This September, Hillary Taymour brought Collina Strada to Storm King Art Center for Detour, the brand’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection and its first runway show at the Hudson Valley sculpture park. There, models moved between a grass runway and steel sculptures in the bright, almost cloudless sky. The show saw up to 400 people overtake the Hudson Valley sculpture park. It’s a big deal to get a friend to go from Brooklyn to the City and vice versa, so having hundreds of people make the trip is no small feat. Viewers lined the runway, snapping photos of the collection, which brought together recycled sequins, plaid deadstock fabrics, ruffles, and references spanning medieval romance, punk, and Y2K for 33 looks. BREDA timepieces appeared throughout the runway: a Jane (Time Choker) here, a Nocturne Time Ring there, and Carly Rae Jepsen punctuated the show.
 
Like Taymour, BREDA is interested in when objects move beyond their expected form or function; in other words, experimentation. A timepiece becomes a choker, a ring, or a charm. There is magic when something is reimagined through a new lens; one could even argue that is all art is. But that is for another day. Fashion, unlike other forms of art, has the unique ability to gather history. It can be given a new life. Silver tarnishes, denim wears thin, and gold collects scratches. But giving something another life also means allowing it enough time to acquire that history. You have to hold on to it. That idea runs throughout Taymour’s work and, unsurprisingly, through her closet. Old pieces survive new versions of herself.

Groove (Time Choker) in Silver

For Sincerely, Jane, we spoke with Taymour about the things she keeps, the clothes she has worn into the ground, relinquishing control over what her designs come to mean, and why the most important part of an object might be the one thing a designer cannot give it: time.

BREDA: You’ve spent much of your career transforming things that already exist, whether that means deadstock or imagery from your own archive. What interests you about giving something a second life rather than starting from scratch, if that’s the right way to put it?

Hillary Taymour: I just think it’s our duty to give things a new life and not rely on making things from scratch at this point. There is already so much stuff in the world. I’m much more interested in figuring out how to take something that exists and make it feel exciting again. It also gives the thing a history, which I think makes it more interesting.

BREDA: Do you remember the first piece of clothing or object you became genuinely attached to?

Hillary Taymour: The first piece of clothing I was genuinely attached to was a pair of trompe-l’œil stretchy jean leggings with printed embroidery. I got them for Christmas, and I wore them completely to death. My mom would throw them away, and I would literally cry and pull them back out of the trash. I was completely obsessed with them. I think that was probably my first realization that clothes could become emotionally important to you, and not just be something you liked wearing.

BREDA: What makes an object become difficult to get rid of?

Hillary Taymour: The memory attached to it. Once something has a life with you, it becomes more than the object itself. Even if it’s ugly, or broken, or completely impractical, it can still feel impossible to throw away. Humans are uniquely nostalgic.

BREDA: Newness is baked into fashion but the things we love most tend to be items we’ve had for years. How do you reconcile those two?

Hillary Taymour: I think we need to stop thinking that new automatically means better. I love fashion, and I love making new things, but I also think there’s something really beautiful about wearing the same thing for ten years and watching it change with you. Maybe the newness can come from how you wear it, how you style it, or how you change it instead of constantly buying something new.

BREDA: What are some objects you prefer once they’ve been scratched, faded, repaired, or otherwise changed by use?

Hillary Taymour: I would say a pair of jeans gets better with time and can create the lived-in experience in such a unique way that it gets cooler as you wear them. I love when you can see that something has been lived in. A perfectly pristine object can sometimes feel dead to me. Give me something with stains, repairs, fading, a weird patch someone added. That’s where the personality comes in.

BREDA: Do you still see the person you were when you made it, even decades later? 

Hillary Taymour: Totally. Sometimes I see something and immediately remember exactly where I was mentally when I made it. It’s kind of embarrassing and funny because I can see all my old obsessions so clearly. But I also don’t think I’ve changed as much as I think I have. There are things I was interested in fifteen years ago that I’m still completely obsessed with. Also, I still wear some things that are ten years old because there was such a need for it in my closet at the time, and there still is today.

BREDA: Is there anything in your own wardrobe that has followed you through radically different versions of yourself?

Hillary Taymour: Yes, so many things. Mostly hoodies and comfy clothes or horseback riding clothes. I have pieces that have been with me through completely different eras of my life. The funny thing is that I’ll wear them completely differently now than I did when I first got them. I like that clothes can survive your personality changes.

Jane (Time Charm) in Silver/Ivory

Jane (Time Charm) in Silver/Ivory

BREDA: Do you ever feel possessive over what something means, or is part of designing accepting that people will give it meanings you never intended?

Hillary Taymour: I think you have to let it go. Once something is out in the world, it belongs to whoever is wearing it. People are going to see themselves in it in ways you never could have imagined, and I actually think that’s one of the best parts of making things. I don’t want to tell people what something is supposed to mean.

BREDA: Is there something you’ve designed that has become sentimental to you for reasons unrelated to the collection it originally belonged to?

Hillary Taymour: Definitely. Sometimes it’s not even the piece itself; it’s remembering who was around when we made it or what was happening in the studio. A collection can become attached to a whole period of your life. Those memories end up being more sentimental to me than the actual garment. The most sentimental thing I have made is my Powie shirt. It's a picture of my dog's face as a tank top, and I just absolutely love it and love seeing my friends wear it. It has become a symbol of a mascot for the brand, so it means a lot when people wear it.

BREDA: When it comes to your own work, do you archive methodically, or are the things you save more instinctive and personal?

Hillary Taymour: Definitely instinctive. I wish I were more organized, but I’m really not. I save things because something about them feels important to me, even if I can’t explain why at the time. Then ten years later I’ll find it and suddenly understand why I kept it.

Jane (Time Charm) in Silver/Ivory

Jane (Time Choker) in Gold/Sky

Nocturne Time Ring in Silver/Smoke

BREDA: Do you think something can become an heirloom accidentally?

Hillary Taymour: Absolutely. I think the best heirlooms probably happen that way. Someone just keeps wearing something, then their kid takes it, then someone else repairs it, and suddenly it has existed through three generations. You don’t have to decide something is an heirloom for it to become one. I think things can accrue heirloom status simply on how it was worn or who wore it where.

BREDA: What would make you happiest to see a Collina Strada piece twenty years from now? Would it be that someone preserved it perfectly, wore it into the ground, repaired it repeatedly, or gifted it?

Hillary Taymour: Honestly, all of those, but probably that someone wore it into the ground and then repaired it. I would love to know that it actually lived a life. If someone tells me they’ve had a piece for twenty years and it’s completely destroyed but they refuse to get rid of it, I would understand and probably do my best to try to help them repair it.

BREDA: How do we change the culture to where the things we own have enough time to become meaningful to us?

Hillary Taymour: We have to stop treating everything like it’s disposable. We need to slow down and actually live with things. Wear something until you’re sick of it, repair it, change it, make it weird, pass it to someone else. I think meaning comes from time. You can’t buy that part.