Whit is Terrific

To Whit
Whitney Pozgay taps into her "puffy-skirted tomboy"

Whitney Pozgay’s kitchen table is crowded with moodboards for Spring 2012; photos from the Vogue archives of sunkissed models from the late 60′s—big hair, big eyes, and pouty-lipped sexuality.

Whitney tells me her latest collection, the fourth for her namesake brand, Whit, orients around a “southwestern mod theme.” Looking at her inspiration sources, I’m momentarily transported to a warm desert far away, surrounded by sand and doe-eyed models staring into a beautiful void.

“I try to think a lot about the different women I know,” Whitney explains of her design process. “I don’t do a lot of embellishment, or overly designed things, so that you can layer and personalize. I try to give a large dance floor to our girls.”

By deliberately keeping her designs flexible, Whitney intends for the pieces to be easily incorporated into her customer’s closet. “There are so many amazing aesthetics in this city, and I don’t like to limit myself to just one,” she explains. “I try to avoid the pitfalls of, ‘I’m only into the rock-and-roll girl or I’m only into the uber girly girl….it’s more fun to cover those bases, but stay within the vein of a single idea.”

Clearly, this is a woman who understands fashion as an intensely personal art form, and indeed, Whitney herself describes the brand as a “celebration of personal style and interpretation.”

Whitney’s keen understanding of her customer’s disparate tastes can be attributed, in part, to her self-described “tomboy in a puffy skirt” aesthetic. Of course, her stellar resume (and enviably stylish gene pool) have also played a part in her success: fresh out of costume design school at UT Austin, Whitney landed her first job working for her aunt, the legendary Kate Spade–also juggling night classes at FIT and Parsons to bridge the gap between her costume training and the fashion business.

Designing a women’s collection with a large group of professional women provided Whitney with a sounding board for her bubbling creativity. At Spade, she learned the important lesson that certain pieces appealed to certain customers—wisdom gleaned from the vast range of tastes represented by her colleagues.

But if Kate Spade afforded her the chance to hone her feminine design inclinations, it was her next stint—working as Steven Alan’s head of womenswear—that let her tap into her inner tomboy, shifting from a female-dominated workplace to a company best known for its cheeky menswear-inspired creations. At Steven, Whitney “fostered the other side” of her aesthetic, scrutinizing boys’ peacoats for design inspiration and incorporating menswear fabrics into the women’s line.

Only with her solo label, however, has Whitney begun exploring the common ground between both, drawing from lessons learned (and friends made) at Kate Spade and Steven Alan. “”I’m designing for women who know what they want and have a strong sense of personal style,” she explains. “None of us really fit into a box, so that’s why I try not to box in what we are doing. I always joke that we’re designing for complex and complicated women.”

Which goes a long way toward describing Whitney herself. Often asked about the role of women in the design world, Whitney admits to being “a little spoiled by the Kate Spade environment,” in which women typically dominated the design team. Nonetheless, she claims to have found Steven Alan’s disconnect from womenswear refreshing by comparison.

As for women’s role in the design world today, Whitney feels a distinct shift from the “catty” ’90’s during which she served her first internships. “There is a nice community of young female designers that I know and we’re all really nice about sharing,” she muses. For instance, “I don’t use a lot of lace but if I see this amazing lace I may call Rachel Antonoff, and say ‘oh, I saw this it could be totally up your alley.’ I feel like it’s more friendly for women than it was.” She pauses for a moment and smiles warmly, “I think it’s getting better.”

For more information on Whit, check out the company’s website. Collections are available in New York at Bird, Steven Alan, and Thistle & Clover.
By Lauren Abend on August 15th, 2011

From: www.terrificmag.com/fashion/to-whit/

A really cool magazine, with amazing subject matter.