Melanie Ward

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If there ever was a renaissance woman of fashion, Melanie Ward would be it. “There’s no reason why you can’t be an editor, a consultant and a designer,” she told trade publication women’s wear daily last year. “You can wear many hats, you just have to have integrity.” Ward started making clothes at 13 — she would bring home clothes bought on London’s Portobello Road and at Oxfam charity shops, customizing pieces by cutting holes, dying them black in her mother’s saucepans. Once, she wore a man’s jacket as a minidress to a club.

By the time ward graduated from London University and started working as a stylist for edgy British streetstyle magazines like The Face and i-d, fashion was dominated by big hair, big shoulders, and supermodels. Ward, together with her friends, photographers David Sims and Corinne Day, who were also just starting out, were more interested in a gritty, true-to-life look. One summer day in 1989, Day and Ward drove to the seaside with a gangly, unknown fifteen-year-old named Kate Moss. Together, they captured Moss in black and white, all freckles and snaggle-tooth, in a spread for The Face that would make Moss famous. Soon, the fashion industry, ready to break out of its glossy shell in favor of ward’s dose of pared-down reality, came calling. She met with Helmut Lang in 1992 and became creative director of his company for thirteen years, designing the women’s line until he retired in 2005. She collaborated with Kate Moss again in the mid-nineties for those iconic Calvin Klein jeans ads, where she cut off the jeans’ waistband and greased and sanded the legs for a distressed appearance. when harper’s Bazaar’s editor-in-chief liz Tilberis hired ward in 1995, she moved to New York – she still lives in Greenwich Village and acts as the magazine’s senior fashion editor. And as soon as Karl Lagerfeld heard about Helmut Lang’s retirement, he called Ward to be the creative director for his new eponymous line. Unfortunately, that venture lasted only a season in 2006 before corporate owner Tommy Hilfiger pulled the plug. During that time, ward met Graham Tabor, who worked as a knitwear consultant to the lagerfeld collection. Together, they’re now collaborating on a capsule collection, Blouson Noir, launched last october during Paris Fashion Week. The first collection was inspired by tea towels. we had to find out more.

25 – A number of stylists have started their own clothing and accessories lines in the past year. What made it seem like the right time to go out on your own with Blouson Noir?
Melanie – For me making a capsule collection is just an extension of all of my other work, and it will co-exist with my other projects. I am still passionate about the image and I love to work as a consultant and stylist with designers as part of their team. I have been making clothes for myself since I was a child. When I graduated from London University I did a course in Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art where I won the prize for Best Daywear. It was after that I began working as a stylist and design consultant.

What’s your design approach? Do you sketch first or drape the material to the body itself? Does your approach differ when designing your own collection versus one with someone else’s name on it?
I am very instinctual in every aspect of my life and that extends naturally to my work. I just feel things in my gut; I have an emotional response. Initial inspiration can come from a vintage piece that will eventually completely change and become my own, but I love to have something physical to try on, wrap around me or drape on my body as part of my process. Sketching is not a first priority for me: It is never an artistic expression but a way of communicating an idea to a pattern maker. Inspiration comes from art, a photo, life, be it abstract or real. My woman is always cool, urban, and …

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