Erin Fetherston gets casual and comfy with Juicy Couture
When Juicy Couture announced it had tapped Erin Fetherston as a guest designer for the brand this year, it initially felt like a mismatch of epic proportions.
Juicy is a quintessential California brand — its laid-back, casual DNA took shape in sunny Southern California. Fetherston is a New York-based designer known for her tailored cocktail dresses.
But it didn’t take long to discover the pair’s commonalities. The 29-year-old designer is actually a California girl, born and bred in the Bay Area. And the two brands share a hyper-feminine vibe as distinctive as Fetherston’s famously stick-straight platinum bangs.
“I felt that my own design aesthetic and Juicy Couture’s had a good amount in common in terms of having a fun-loving, feminine spirit,” said Fetherston, sitting down recently at Juicy Couture’s headquarters in Arleta. “And I loved the idea of coming home a little bit through this project.”
Edgar Huber, chief executive of Juicy Couture, said the company zeroed in on Fetherston after Juicy founders Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor stopped designing for the label early this year. Fetherston was chosen because of her “fashion knowledge and experience, her California roots and her individual sense of style.”
As a guest designer and consultant, Fetherston is charged with creating collections that bear her youthful, fashion-forward mark for the sporty brand, which was bought by Liz Claiborne in 2003. The partnership is open-ended, and Fetherston declined to forecast how long she’ll be on board.
The designer’s first foray for the brand — a holiday capsule collection of chic-but-comfy eveningwear called Juicy Loves Glamour Girls by Erin Fetherston — debuts in stores and online Monday.
Taking the brand’s signature tracksuit head-on (remember all those bums that read “Juicy”?), Fetherston employed the brand’s weighty velour in new and wondrous ways — most notably in a draped, dolman-sleeved dress (available in short and floor lengths) modeled after the high-shine velour gown she whipped up to wear to this year’s Met Ball, mere days after starting her tenure at Juicy.
“I challenged myself to make a gown that would be appropriate for the Met Ball that would also be Juicy Couture,” Fetherston said. “I used that gown as the starting point for the collection.”
Velour isn’t the only Juicy hallmark in the line. A washed silk tuxedo jumpsuit boasts a sporty ribbed waistband, and dresses feature the brand’s signature draw-cords, only braided and embellished.
Other looks include short velvet dresses with halter and bustier bodices, black jewel-embellished velvet evening jackets, washed black silk pants and sculptural skirt and a viscose T-shirt embellished with satin bows and rhinestones. Prices range from $158 for the gussied-up tee to $378 for the maxi-length, dolman-sleeve dress.
“Casual, chic elegance perfectly complementing the Juicy Couture heritage,” is how Huber described Fetherston’s initial collection.
“This is my first time working with sweats and T-shirts and super casual looks, and I love that,” said the bicoastal Fetherston, who rents a house in Los Feliz and maintains a residence in New York. “When you are a designer with a strong point of view, it’s really fun to go into different arenas to express it.… It’s interesting for me as a designer to think, ‘What does Erin Fetherston wallpaper look like?’ In this case it was, ‘How am I going to bring my aesthetic to Juicy’s core casual product?’”
Fetherston’s aesthetic has been crystal clear since she launched her eponymous collection fresh out of Parsons School of Design in Paris in 2005. She readily acknowledges that her designs are a direct reflection of her personal style.
“My [namesake] collection is an autobiographical reflection of what my experiences are, manifested through a fashion collection,” said Fetherston, clad in a pair of dark, unembellished fitted jeans, a gauzy cream-colored button-up blouse of her own design and Chanel two-tone ballet wedges. “And I like working like that. I feel like that’s what gives it authenticity. I need things to be close to my heart.”
After her Paris debut collection in 2005, the statuesque designer was instantly pegged by the media and the fashion flock as the perfect model for her girlish, almost doll-like dresses.
She’s since moved on from overtly girly looks (she doesn’t even like to use the word “girlish”) into more sophisticated territory, but her pulled-together personal style remains integral to her brand’s image.
“I think that for a long time I was almost a dress-only girl,” said Fetherston, who primarily wears her own designs. “So my style was very dress-centric. But in the past year and half I’ve started to get into pants and great blouses. I think my style is feminine, it’s romantic. I do love clothes that have an airiness to them. I love wearing the color white all year round.”
Daily work wear often consists of an easy-fitting dress paired with flats or sandals. A night out at the Tower Bar or Chateau Marmont — two of her favorite haunts — usually means slipping into a cocktail dress and sky-high heels. “I’m 5 feet, 10 inches, but I will definitely wear a 6-inch heel.”
Vintage fashion is another passion. Fetherston is a devotee of local secondhand shop Shareen Vintage and hits up L.A’s flea markets for retro treasures. “I love to mix my own designs with vintage,” she said, adding, “The whole vintage scene in L.A. is really fun.”
When it comes to beauty, “I’m more of a naturalist,” said Fetherston. “So I’m a lot more interested in skin care than makeup. To me, skin is really more important.”
She takes an equally low-maintenance approach to her famously blunt bangs — she cuts them herself. “One could seriously cut them every other day because I just cut them a millimeter here and there,” she noted. “But if you’re really busy, you could go every two weeks.”
For a fun-loving, feminine spirit, every two weeks might be just uncomplicated enough.
