Loewe’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez On Their First Menswear Collection and the Loewe Craft Prize

14:17Jack McCollough:We've been on some panels in the past judging fashion designers, and you're comparing the same medium across multiple designers. This is quite different in that everyone's field is completely different. It's everything from ceramics to leather work, weaving. So everyone's personal work is deeply personal and quite different from one another. So it's going to be tricky to judge one another. You're not comparing apples to apples.

14:43Lazaro Hernandez:Maybe your glassblowing past can come in handy. Perhaps. I didn't know about this. Jack was a glassblowing major.

14:50Jack McCollough:I did glassblow for a minute. At Parsons? No, in San Francisco before I transferred to Parsons. It was glassblowing and painting. This is something new. I'm learning about you. He's got the expertise in the glass part. I mean, I never became an expert. These people are experts.

15:04Lazaro Hernandez:But, you know, in terms of what we're looking for, We're looking for something that feels deeply personal to that person, but also kind of universal and something that transcends the personal realm and feels kind of universal and appeals to a broader group of people and says something true about the world that we live in. yet deeply personal in terms of its cultural point of view, its history and how it takes that specific craft and moves it forward, and where they learn their craft. It's really about a tradition of learning from previous generations and pushing it forward, and that's really interesting about the craft prize.

15:46Lazaro Hernandez:A lot of these people are taking crafts that would maybe have been forgotten or lost and bringing them to the modern world and reinterpreting them and just exposing this skill set to a new audience. And that's so important for this craft to not be forgotten or lost. And for us as designers, it's so inspiring. On a personal level, for us, seeing this stuff is so inspiring and such a rich source of inspiration. We're interested in maybe collaborating with some of these people and seeing how they can even, like, you know, function in our universe and maybe they can make some stuff for the brand side.

16:26Lazaro Hernandez:And there's a lot of, like, interesting parallels we can draw or collaborations.

16:31Jack McCollough:I mean, I think what's so beautiful about craft is it really teaches you to slow down. I mean, the amount of time these artists put into their work, it's incredible. And us working in fashion at the speed and the rate we've got to output, just kind of meeting these people and seeing their work and their process and how long it takes to create these things is really magical to us. It's really the art of slowing down in many ways.

16:57Lazaro Hernandez:And in some ways, it's also the soul of Loewe. It makes so much sense. Loewe started as this guy, Enrique Loewe, came from Germany, 1846. Loewe is the second oldest luxury fashion house in the world, which most people don't know. It's 180 years old this year, which is quite insane. this German guy, Henrique Loeve, came over to Spain, and he found all these leather craftspeople. They were all independent from each other, working independently and making little things, like little trinkets, little wallets, little bags, just leather things. And he brought them all under one umbrella and called it Loeve.

17:38Lazaro Hernandez:So it was just from the beginning, this sort of coalition, a group of craftspeople coming together and sort of being organized as one unit under the moniker Loewe. So yeah, it's like in the blood and the roots of this company to celebrate craft. We're so happy to be a part of this thing.

17:57Jack McCollough:Can you go into more detail about the workshops in Madrid? You know, you've been at Loewe now for going on a year. What have you observed there? Is there anything that really stands out to you about the kind of handwork they're doing? I mean, it's just incredible, their capabilities. When we started the job, we didn't want to start in Paris. We wanted to start in Madrid and meet the people there and go to the factories and meet all the craftspeople. And it just blew us away what's possible. I mean, they're kind of waiting for us to kind of feed them the ideas, but they're just ready to go, and they've got all these incredible techniques.

18:35Jack McCollough:And, you know, they're really well known for their intarsia leather, which is like an inlaid kind of leather, and they can do very intricate work with this. It's like leather marquetry, essentially. a lot of the skiving techniques you saw on our first show. So leather skiving is essentially you're taking layers of leather, overlapping it on top of one another, and then you're kind of putting it through the skiving machine and shaving it down and exposing layers. A lot of people thought those polo dresses we had done were knitwear, but it was all just skived leather.

