With its own fashion week, a Top 10 design school, and a slew of clothing companies, Columbus is home to a thriving fashion scene—enough that a 2012 study found the city has the third highest number of fashion designers in the country behind New York City and Los Angeles.
“Fashion is embedded in our culture here in Columbus,” said Thomas McClure, founder and CEO of the Columbus Fashion Council.
McClure calls the Columbus fashion community, with its ecosystem of designers, makeup artists, models, photographers and others, an “art theater.”
Five local designers sat down with The Dispatch to talk about that art and the future of high fashion in Columbus.
Maris Equi
Matthew Chess and Rian Ismadia said they’re lucky neither of them are crazy.
The couple met online in 2015 and immediately hit it off, but they faced a problem: Ismadia lived in Indonesia.
“It was cold and I was bored and I was like, ‘How about I go to Indonesia?'” said Chess, who studied communication and education at The Ohio State University.
Ismadia ended up joining Chess in the United States, where the duo pursued their interest in swimwear and underwear design, launching their Maris Equi brand in 2017.
“It’s driven by passion, from the very beginning,” said Ismadia, who studied international business in Indonesia and the Netherlands. “We know what we like to see and what we personally like in a swimsuit. So that’s what we did.”
Two years after its founding, Maris Equi landed a spot on the Columbus Fashion Week runway.
“It seemed ridiculous that we could get into this fashion show because it’s mostly embellished dresses,” Chess said. “I think we literally submitted our application with five minutes to go. [left].”
Chess and Ismadia see the future of fashion as digital. The duo have been expanding their product line and creating 3D digital renderings of their designs that allow consumers to “wear” their fashion online, in photos or in Zoom meetings.
“It is our answer to the future and I like to be part of the future,” said Ismadia. “I don’t want to be left behind.”
Xantha District
Xantha Ward can’t remember when she wasn’t sewing and creating, beginning with reconstructed garments and material tough enough to ruin sewing machines.
“I started with denim because I couldn’t afford fabric at the time,” said Ward, who founded her fashion design firm in 1987 with a style she describes as edgy, contemporary funk and unisex.
Before becoming a full-time designer, Ward worked at National City Bank.
“I quit, and everyone was like, ‘You’re crazy!’ ” she said. “He had great benefits and everything. She really had only been there a year. But I just said, ‘This is not what I want to do. So I went… and started designing. Here we are 30-odd years later, that’s all I’ve ever done.”
The collection Ward started after leaving his job was called “Ghetto Blues”, inspired by living life with a daughter in a poor area.
“What I used to do, fast fashion is doing faster,” he said. “It’s very hard to compete with that because their prices are so much cheaper. So right now and with my denim, I make one-of-a-kind pieces and they’re very one-of-a-kind. That keeps my brand on the cutting edge.”
Ward now spends more of her time chasing haute couture and couture styles outside of denim, as well as jewelry, finding texture and pattern inspiration in tropical fish and the natural world.
Ward, who operates a studio on North Hamilton Road in Whitehall, has exhibited her designs internationally, but says that doesn’t define success for her.
“I know when I’m successful, because I know my life and my story,” he said. “I really think my clients are my celebrities, because they’ve kept me in business for over 20 years. No, I don’t think I’ve made it because I’ve done it internationally. I just know my story and where I came from.” of.”
Joan’s Bridal Haute Couture
Joan Madison made her first wedding dress at age 13.
“I started sewing at the age of seven, so by 13 I was already experienced,” Madison said with a laugh.
A native of New York, Madison came to Columbus in 1996 with The Limited, where she led the technology design department before taking a similar role at Express. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and Syracuse University, she studied fashion design but she also knew she needed to learn more.
“In my soul, I have always wanted to have my own [designs]he said. “I tell every young designer, you have to do the work. You have to work for other designers because how can you know what to do or how to run a business?”
Madison opened Joan’s Bridal Couture in 2006, presenting custom gowns for clients and her own collections, which she has shown at international fashion shows.
