by About 800 people attended Derek Blasberg’s conversation with Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon at Washington University’s Graham Chapel in St. Louis.
The Nov. 18 event was the Saint Louis Fashion Fund’s annual “Speaking of Fashion” speaker series, hosted in collaboration with Washington University and Caleres, the global footwear company.
Gordon said that as a child he insisted on choosing his own outfits and wore red suspenders every day to kindergarten, played with his mother’s old Barbie dolls and “went into her closet to tell her what she had to wear every day.” He attended a somewhat conservative school and said he kept this double secret of being different and gay and wanting to be a fashion designer, “while everyone else wanted to be a baseball player,” Gordon said.
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Before he even knew it was a thing, Gordon said an old coffee-table book about Valentino made him realize it was the right job for him. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he plucked up the courage to find a local seamstress to teach him how to sew. At Central Saint Martins, his graduate collection consisted of hand-blown glass.
A native of St. Louis, Blasberg, whose role at Vanity Fair recently transitioned to special correspondent, is a loyal supporter of the SLFF. Another fashion insider, Karlie Kloss, also from St. Louis, was also on hand.
Before the question-and-answer session, Gordon gave personal critiques of their collections to some fashion students from around the state at a luncheon. St. Louis City Mayor Cara Spencer presented Gordon with a proclamation declaring November 18th “Wes Gordon Day in St. Louis.” The designer also accepted the Saint Louis Fashion Fund Award from the group’s executive director, Becky Domyan.
Recalling his internships with Oscar de la Renta and Tom Ford, Gordon said de la Renta was “a man who knew very well the women who wore his clothes.” Ford was described as demanding and with an attention to detail – “nothing is left to chance,” said Gordon.
When asked for advice for students, Gordon said, “This is a time you’ll never get again, so be a crazy person. You’ll get into a career where you have to make clothes that sell. Your life will be about sell-through and margins. Use this opportunity to do something crazy.”
Dispelling a fashion myth, the designer said: “Everyone has this idea that fashion is ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ because it’s fun and sexy and we like to think that everyone is spiteful and bitchy. In reality, it’s a community, a family of like-minded people who share similar passions and work so hard. There’s a real sense of camaraderie and team spirit. You see it at events like the CFDA and whenever people get together, which doesn’t happen.” It’s enough for the three of us to be here [referring to Kloss, Blasberg and himself.]”
Gordon continued: “The world is big enough to support many different designers. It’s not this game of nemesis and arch-rivals and spite towards assistants. It’s people rolling up their sleeves and working so hard to try to make the impossible possible. And we’re all in this together.”
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