We sat down with Daniel McCall last week at the new Ace Hotel to talk about his past, present, and future in fashion design. In the past he has owned a shop called Androgyny and a showroom called No. 28 in Morgan’s Alley. Most recently he is preparing for the Mercury Fashion Show and making steps towards Parson’s School of Design in Paris.
On travel…
Originating from Eugene, Daniel hasn’t settled far from home but has also called Japan, France, and other countries home as well. “I love to travel. I love to see the way people dress in other countries. Of course globalization has homogenized fashion a bit, but even things like climate still has an affect on what people wear. The history of a country also influences the clothes; in Italy you can see the craft so much in the outfits, the perfect fit. After I travel, I think it’s visible in the clothes I make. For example, this woman bought several dresses from me at No. 28 and remarked that they reminded her of Belgium. I had just gotten back from Antwerp!”
On Androgyny and No. 28…
“Androgyny came out of the 90s when I was really interested in blurring the boundaries of gender and clothing. I also was trying to find a brand name, but ultimately decided to just stick with my name. No. 28 was such a learning experience as I got to see women react to my clothes. It was also great to see how clothes fit a variety of body types–not everyone is the fit model’s size and shape. I work with a lot of jersey right now and I’m in love with it. It has a flow and drape to it and works well for many different women. It has a beautiful weight and movement.”
Daniel McCall
On his concepts…
“I’ve been working in fashion for 20 years now. I’ve been tormented by it for this long!” He says this laughing, but one gets the sense that there is something in fashion design that keeps pulling at him, keeps wanting perfection. His latest creations have been jersey dresses (that have sold well at Una) inspired by Madeleine Vionnet. Some people may know about her because the fashion house just appointed a new creative director, because Barneys in New York City dedicated their fall fashion week window to Vionnet, or because you bought one of McCall’s dresses and read about her on the clothing tag. McCall loves Vionnet for its supreme timelessness, it’s wearability, and also it’s tweak on fashion history: Madeleine Vionnet was one of the first who liberated women from corsets, outfitting them in more comfortable yet lovely garb. McCall wants the women who wears his dresses to know this history. “I want to provoke a feeling and I want to tell a story.”
Needless to say, this man is not about trends. Not to say that his designs are vintage reproductions or look stuck in antiquity–he strives to take an aspect of historical clothing and modernize it. “I don’t want to see my clothes in a department store all jam packed together and each piece losing its special singularity. When one of my pieces is hanging on a rack I want to see some air around it, I want it to have space. I call this ‘hanger value’…does the piece have a life to it? I see this in Comme des Garcons.” Along with Comme des Garcons and Vionnet, he counts Yohji Yamamoto, Dries Van Noten and other Belgian and Japanese designers as inspirational. These designers seem to have a very architectural quality to them. This is something that isn’t coincidental as McCall is extremely interested in architecture. “There is form, space, structure and practicality in architecture. It’s all there in clothing, too.”
On his designs…
“I really wanted to perfect my craft. I spent a long time working on my sewing etc., and now I’m really interested in furthering my design and the concepts behind it. I want to find another source for everything else. I’ve been a one man show and I’m ready to have some help because I’m not really interested in sales. I’d love to just be behind the curtain, designing and growing. I want to focus and create a few pieces that I feel are perfect. It would be ideal to introduce pieces seasonally and constantly update and make things better, but I want to restrain myself. I’m not interested in being everywhere, I’d prefer limited production and for my pieces to be in smaller boutiques. All of my things are numbered with the story tag because I want it to be apparent that it has its own life, that there is a hand quality to it. I want it to last.”
–Patricia No
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