“I just like things to be balanced, to be even on both sides,” Issa Rae said on a call this month. “Being a middle child, right in the middle of five, I always wanted things to be fair.”
This desire for balance has informed her personal style. Ms. Rae, 39, an actress and producer in Los Angeles, gravitates toward attire that gives her a sense of “symmetry,” she said, and doesn’t put too much thought into getting dressed. She avoids “extravagant, showy clothes,” she added, and feels most comfortable in casual pieces like jeans and Converse sneakers.
When she wants to look more glamorous, she turns to jewelry.
“Jewelry is my dress-up,” said Ms. Rae, who had her big break as the creator and star of the HBO series “Insecure.”
“I remember one of my first beauty compliments my mom gave me was that I have nice décolletage,” she continued. “So now I like having a necklace there to accentuate it. It makes me feel beautiful.”
Ms. Rae’s taste in jewelry is reflected in the collection of accessories she recently developed with Cast, a brand in the Bay Area. The pieces have simple, linear shapes that meld with her uncomplicated approach to style. Some are inlaid with lab-grown diamond and onyx accents that make them sparkle. Prices start at $250 for sterling silver hoops and creep past $5,000 for jewelry made with 14-karat gold.
Ms. Rae’s goal was to create “pieces that you can go to the office with in the morning that transition into nightwear,” she said. Before working on the line, she added, “I didn’t know much about the creation of jewelry or have the language to describe it.”
She credited Cast’s founders, Rachel Skelly and Eric Ryan, with bringing her up to speed. “I had great translators,” as Ms. Rae put it. Ms. Skelly and Mr. Ryan, who founded Cast in 2019, said they approached Ms. Rae through a mutual friend to collaborate after she had worn their brand’s baubles to red-carpet events like the Emmy Awards.
Ms. Rae’s jewelry collection, called Braeve, is one of a few recent endeavors through which she has engaged with the fashion world. This month, she attended runway shows for Cos and Off-White. And in August, she appeared in her first fashion campaign as a face of the shoe brand Stuart Weitzman.
Ms. Rae’s Cast collaboration and Stuart Weitzman campaign were not her only firsts this year: She just wrapped the first film she has produced without also acting in it. “It’s the first time I’m completely behind the scenes from start to finish,” Ms. Rae said of the still-untitled movie, which stars SZA and Keke Palmer and is set for a January release.
Shop Talk: Vintage Ralph Lauren and Wearable Art
Recycled Americana
Ralph Lauren is aiming to capitalize on the continued interest in vintage clothing by offering a selection of archival men’s and women’s designs for sale on its website and at select company stores. The initiative is also targeted at passionate collectors of the brand.
Items will be released in monthly installments and come from nearly five decades’ worth of collections by the company’s various lines, including Polo Sport, Ralph Lauren Collection and Rugby, which took a youthful approach to preppy style and was discontinued in the early 2010s. Prices for the vintage clothing range from $150 to $3,500.
Art You Can Wear
“Residual Energies,” a group show at Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami on view through Oct. 19, mixes sculptures, collages and textile artworks with more wearable pieces that bridge the gap between art and fashion.
Apparel and accessories in the exhibition, which was curated by Camille Okhio, a senior design writer at Elle Decor, include an 18-karat-gold-and-emerald ring ($4,400) by Joy Bonfield-Colombara, an artist and goldsmith in London, and a quilted cotton-and-linen coat ($1,250) by Sarah Jean Culbreth, a fashion historian in Rockaway Beach, Queens. Also featured: a $900 hand-sewn doll wearing a miniature version of the coat.
A Toy Store’s New Tenant
The fast-fashion jewelry brand BaubleBar just opened a one-year pop-up shop inside the toy store F.A.O. Schwarz in Rockefeller Center. Customers can design their own bracelets ($35) or shop from a selection of premade styles (starting at $15).
Three Questions for a Designer Shuttering Her Cult Brand
Many were surprised last week when Ilana Kohn, a designer of graphic jumpsuits and coveralls manufactured in New York City using soft cottons and linens, announced she would be shuttering her namesake brand at the end of September.
Ms. Kohn, 42, started her label in 2010 and developed a niche but devoted customer base by selling her clothes at specialty stores like Totokaelo, Bird and Need Supply, all of which are now closed. In 2021, she switched to a direct-to-consumer business, and in 2022, she opened a store on the Lower East Side as a new way to reach her customers.
But shortly after that boutique opened, Ms. Kohn said, the market changed. She noticed a drop-off in customers, which she attributed to a decline in discretionary spending at a time of high inflation, as well as to decreased engagement with her brand on social media, which had become a key tool for selling her products. “It felt like screaming into a black hole, working so hard to push out product when it isn’t being seen,” she said.
In a brief interview that has been edited and condensed, Ms. Kohn, who is offloading remaining stock in a liquidation sale ending on Monday, discussed the closure of her label and what she learned from its 14 years in business.
What do you hope your brand’s legacy will be?
I wanted to make things other women would love. One thing I kept hearing is that our clothes fit really well and made people feel good in their bodies. Fashion isn’t going to solve world peace — at the end of the day, it’s just clothes. If I could accomplish helping someone feel good in their own skin, I’ve truly done my job and I’m proud of that.
If you were to do this all over again, what would you do differently?
I would create something smaller that doesn’t require me to be pumping out tons of clothing in order to stay afloat. I’d make something more financially sustainable. I don’t love when the name of the game is to force consumerism on people to hit numbers. I want people to genuinely want our pieces.
What’s next for you?
In the immediate future, once the worst of this is over, I plan to lie in bed for a month and get bedsores and snuggle my cats. After that, I really don’t know. I’d love to start a new company in a different way. Anyone’s guess is as good as mine.
The post How Being a Middle Child Shaped Issa Rae’s Style appeared first on New York Times.
