Senior fashion major Sam Anthony is a cosmopolitan and a calm, courteous creative whose designs reflect his love of classic English literature. He is set to show during the must-see SCAD Fashion Show, where the cream of the senior crop gets to debut the culmination of all their hard work during their years at SCAD. He explains, “The collection is about exploring intimacy and sexuality, using the narrative framework of Wuthering Heights.” The Manor had the chance to dive deeper into Anthony’s process and personality through an interview with the designer himself.
I just want to start by getting to know a little about you. So, where are you from?
I was born in Massachusetts, but I grew up in Sarasota, Florida. It’s the retirement capital of America, so it’s just like a really quiet city– great beaches.
Have you always wanted to study fashion?
Yeah. The high school I went to in Florida was a theatre high school, so kind of through doing that I discovered I liked the costume closet.
So I’m just going to hop right into asking about your collection. What five words would you use to describe it?
Oh okay! Sensual. Fanfiction. Raw. Subversive. Erotic.
Who do you design for? Who’s your customer?
Okay, I have a really specific answer to this but it can also be general. [laughs] I’m a firm believer that you have to design for yourself. If you ever design something you wouldn’t wear, it’s not as successful. One of my really, really good friends is Mary Catherine and she is a part of the collection. She does the art that I embroider with Forrest, but Mary’s kind of my muse. She’s kind of this “too cool for school” vibes. She’s just an artist through and through. I put my muslins on her to see how they look and she always gives me feedback, because she’s a fashion design student as well. So we bounce ideas back and forth. She’s definitely my customer. You kind of have to have a new mindset to rock the revealing nature of my clothes.
So did you encounter any challenges while working on this collection? And if so, how did you overcome them?
I guess the biggest challenge, like technically wise, was the catsuit. The lace that I’m using is loom lace and hand-done bobbin lace, so there’s no elasticity to it. So with something as skin tight as a catsuit, each girl you have to really custom fit it to. It’s a long process. And once they’re in the garments, they have no mobility. They can’t sit. They have to just stand and walk gingerly. So that was definitely a learning experience.
Did you find models before deciding to do the catsuits?
We’re assigned models, but I did request really tall, skinny girls. [laughs] It’s a weird thing but the legs can’t touch or else they’ll rub away the lace.
That’s a really good learning experience though.
For sure! It was different. Usually, if you want fit that tight you use a knit, so using a non-knit to get it that tight was really interesting.
Right. Do you feel like you were successful or do you want to keep refining that technique?
I want to refine that technique. I met with Becca McCharen-Tran from Chromat and we were talking about them. She’s really interested in the idea, but she was saying I needed to insert gussets of the knit somewhere maybe that wasn’t so visual, so it would still have the beauty of the woven lace, but it would still have the mobility of the knit. I would really like to develop that if I were given more time.
What are the main materials in this collection and how did you like working with them?
So, I did an internship this summer in Dublin, Ireland with a designer there, and while I was there, I discovered that I really love linen. Irish linen is this really really beautiful material, so I wanted to use that and mix it with hyper-lightweight, so featherweight fabrics such as silk gauze, silk chiffon, using the motion of it. Linen has a really interesting elasticity to it, so it moves like no other fabric, because of the way the fiber is. So, I’m mixing those with the hyper lightweights and all natural fabrics, nothing synthetic.
Are you collaborating with anyone for your collection?
Yes! Could you write them down please because I love them and I want to make sure they get all of the credit they can? Alaina Colleen is doing the beading. I get all my beads from Swarovski, so I’d like to give them a shoutout. Mary Catherine Crisp is the concept artist for all the embroideries. Xavier Lockhart is the embroidery technician. And then the last but not least is Zerica Camel who made all of the lovely jewelry and o rings for the collection. She’s a treasure. That’s it! Those are my collaborators.
What music do you listen to while you work?
Oh! Key question! Okay, I’m like a complete fanatic for Kate Bush. The collection, if you trace back the inspiration, Kate Bush was such a huge part of it because she has her 1978 song “Wuthering Heights” that I play on repeat. Björk, Kate Bush, Arca. Really transient people.
If you weren’t majoring in fashion design at SCAD, what would you be doing?
English literature. That was what I was going to do before senior year essentially. I was going to be an English Lit major, which I think makes sense giving what we’re doing with the collection. I just love it so much. This collection’s been a really interesting experience because essentially I’ve approached it a lot like I would approach writing a book… a fanfiction really. It’s kind of Wuthering Heights and my interpretation of it– what it means for me and me interacting with the text in a way that I would be able to do if I was writing a fanfiction, but instead, it’s clothing.
So your interest in English literature plays a heavy part in collaboration with your fashion design?
Yeah, for sure. It’s where I get a lot of my conceptual inspiration. I find a lot of my concepts through ideation, more literature, less photography. It’s more ideas for me less visual stimuli. That comes later.
Do you have a celebrity muse that you would want to dress later in your career?
Oh! That’s a really cool question! There are some people I’ve definitely been looking at. There’s a singer named Kelsey Lu who I would love to reach out to for PR. My dream would be Björk because she’s, like, the queen of avant-garde fashion. I feel like she’d rock it. But on a more doable scale, definitely Kelsey Lu. She’s got like a crazy, cool style, really her own sense of wardrobe. She always styles herself, so I would be intrigued to see what she would do with my designs.
What are your plans after SCAD?
So the short-term, right now, is I’m going to New York after I graduate to do a five-month internship with Vaquera in Brooklyn. I’m going to do fashion week with them. From there, that’s a larger question. I would like to go back to Europe. I had a really good time working there. Probably doing technical work at the beginning. I’m a good pattern maker. I know I am. And it’s kind of harder to find creative jobs in the fashion world, so patterns are going to be my bread and butter. And I like doing it, so I wouldn’t mind doing that. But for the short- term I’m going to go do Vaquera.
Written by Ka’Dia Dhatnubia
Photography by Julia McCartney