19:06Lazaro Hernandez:Or taking, like, you know, let's say a thousand leather skins all stacked on top of each other, and then kind of slicing it into a... thin cross-section of a couple of millimeters wide.

19:18Jack McCollough:It's almost like creating a plywood, but through leather, and then doing a cross-section to create this new textile.

19:24Lazaro Hernandez:But every skin's a different color, so it creates this stripe idea, but it's all just stacks and stacks and stacks of leather. It's so beautiful.

19:31Jack McCollough:So it's just blown us away. All the bags are developed and produced in Madrid, and then we've got a leather atelier in Barcelona that just does leather clothes. And they're the ones that did the molded leather jackets. They opened the show our first season, and we love this idea of fetish finish. John McCracken, one of the West Coast minimalists, kind of coined that phrase. But it's something we're very interested in, like how can you craft something to such a level that you almost erase the hand? That was an interesting concept to us, and that's what led us to that technique with those molded jackets.

20:07Jack McCollough:I mean, they looked seamless, they weren't, but you're basically skiving leather so thin and then overlapping it and hand gluing it and then hand spraying it afterwards to create this almost fetish finish where the hand almost dissolves, even though it's this thing that's been meticulously crafted by the hand. That to us is an interesting idea of craft.

20:28Lazaro Hernandez:And that's what's cool about working at Loewe. Sometimes we don't know how to do something or it's even technically possible. So it's just ideas where we want to create a jacket that's almost, it looks like it's been molded by a hat maker. So there's no seams, all the forms are like round and, and the shape is sort of the seaming and the shaping is invisible. So it feels like one piece that's comes out of some machine looking like that. Like, how do you do that? And so we kind of challenge them, and they create techniques through their know-how and experience to sort of execute the ideas that we might have.

21:03Lazaro Hernandez:Sometimes we have more specific ideas that involves like a specific technique we know or understand, but their capabilities and their know-how are so much more profound than ours. We just sort of give them ideas. It's very collaborative in that way. We couldn't do it without them.

21:16Jack McCollough:I've also just been so blown away by how open they are to experimentation and for us to push the boundaries and explore new techniques. And they really celebrate creativity and innovation there. It's not pushed away. It's embraced. And it's just so nice to be working at a company that celebrates this kind of thing. I think it's quite rare these days. So it's been very fulfilling.

21:43Lazaro Hernandez:And people expect that from the level, which is great. They want newness. They want something that feels radically new. For us, it's, sign us up. Music to our ears.

21:52Jack McCollough:Yeah.

21:57Jack McCollough:Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

22:12Jack McCollough:Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. And we're the hosts of Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. And just because the Oscars are done, for now, doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

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23:23Jack McCollough:Another thing that's new for you is menswear. Yes. Yeah. So what has that been like, sort of deciding what your menswear is going to look like? Yeah, we've got our first mens-only show coming up in June, so we're already in the thick of that. You know, I think we were like, not nervous, but we were just kind of curious how it was going to all go down because we'd never done it before. We were doing women's wear our whole career. We've never dabbled in men's. But ultimately, I think it felt very much like the same process and the same approach that we approach our women's with. I mean, especially this last show where men's was integrated into women's.

24:03Jack McCollough:We want to feel like one world. Sometimes we weren't even looking at the heads, whether it was a boy or a girl wearing the garment. and it was really just how does this look and this piece sit in with the storytelling that we're trying to accomplish. So in some ways it felt very natural. I mean, you're still working on a body and building clothes and its silhouette and its composition and materiality. It's not so far off from what we've been doing. So we're excited to see kind of how it evolves and how we explore it in new ways.

24:36Lazaro Hernandez:It's a bit more personal, I think, when you're designing women's wear. Obviously, we're not women. so you're projecting and kind of fantasizing a little bit about like oh who she is and would she wear this or it's sort of it's a projection and it's sort of like one layer removed as men designing menswear it's much more personal like we could try on the clothes um put them on see how it feels moving them there's a layer of the personal in the men's approach that maybe doesn't exist in the women's. And I'm not sure that's better or worse, but it is what it is.

