It's official!

My line has won the 2012 Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation award for Sustainable Design. I'm deeply honored to have been given this opportunity, and looking forward to showing my new collection at New York Fashion Week in (gulp...) a month. I'm lucky to have an amazing team lined up to help me put on this show; will reveal more details as we get closer to next month, but for now, back to patternmaking and more patternmaking!

Paper cuts

Profiled in the new issue of Paper Mag!

"Sustainability is at the core of Brooklyn-based designer Titania Inglis' eco-friendly, experimental, eponymous line. 'The concept of sustainability is a dichotomy in itself. It's about nature and about the future, and so is my line,' Inglis explains. These contradictions are evident in her spring 2012 separates, featuring asymmetrical sheer and organic cotton constructions, playing on ideas of lightness and darkness. The line is available at End of Century in New York and shop.titaniainglis.com."

Behind the scenes

Frustratingly, I've been too super busy to write any long posts lately, but I have a couple of things in the pipeline for you. In the meantime, I wanted to share some backstage shots from a shoot today around Williamsburg with the amazing duo of Frida Marklund (photographer) and Linda Gradin (makeup artist). Real photos soon to come!

Spring/Summer 2012 presentation and trunk show!

Countdown to [capsule]

So in case you haven't noticed... the Spring/Summer 2012 collection is now up! And although I've been too busy this season to organize a presentation for this Fashion Week, there will be a couple of chances to see it in person: for industry folks, this coming weekend, Sept. 17-19 at [capsule] New York; and for West Coast-ers, I'll be doing my very first runway show Oct. 6 at Vancouver Eco Fashion Week. Hope to see you there!

 

Spring is here!

 

Behind the scenes at last Friday's lookbook shoot, which we were lucky to squeeze in before the chaos of Hurricane Irene! Real pictures soon to come...

Glorious Iceland

Just got back from an amazing inspiration trip to Iceland and wanted to share a few photos out of the 450 or so I shot... Enjoy!

Quote of the day: Alexander McQueen

"Let me not forget the use of my own hands, that of a craftsman with eyes... that reflect the technology around me."

- from the book accompanying the stupendous exhibition

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Reasons I love Japan, Day 2: Organic cotton

Among sustainably-minded clothing designers, the most common complaint is that the selection of organic and low-impact fabrics is so small, we spend more of our time sourcing fabrics than actually designing our clothes. I still find this to be true in the case of leather and wool, which I'm still looking to source satisfactorily; but it didn't take me long to find the basis of my line in the nation that loves denim most of all, and whose organic standards and standards of quality soar above the rest: Japan. And so, after two years of placing orders over email, I took a trip last fall to Tokyo to visit some fabric showrooms in person.

Showa's Tetsuro Takasugi at his company's Tokyo headquarters.

The first stop was Showa, a larger mill that has the distinction of having developed the world's only indigo-dyed wool denim, along with the lovely two-tone organic cotton twills I've used for my SS11 Save Japan tee; the circle dress and bias tank in my FW10 collection; and the FW11 trapeze dress. Some of the fabrics have a rougher, more typically "natural" feel I personally eschew in favor of the crisper, cleaner-looking denims and twills, and they also work wonders with natural dyes.

Reasons I love Japan, Day 1: Muji

[ed.: this post was meant to be published on 5/11, but didn't go up until 5/14 due to a  glitch with Blogger, of which there have been a lot lately. let me know if you can recommend a more stable blogging platform!]

It's hard to imagine anyone can doubt the impact of global warming with the weather going so crazy on us lately; the cold, rainy spring here in New York has suddenly turned into hot summer, while hundreds of tornadoes have ravaged the American South — and then there have been the record-breaking earthquakes.

Two months after Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and ensuing nuclear meltdown, which have the dubious honor of being the most expensive natural disaster in history, there's still a lot of work to be done in rebuilding — and I still have a few of my Save Japan bias tee (featured lately, btw, in Time Out, Ecouterre, Magnifeco, the Dutch Biojournaal, and Luxist Japan!) to sell for the cause. In support of my friends and colleagues in Japan, and to remind everyone that the nation still needs help, this month I'm going to post 30 things I love about Japan.


Today's subject? Muji!

 

Since a friend tipped me off to Muji's wonders in London in 2000, I've been an avid fan of their clean, no-nonsense stationery and housewares. With a design team led by the ingeniously understated industrial designer Naoto Fukusawa, the Japanese no-brand brand issues one product after another in their deceptively simple, yet incredibly well-thought-out oeuvre. I've been loyal to their dot-grid notebooks since 2000, loving how the dots allow for writing in a straight line, but also for creating sketches without the distraction of those annoying horizontal lines.

FW11 party photos

All photos are stills from footage shot by Leo Jimenez for an upcoming documentary by Kioka Williams. Enjoy!

April events: Today (yes, today) and 4/22!

So much going on, so little time to post about it! First up: I'm having a little trunk show/studio-warming event today now that I'm fully moved into the new location. Loving the sunny space and my amazing studio-mates Helena of H Fredriksson and Susan of DLC Brooklyn, both of whom I'll write more about later.

Anyhow, as far as today: Come by 177 N 10th St. in Williamsburg from 1 to 5 this afternoon to place personal orders from the FW11 line or just hang out! I'll also be selling my Save Japan top, and Susan will have some of her killer jewelry on offer, with 25% of the sales price also going to the Japan relief efforts.

Jewelry by DLC Brooklyn.

Secondly, on April 22nd, I'll be participating in Fashioning Self and the Environment, a sustainable textiles show at TAC curated by the amazing Abigail Doan of ecco * eco. The event will also feature work by Susan Benarcik, Meiling Chen of Fearless Dreamer, Abigail Doan, Daria Dorosh, Eko-Lab, Eve Mosher, and Zoe Sheehan Saldana. Looking forward to it already!

Art by Susan Benarcik