{"id":16064,"date":"2012-05-10T12:34:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T16:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/modacycle.com\/?p=16064"},"modified":"2012-05-10T12:39:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T16:39:25","slug":"a-detacher-fashioning-the-personal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/2012\/05\/10\/a-detacher-fashioning-the-personal\/","title":{"rendered":"A D\u00e9tacher – Fashioning The Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"

story written by Chloe Bensahel
\nphotography by Ned and Aya Rosen
\nstyling by Michael Tucker
\nhair by Agata
\nmakeup by Sokphalla
\nmodel is Melinda from One Model Management<\/p>\n

Mona Kowalska<\/a> is not one of those fashion designers who sit in studios drawing pretty things to be sent out to distant places to be born. Not only does she make all of her patterns, but her small and efficient team of three takes care of all other aspects of the brand, including sales and press. Her atelier\u00a0is located behind the Nolita store\u2019s glitter-clad back wall, so that she may personally greet any customer who walks through the door. One even has to ring a bell to enter, a sign that one is not simply entering a store but rather a special place. Kowalska\u2019s space, however, is unlike any other in that it is first and foremost personal. A common scene to be found in the store consists of a joyful customer walking in to pick up a custom-wrapped garment and a hug from the designer before strutting back out into the streets of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m not a control freak about that, and it\u2019s kind of interesting to see what people do with the clothes. Things should live outside of your space.\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Ms. Kowalska likes to draw inspiration from her own life for collections. As she explains, there isn\u2019t one set process, as sporadic and unexpected ways of designing can make way for the best of collections. For instance, after finding herself a home, she based a collection on \u201cgrandma\u2019s house,\u201d sharing the comfort she found in a home of her own with others. Sharing is an important part of Kowalska\u2019s work, whether it\u2019s with other creative people or with the women dressed in her clothes. She isn\u2019t, however, interested in sharing with everyone, rather with those who truly care. A D\u00e9tacher\u00a0doesn\u2019t go looking for customers; customers come looking for A D\u00e9tacher. In that same vein, A D\u00e9tacher\u00a0is not an aspirational brand: it does not prompt women to mold their identities around the brand. An A D\u00e9tacher\u00a0garment is one that fits you, just the way you are. In an industry that is constantly encouraging people to \u201cbetter\u201d themselves via fashion, this feels like a breath of fresh oxygen in a carbon dioxide-saturated world.<\/p>\n

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Kowalska even describes instances where she has happily altered designs for customers. She explains, \u201cI understand why they like it and why they want it shorter.\u201d Whereas she has in building her brand refused to compromise, she does not expect anything less from her customers. Mona Kowalska operates her business as one might a family, on a personalized level and a human scale. She works with store-orders so as to get only what she needs. Kowalska takes great pride in the fact that her clothes are manufactured her in New York, as opposed to the ubiquitous \u201cMade Elsewhere\u201d business structure that is so common within the industry. When asked about how the industry has shifted since she first began, she explains that this mode of manufacturing has had great impacts on the level of creativity. \u201cIt is hard to be creative at a distance.\u201d Kowalska regularly visits her factory, nurturing the same personal relationship with it that she has with her customer base.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen I first started in the industry, everyone had an in-house atelier. When you had the sample maker there, there were little things that you could tweak. Those are the things that are lost: the last step of refinement. That moves something like a good idea to something that you cherish, that you want to keep.\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Whereas \u201cA D\u00e9tacher\u201d signifies \u201cto detach\u201d in French, every single part of Kowalska\u2019s process, whether apart or as a whole, retains the same level of personalization and quality. A D\u00e9tacher\u00a0is like a good Proust novel: One can let it open, read skipping at random, to find that any one page is as rich and wonderfully constructed as any other in the book. When Mona Kowalska founded her brand, she was very much ahead of her time. The economic recession and digital revolution have created a customer base that is more critical than ever, looking for answers when the rest of the industry is constantly trying to cover its tracks. Kowalska has nothing to hide, as her clothes are only made more beautiful through the process by which they are made, and like good literature, that never goes out of style.<\/p>\n

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Mona Kowalska is not one of those fashion designers who sit in studios drawing pretty things to be sent out to distant places to be born.<\/span> Not only does she make all of her patterns, but her small and efficient team of three takes care of all other aspects of the brand, including sales and press. Her atelier is located behind the Nolita store\u2019s glitter-clad back wall, so that she may personally greet any customer who walks through the door. One even has to ring a bell to enter, a sign that one is not simply entering a store but rather a special place. Kowalska\u2019s space, however, is unlike any other in that it is first and foremost personal. A common scene to be found in the store consists of a joyful customer walking in to pick up a custom-wrapped garment and a hug from the designer before strutting back out into the streets of Manhattan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,731],"tags":[566,567],"class_list":["post-16064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-features-and-editorials","tag-a-detacher","tag-mona-kowalska"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16064"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16111,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16064\/revisions\/16111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modacycle.com\/old_modacycle_jan_2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}