25:12Jack McCollough:Well, I was very impressed that it's sort of interchangeability, right? There was a lot of overlap between the men's and the women's shapes. That's like the world we live in. My parents didn't know who the boys were and who the girls were. I mean, not that they're fashion people, but they're like, oh, is that a boy or a girl?

25:27Lazaro Hernandez:It's not like we're putting men's in skirts or men's in dresses. Like, that's fine and cool for something, you know, but that's not what we do. The boys felt kind of boy and and the girls felt sort of feminine. So they were different, but we wanted it all to kind of feel the same and kind of all blend into one another. You know, next show is different because it's just men's only. So it'll be...

25:47Jack McCollough:You're not going to throw in a few women? As of now, no. But good idea, maybe. I don't know, with the women's too, I think there's at times this level of abstraction, and there's these dresses that sometimes aren't rooted in anything, so it's a bit of a different approach. the menswear, at least the menswear we're interested in, is usually rooted in an archetype or a sartorial aspect to it. So it comes from a different place. I'd say it comes down more to the little proportion shifts that really tweaks menswear in one direction or the other. Like, if you're putting a suit together, it's all about, like, is this sleeve length?

26:27Jack McCollough:Women's too, but especially with men's, like, you know, where the button's sitting, how long the jacket is, that's what kind of makes it this or that.

26:36Lazaro Hernandez:Or the palette of things to work from is smaller in men's. Like we take away dresses and skirts from the equation, which we are. Less categories. There's less things you can work with. And dresses tend to be more abstract. Like a jacket hat, you have two arms. There's like a thing. You know, there's archetypes of pants and coats and jackets. I think a dress can be a little more of an abstract form and that doesn't exist so much in the men's space. So it's a narrower set of archetypes to work from. But in that, maybe you go a little bit deeper. It's less things, but maybe a little deeper into them.

27:15Jack McCollough:Do you feel that you're making clothes for yourselves? Like, are you trying to make a Loewe wardrobe for Jack and Lazar? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I'd say the shows in our pre-collections are a slightly different approach. With our pre-collections, we're really trying to wardrobe build. for both men and women. It's more about the everyday. I think with a show, it's a bit more about storytelling. It can be a little more fantasy at times, whereas the pre-collections are maybe a little more rooted in reality. But yeah, I mean, we should want a good chunk of these things, and if we don't, we should know people who do.

27:53Lazaro Hernandez:Yeah, I think a show is like a— I don't know, some people use their shows as a place to put product in, and that's great, and people love that. and then some shows, I think our shows are like that a little bit, where it's like a playground for experimentation and play, and we experiment, and, you know, and I think then the pre-collection, usually the pre-collection afterwards, we take that stuff that we played with and then sort of boil it down to its most efficient and wearable and, you know, usable form. So I think, like, the true, true, true product comes sometimes a season afterwards or sometimes a season before, like the recollection before.

28:31Lazaro Hernandez:So yeah, I think that's the place of where the most real stuff lives. And the shows are just like fun and playful and like a place of experimentation and putting on a show. It's a form of theater in some ways, a show. We come from that school of where shows are a form of theater. It's entertained in some ways.

28:52Jack McCollough:Well, speaking of school, all the way back in 2005, not long after you graduated, you told New York Magazine, we always fight a lot before the show.

29:02Lazaro Hernandez:Did we say that?

29:03Jack McCollough:Do you still?

29:04Lazaro Hernandez:I think those were the days we were trying to figure out how we worked together still. I think 20 years later, we figured it out. We don't fight that much.

