Cynthia Rowley talked about her multi-disciplinary practice, the creative process and collaborations at the AIGA/NY Cynthia Rowley event held at Tishman Auditorium on Thursday, December 2, 2010. Willy Wong introduced and moderated the discussion.

On starting out as a designer:

Cynthia Rowley recalled she sewed her first outfit when she was 7 years old. “My mom gave me a yard of fabric, I laid it out on the floor, traced it around myself like a crime scene victim, cut it out, sewed it together, and wore it every single day,” she said.

She continued to sew her own clothes and pursued fashion design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During her junior year, a woman stopped her on the street to inquire about her jacket, upon finding out that the jacket was made by Cynthia, the woman gave her business card and asked to see a 5-piece collection the next Monday. Cynthia sewed through the weekend, delivered the collection, and received her first order—that was the beginning.

On the creative process:

For Cynthia Rowley, the creative process starts with a seed from a cultural and artistic standpoint, “you have to feel it from experiencing a lot of different things,” she said. She described the process as a conflux of everything that’s happening in the world—culture, design, film, art, etc. Examples of inspiration seeds included black-light posters and pictures of Cher.

The creative process is a balance between a conceptual point of view and “the right amount of art, commerce, fantasy, and what is relatable to people,” she said.

On showing collections and storytelling:

To show each collection, “you get one chance on the runway to tell the story,” she explains, “you want to surround the clothes with as many things to help tell the story,” like music, models, hair, makeup and the set.

Cynthia showed a collection where she based laser-cut fabrics on contemporary artist, Kara Walker’s. Cynthia continued the story of Walker’s work by creating a 15-foot pop-up book. The show began with the pop-up book opening to reveal the model, “as if she was pressed in that book,” and “that was the way to tell the story on the runway.”

Another example of storytelling came from her most recent Spring 2011 show held at Lincoln Center. To pay homage to the new location, Cynthia incorporated borrowed sets from New York City Ballet’s Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet as her runway backdrop.

On collaborations for consumer goods:

Cynthia’s first consumer product collaboration took place in 2000. After the success of her best-seller book Swell: A Girl’s Guide to the Good Life, Target approached Cynthia to collaborate on a houseware line intended for young women decorating their first home.

Next she talked about the success of the Johnson & Johnson limited edition band-aids. The chic band-aid designs range from mini run-way show, trompe l’oeil, lace, sequence, gems, and a Cynthia Rowley logo, “I always thought the ultimate status if you could put your label right on people,” she said.

Within a month of the launch, Johnson & Johnson received over 100 million impressions to their website, and increased sales by 5% that month. “It was a big success and now we have a long term agreement,” Cynthia said. The Cynthia Rowley band-aids will be available in Target and drug stores in March 2011.

Another collaboration came out from her personal experience. Cynthia expressed that designing every day necessities and commodities are overlooked in the world of design. “I was thinking ‘what’s the first article of clothing a human being puts on?’” she continued, “designers always talk about getting your customers at an early age, so I thought nobody’s ever done diapers.” Cynthia collaborated with Proctor & Gamble to create fashionable diapers for the design-conscious parent.

“Sometimes collaborations are born out of something that’s missing in the market,” Cynthia said as she showed sketches and photos of wetsuits she designed in collaboration with Roxy.

Being an avid surfer, Cynthia teamed up with Roxy to create wetsuits because “there’s no cute wetsuits for girls. You just look like a small dude,” she said. The idea came out from an observation that surf culture seemed to be looking backwards, “everything is about vintage Hawaii, and nothing [looked] forward at the future of the sport.”

Her response was updated neoprene wetsuits, headbands, and neon colored surf wax “so you can write messages on the board, maybe your phone number if you’re single,” she added.

As her general rule in regards to partnering, “any collaboration that we do, has to be authentic, genuine, the heart of the brand, [and] personal to me. Otherwise it seems too gratuitous,” Cynthia explained.

On art collaborations:

Next, she showed a clip from her collaboration with a film collective. She was the first designer to create a mini film for taxi riders that presents her collection in a short movie titled Hide and Seek.

In the continuing flux of fashion in art, Cynthia showed images from Move!, a 2-day weekend event that merged 14 fashion designers with 14 artists for installation from each duo.

Among the famous pais were Kalup Linzy and Diane Von Furstenberg; Rob Pruitt and Marc Jacobs; Terence Koh and Calvin Klein; Dan Colen and Proenza Schouler.

Cynthia collaborated with artist Olaf Breuning, “we did installation that took denim clothes—the blank canvas of the fashion world—and put it together with his painting and photographs. We dumped paint on over 100 dresses in 2 days (99 models and me).” The paint-splattered garments from Move! are available on Cynthia Rowley’s website.

Next, Cynthia talked about her belief in democratization of the arts–whether it is in fashion or painting-in a project called Exhibition A, a new website selling reproductions of contemporary art for $100-500, co-founded by her husband and herself. Cynthia’s impetus for starting the project was to make contemporary art more accessible to a broader audience. 

On future projects:

Upcoming projects include a redesign of United Airlines uniforms for over 90,000 employees. Since merging with Continental, United Airlines is the world’s largest airline. The redesign is a large-scale project that will include uniforms for flight attendants, pilots, customer service reps and maintenance. “It’s a big project, but fun. Hopefully I’ll get to wrap a plane, and maybe [propose] better food,” she said.

On the future of the fashion world:

“The exciting thing is the immediacy of products. You can get products to the consumer without being at the mercy of one person’s approval,” said Cynthia. Fashion is much more democratized now, “before, only editors would see the runway shows and decide what to put out to the public. Now, shows stream live [to] anybody who wants to see it,” she explained.

The democratization of the fashion world has taken away the power from editors and put it in the hands of the public. Editors are looking towards the general public as a guide to representing fashion and style in their magazines.

“It’s a really exciting time right now,” she concluded.

For more information, visit

Cynthia Rowley http://www.cynthiarowley.com/

Swell: A Girl’s Guide to the Good Life, by Cynthia Rowley http://www.amazon.com/Swell-Girls-Guide-Good-Life/dp/0756786576/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Hide and Seek Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNMUuUgFLME&feature=player_embedded

Move! http://ps1.org/calendar/view/234/

Cynthia Rowley and Olaf Breuning for Move! At MoMA PS 1 http://vimeo.com/15824811

Move! Garments for sale http://www.cynthiarowley.com/exclusives/move-collaboration-with-olaf-bruening

Exhibition A http://www.exhibitiona.com

To view event details, visit

AIGA/NY Cynthia Rowley http://2006.aigany.org/events/details/11P3/

To view additional photos, please visit our Flickr photostream. We encourage our members to contribute their photos to the AIGA New York Flickr group.