"By Julian"

This Santa Cruz native and graduate of Cooper Union is a triple threat. Not only a fashion designer, Julian Louie is a photographer and artist whose work has exhibited in New York galleries Vagabond and Stay Gold. Perhaps that's why Calvin Klein’s Creative Director Francisco Costa personally chose him to mentor.

The two met during Louie’s unsuccessful internship bid, but a year later, Costa tapped him for the Italian Vogue/AWI (Australian Wool Innovation) Protégé Project. Over the course of 2007, Louie worked as a design assistant on Klein's spring, pre-fall and fall '08 collections, while Costa oversaw the fledgling’s first line. Equally "austere and opulent," as Louie describes it, the inaugural outing showed in Florence, Tokyo and Australia.
Louie's fall 2009 show was inspired by matadors for the silhouette, samurai armor for the embroideries and knitwear and Olaf Otto Becker's photographs of Icelandic landscapes for the palette. Experimenting with heavy wool felt, Louie laser-cut jackets that were then assembled with rivets and centered the rest of the offerings around them. The asceticism was then set off with Swarovski sparkle, whether dusting the epaulettes of a jacket or cascading down the bodice of a dress. For Louie, "tension between elements is key," proving that Costa's instincts were on the mark.www.julianlouie.com


(Surface magazine)