“After being here, I knew in my heart that this is my home and this is where I wanted to open my business,” he said. “I found that Columbus really gave me a lot of opportunities that I always wanted to do in New York, but he just couldn’t afford to do it.”
His most recent work is called Uthabiti, a Swahili word for resilience after hardship. Madison said that she was inspired by global world events like the COVID-19 pandemic and political unrest. Her response to her fashion is to juxtapose a colorful sequined patchwork fabric with a solid black fabric.
“I feel like it was also a fight between good and evil,” he said. “Everyone was having this reckoning, it was almost like a soul reckoning. And everyone was going through it and was touched on some kind of level. It’s like, who are you underneath when adversity hits?”
Madison says local designers are “bringing couture to Columbus.”
“I’ve seen the growth and it’s been amazing and exciting,” he said. “We are like a family.”
Malvar = Stuart
Celeste Malvar-Stewart knows the names of all the alpacas she uses to create her dresses.
Using the ancient technique of wet felting, which converts raw wool into a fabric with the help of moisture and agitation, Malvar-Stewart is able to create unusual and sustainable designs. His garments are dyed with natural materials that he grows or collects, and his textiles are created with rainwater.
“I want these pieces to be family heirlooms that are passed down from generation to generation, which is sustainable,” he said. “But if for some reason, at any point in its life, someone decides to throw it away, you can throw it back on the ground and it’s completely biodegradable.”
Due to her felting technique, Malvar-Stewart, who operates the Malvar=Stewart studio in German Village, is able to create a completely uniform silhouette along the dress leg.
Malvar-Stewart realized how much waste she was creating as a designer after graduating from American College in London, which is now Regent’s University. She started her design career in San Francisco before moving to New York.
“When I was in San Francisco, I started my own brand,” he said. “And these bins were filling up and overflowing. I was like, ‘I’m creating so much waste, how do I keep creating high-end parts without waste?’ That’s when I went back and got my master’s degree from Eastern Michigan University and then started manipulating fibers.”
After seven years in New York, Malvar-Stewart landed in Columbus.
“My husband was a professor and researcher at Columbia University and was part of a laboratory,” she explained. “They recruited the entire lab for Children’s Hospital and OSU… But then I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ … I found out that we’re third in the nation in terms of concentration of fashion designers, but I noticed there weren’t many independent fashion designers.”
Malvar-Stewart embraced the world of local designers and is now a board member of the Greater Columbus Arts Council and teaches at the Columbus College of Art and Design. She also teaches a Farm to Fashion program where participants tour an alpaca and sheep farm to learn every step of creating scarves.
Malvar-Stewart is taking sustainable design a step further with her new project “Grassroots,” in which she plans to put grass seeds into felt so the garment will literally grow.
“When we first moved in, people couldn’t understand these things,” he said. “I was like ‘No, no, no, this is where you’re supposed to be because this is how you change the world.'” “
Oak Designs
Gerardo Encinas hoped to return to Mexico after visiting his sister in Colón two decades ago.
“But I met my partner,” he said. “We have been together for the last 21 years.”
Together, the couple opened an event planning company in 2003, working primarily with the Latino community. In 2016, Encinas attended her first show at Columbus Fashion Week.
“Fashion was always my passion, ever since I was a kid,” he said. “I was like, ‘Okay, now I can follow my dreams because we have Columbus Fashion Week.'”
Encinas also worked with the Miss Ohio Latina pageant for six years. Between that and trying to build her own designer brand, she decided to shut down her event planning business shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic.
A self-taught designer, Encinas learned his techniques from YouTube and has worked with celebrities such as Nina West, who appeared on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” and Tiffany Moon of “The Real Housewives of Dallas.” Encinas said that in 2019 he made 50 dresses for West.
In 2020, the designer moved on to making face masks during the pandemic, eventually moving his studio to South Third Street Downtown.
In addition to working in her studio, Encinas focuses on designing sexy dresses with large sequins, regularly finding inspiration in what people wear in Columbus.
“I love the drama on the runways,” Encinas said. “I love seeing people’s faces every time a dress comes out.”
@E_SkidmoreGS
Source: www.dispatch.com