East Side back then.

Pamela: So have you always wanted to be “part of the show” by being a fashion designer?

Rachel: No, not at all. I was never that into fashion. I never intended to do this. I really fell into it in such a backwards way. I had a line prior to this one with a partner [Alison Lewis], called Mooka Kinney. She was my roommate and we had this magical “Summer of Dresses”. We were really into vintage clothing at the time, specifically dresses, and every night we would put on a dress and go somewhere. We had all these ideas of dresses we wanted to have, and I had this neighbor in New Jersey who was the sewing mom in town, Ms. Marlene Sapoff. We went to her with our ideas and she made them. It was crazy exciting because it was great to see your ideas and dresses actually exist.

I had previously worked in fashion PR for Rebecca Taylor, so I emailed pictures to some editors I knew and then we had a meeting with Teen Vogue and they called Barneys on our behalf. It was like a dream: magical and terrifying. Before Barneys we had one store. We had three samples. We would wear them and parade around boutiques hoping someone would say “That’s cute”, and we’d say ‘We made it! We made it!’. We went parading around I Heart, and the owner Jill said, “I like that!” and placed an order for 16 dresses. It took Marlene from June to August to fill this order of 16 dresses. Then we got an order from Barneys for 300-something dresses! There was a solid year when I cried in public in Midtown every single day, because we just didn’t know what we were doing! I felt like a reality show….when they say, “Here’s a career of somebody else’s. You do it!” And [Allison] had a full-time job, so it was just crazy. It took about four years to stop feeling like a complete fraud, having no idea about what we were doing. Now I kinda know what I am doing.

Pamela: What other things have inspired you lately that you think will be incorporated into your next collection?

A look from S/S10

Rachel: It’s kind of private detective-themed. Nancy Drew, Hitchcock…I’ve been working on getting my private detective license. It will be keeping with the whole adventure theme and, again, it’s kind of a throwback to childhood. My brother and I used to pick people to spy on when we were kids. Pick strangers and follow them around for a while. I’m really irritated because I’ve had this idea since the summer, since before I was aware of Bored to Death, which now seems to be a thing, so I’m a little less excited about it.

Pamela: Yeah, and the new Sherlock Holmes movie is coming out…

Rachel: I know. Well, at least it’s not vampire-themed. I must have read about spying somewhere, something must have piqued my interest. Then I was thinking about it and found my old Nancy Drew books. Then I heard about Bored to Death and was like, ‘Huh?’… And then Band of Outsiders featured Jason Schwartzman in their lookbook. Still, there are so many different things that fall into the umbrella of that genre. So many different ways you can go with it, like Diane Keaton with Woody Allen, Grace Kelly and Nancy Drew. Manhattan Murder Mystery is one of my favorite movies. And who doesn’t like a trench coat?

Pamela: What other books do you like to read? What are some of your favorites?

Rachel: I love reading. We were just talking about The Lovely Bones movie because that’s one of my favorite books ever. It’s really, really sad. If you read it without crying you might want to go to the doctor. I’ve read it multiple times, and the last time I read it was on a plane—terrible idea. You should be in the privacy of your own home and you should have a box of tissues and dedicate an afternoon to being depressed. Mary Karr is my favorite writer of all time. And I really like memoirs. Sloane Croasley wrote one of my favorite books recently, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, which a collection of essays. Her book is amazing. And now HBO is developing [it] into a series.

Pamela: What do you like to do on your days off?

Rachel: I see a lot of movies. I really like to go to the movies alone. I like going random times, like noon, because there’s nobody there. That’s when I wanted to see The Lovely Bones. I saw The Family Stone by myself, and it was a good time to cry alone in the theater. I hang out with my boyfriend, my brother and my friend Nate every single night. That’s pretty much what I do every day. And I go to Souen every day.

S/S10

S/S10