NYFW: Alice + Olivia is all about the "strong female protagonist" for Fall/Winter 2019
When it comes to fashion week, Stacey Bendet does not mess around.
The designer behind the famed cool girl brand alice + olivia knows how to put on a show. And her presentations are equally as magical as her designs: a decadent amount of sparkles, intricate headpieces and a surplus of glitter everywhere you walk.
We caught up with the renowned creative to talk about her upcoming season at New York Fashion Week, rewriting fairy tales and her spotlight on the "strong female" each and every day.
On this year's theme...
I think the theme, just creating the whole "Fantasia" theme is so fun. I obviously love designing clothes but creating the stories around them is so fun, too. When I was working with my visual team and I started describing the clothes and how I was doing these crazy butterfly prints and mixing zebra and leopard, I was like "you know, it's sort of like fashion Fantasia." And that's how we started working on this.
On how her kids inspire her work...
My whole thing with kids and fairy tales is that I like there to be a strong female protagonist, which is actually what one of our shirts says. Because everytime the concept of fairy tales comes up, you know, one of the things I try to teach my children is that it isn't all about the rescued female. I was so proud because I went to my daughter's school conference last week and they told me that my daughter had told the class that she really didn't like the movie "The Little Mermaid" because "no woman should leave her whole family for a man."
I just hope that I can inspire some fairy tales to be rewritten...
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On the strong female protagonist...
It's less about a political party or a candidate and more about women owning their femininity and owning their power. I think a lot of times women shy away from really showing their strength...For me it's really about empowering women so they can say and do and feel exactly what they want to say and do and feel.
On her ideal alice + olivia girl...
She definitely likes to dress up. She's strong, she's whimsical, she's colorful. The alice + olivia woman spans from age 13 to 75 and my thing is that every woman who walks in our store should feel great and have fun putting on our clothes.
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