Mabel Johnson

 

Mabel Johnson makes one of garments inspired by the quilts of Gee’s Bend, the colours and shapes of Paul Klee and Milton Avery paintings, pulling techniques and styles from the past, while at the same time creating a new contemporary story.

Tom's Sons

 

Above: Leon Kalajian

Tom’s Sons International Pleating has been a family-owned fabric and textile pleating business in New York city’s Garment District since 1931. 

“My mother was doing pleating when I was very, very young. Every chance I get, I am in the factory — I was 6 years old. I have to work. I cannot stay at home. I have to do something. I have to be around people. Someday they ask you: ‘When the pleating is not in fashion, what will you do?’ I do pleating! For me it never goes out, the pleating. Every day I can create a new style.” 

Leon Kalajian

                               

George Kalajian (above) is a  master craftsman in New York City’s Garment District, with pleating expertise passed down through five generations. He has collaborated with many prestigious fashion brands and institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dior and film and television productions. He is the current owner of Tom’s Sons International Pleating, established by his grandfather Leon, George oversees every aspect of production, preserving and advancing the art of pleating for future generations.

Yiqing Yin I

Amazing structures of layered pleats producing a textured garments resembling coral or magnified detail or organic structures like electron micrographs by designer Yiqing Yin.
'Examining the dynamic potential of pleats, she imagines structures which are never fixed, shapes that are always in mutation. She sculpts the emptiness around the body with, as a common thread, the search for balance and points of rupture between the flowing zones and the sculpted zones. The modernisation of smocking and the elimination of any order of construction, allows her great room for experimentation.'

Yiqing Yin