AZ Big Media sat down with renowned fashion designers Mark Badgley and James Mischka who just debuted their Spring 2020 Ready-to-Wear collection in New York in September, are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Badgley Mischka with their Fall 2019 Ready-to-Wear collection available at Neiman Marcus, about the collection and what’s next for the label.
AZ Big Media: What makes Neiman Marcus a perfect partner for your line?
Mark Badgely: Neiman Marcus has always been our biggest support store, I think we understand Neiman’s customer. In our careers, we’ve grown up with Neiman Marcus, we love the woman that shops here. I think our collection is simpatico with what they believe in and quality and style and I don’t know what we’d do without Neiman Marcus.
AZ Big Media: What collection are you showing at Neiman Marcus currently?
James Mischka: Our Fall 2019 collection, on the tail end of our 30th year in business, our 30th anniversary year. We came into it with a feeling of post-war optimism was our mantra, WWII people coming back to America and feeling optimistic and energized and positive about the future, which is how we’re trying to make our customer feel, too. So we used a lot of period details, we got a lot of inspiration from old 1940s Mercedes-Benz colors and shapes like the curve of a fender became the curve on a dress.
MB: There’s a lot of line to this collection, a lot of times our collections are very soft and diaphanous, and this was a little bit of a departure from that, it was a little bit more streamlined, silhouettes were cut a little bit closer to the body.
JM: There’s a little more structure too, which we felt was important for the season.
MB: Suiting’s came back a bit, our woman hasn’t been wearing that many suits and had that much structure for a long time, it’s been a lot of dresses and two-piece dressing blouses and all of a sudden the suit looked great again and she’s been wanting a shoulder pad again. So we incorporated some of that into chic evening coat dresses and things like that. I think that’s what gave this collection a separate edge than maybe what we typically do.
ABM: How many pieces are in the collection?
MB: The collection is huge, whatever’s in the store at any given moment just depends. But they always have a great assortment of what we do, they support our collection very well.
JM: And we did the Premier Collection for them also, which is a capsule collection we did based off of the past 30 years of Badgley Mischka and Neiman Marcus collaborating and we took some of our favorite pieces from the past 30 years and reinterpreted them for 2019 and 2020.
ABM: How do you see this line fitting into where the fashion industry is headed and current trends in the future?
JM: It’s funny, we just got off the Spring season, and Paris just closed and New York was almost a month ago, and I think it’s leading us into 2020 because tailoring is super important for 2020, it’s going to be even more important for our next fall, and structure the feeling of giving a woman power through her clothes is really important now and going forward.
ABM: What are some of your favorite things from this collection that you haven’t done in the past that you were excited to implement and add to the already diverse and accomplished label?
MB: I think it’s some of those structured evening pieces, we brought back the evening tuxedo, we cut a suit in a beautiful knit gold payette that is comfortable, it feels like you’re wearing pajamas, but it’s structured, it’s very soft, has a wrap and belted, it’s super dressy, but I think it’s very modern. It’s packable, you can fold it up in your suitcase, she can wear it on it’s own, throw the jacket on over something or the pants with something different. It’s been one of our top sellers with Neiman Marcus, it’s just a great, easy way to look for evening. It’s an important look, but there’s still something very easy about it which I love.
ABM: Is versatility important for your pieces?
MB: It absolutely is, we always will be about that special occasion evening gown because that’s our core business, it’s a gown that’s in the back of her closet that evokes a memory of ‘I wore it to this or that,’ that’s our core business and we love a beautiful evening gown, but that is just a section of our collection. We do a lifestyle collection for Neiman’s today, we do day dresses, suiting, cocktail dresses, evening gowns, tuxedos.
JM: It’s funny because we’re saying we’re doing day dresses, but for a lot of people those dresses don’t go out before 5 o’clock.
MB: Everything that we do has a thread of glamour in it, we do all kinds of products now, our teacups are glamourous, we love glamour. And what we consider daytime, some people think ‘people wear that in the day?’ and some people do, but we find that a woman’s life, her wardrobe has become so industrial just because life is so crazy now and now we find that she likes an excuse to dress up now because she doesn’t always get to.
Women used to dress so formally everyday, now people don’t dress like that anymore, so to me it’s a novelty, they love to go and try on a gorgeous gown or a really special piece because it’s not what they’re used to and I think the category of dressing that we do I think is sort of fun now for women when they walk into a store, it’s not like buying another pair of jeans.
ABM: What are you most excited for the upcoming year for the label?
JM: We just designed what we think is a fantastic swim collection which is new for us, which we think will be at Neiman’s in the spring. It’s like evening gowns as swimwear.
MB: If you think about it, it makes sense. It’s beautiful necklines, which are always our foremost focus when we design an evening gown.
JM: Ruffles and flounces and fantastic embellishments, you would never think you can get these swimsuits wet but you can.
MB: They’re very glamorous, a lot of things, we’re launching a new fragrance that we’re excited about. Our flagship store in Los Angeles is up and running, James and I spent the last year building that and we’re interested to see where that goes. In this industry, unfortunately you don’t have a chance to get bored, sometimes I wish you did because it’s all we can do to keep up, but I think that’s what’s keeping us busy right now.
