Know Your Labels: Caroline Constas

Something great about New York fashion is the element of discovery that unfolds at the hand of the manifold new designers who tend to accurately embody the spirit of making it in the metropolis. They inject that “intoxicating” sense of novelty that as J.V. fashion critics, we’re always after.

Of course, what is most impressive is when these new designers become the older designers, who predict and then make the ideas that we will project using our bodies the following seasons. On board to join the next chapter’s legion is Caroline Constas, the New York-based, Canada-born designer who is, unsurprisingly, responding to the popular cry for wearable clothes and making what women will, no doubt, describe as the stuff they want to live in. She calls it, “Something new to the market that is of quality and that I myself would want to purchase.”

For Fall 2015, the designer, who was pre-med in college, showed a series of off-the-shoulder blouses styled over turtlenecks and with flared pants that only slightly challenged the narrative (we were bound before she made them to gravitate towards big pants) but did it with enough relish to make you wonder the million dollar question: why didn’t I think of that?

Constas launched in Spring 2013 in spite of a background in the sciences as a reaction to her consistently envisioning clothing she couldn’t find. Coupled with a commitment to “wearable high quality fabrications,” she understood there was space in the contemporary market to inject the kind intellect you’re often wont to find among the upper echelons of the industry by simple virtue of practicing some smart, healthy manipulation.

“It can be tricky in this market because the creative process is dependent on profit margins,” she said, “and I have noticed that the corner that is most commonly cut is in the fabrications. I was always perplexed by this so I created a sustainable, vertical business structure, which would allow me to have free range to design and buy the fabrics I loved by choosing to take austerity measures on the overhead budget as opposed to the design and production budget.”

You get the sense that Constas had this off duty Bianca-Jagger-skiing-and-partying-in-the-Swiss-Alps type in mind when she designed Fall. And it works — though it’s still early, she’s displayed an intelligent understanding that in fashion, you’ve got to play with the tension and the great paradox. Say it quietly but with loud confidence! Stand out while sitting down! Be strong, stay soft!

She calls her woman “feminine but willing to take risks,” citing a thrilling new normal within fashion as her motivational thrust; “There is something very playful about fashion today. We are more open and take more risks. It doesn’t have to be so serious.” There’s a lesson we can get behind.

The spring 2015 collection is now available on Shopbop.

Read about more cool, new designers here.