29:10Jack McCollough:No, we don't fight that much. Sometimes there's a little passive aggression here and there. But no, we don't. I mean, we've been working together for so long, and there's such a shorthand. Oftentimes, we don't even have to say something to one another for us to kind of be aligned. I think the challenge since we started at Loewe has been getting to know the team. I mean, back at Proenza, we designed the whole shows ourselves. We'd go up to the Berkshires and I'd sketch half the show. Lazar would sketch the other half. And it was really just the two of us when it came to the show collections. Now it's a different approach.

29:46Jack McCollough:And we've got a huge group of incredibly talented designers. and our job now is to guide them and steer them. And I think it takes a minute to build that shorthand with new people. I mean, it takes many, many seasons to kind of get to know one another and for them to understand what we're thinking and for us to understand their creative process and how they work. I mean, between the two of us, like, things are going good. and in terms of the team, we're just still getting to know them and we're still building the team.

30:23Lazaro Hernandez:But between us, we're still figuring out how to work together in this new environment. In our old job, we kind of had been there for so long and we knew the system so well that we were really comfortable separating. We wouldn't work together a lot at Pro Onsat back in the day.

30:38Jack McCollough:Outside of the shows,

30:39Lazaro Hernandez:we didn't really work together. He would do a pre-collection one season and I could do another one. He would work on a bag. I would work on a shoot. We would sort of have like our different projects and we would sort of overlap at times, but really we had our own sort of little layers and teams.

30:52Jack McCollough:We really tried to divide and conquer.

30:54Lazaro Hernandez:Yeah, because it was such a small team we had to.

30:56Jack McCollough:I think because we're just kind of building this, we're still trying to fine tune what it is that we want to say. I think we're, you know, we're almost every meeting together now because we need to be aligned as to what the direction is. So we're spending a lot of time together. Yeah. but we're used to it. I want to think about the big picture fashion. In the big picture now, in September, last September when you debuted, we made a lot of hay about, you know, it's the big reshuffle. You were among a group of like 12 or 15, you know, houses that changed over. That's crazy.

31:35Lazaro Hernandez:When you think back to that, that was unprecedented.

31:38Jack McCollough:Yes, truly. I think it was really just a domino effect. three creative directors were leaving their roles, which left three open positions. So three new people came in, which left three other open roles, and it just created this domino effect. But it was wild. We've never seen anything like it before. I feel like. Yeah, so I wanted to ask you, two seasons in, what do you see when you look around? You know, obviously you're in the whirlwind too, so you have a different perspective.

32:05Lazaro Hernandez:I think there'll be some, I don't know, I don't know if it's a word to say it, but there'll be some winners and some losers. I think there's some people that, really where it makes a lot of sense. And then some people where it's not making so much sense. And maybe it just takes a minute for everyone to sort of find their footing.

32:21Jack McCollough:I think people also expect these designers, these creative directors, to like come out of the gate right from the beginning with a very solid, very clear direction. And I think what people don't realize is it takes time to build a world. It doesn't happen overnight. I mean, so I think many of us are figuring it out still. I think it's really interesting to see everyone sort of, everyone has, what you realize is that designers have a hand.

32:46Lazaro Hernandez:And I think this whole reshuffle has made that so apparent to me. Everyone has like their hand and their point of view. And everyone's coming into these new houses. But then attacking that brand's codes through their hand. I think the most successful ones feel like a really seamless sort of blend between their personal point of view and the house codes. That's what we were saying the whole time during our debut season.

33:16Jack McCollough:Yeah, if this could feel so Loewe, but also so Jack and Lazaro, I feel like that would be... I mean, that's what we wanted people to say, and we heard it from a lot of people. That's kind of what we were after in many ways.

33:30Lazaro Hernandez:Yeah. So that's why the American thing and the sportswear thing was so important to us. We didn't want to divorce our personal identity or our roots. Like, you know, there was that one time we went to Paris, we did a few shows, and it was like very kind of French. And we look back at that, we're like, you know, we should have just been ourselves. Like, it's so cool to just kind of, I mean, it's so American, but be proud of who you are and all that stuff. But just be honest with who you are and your point of view. And I think maybe that takes a little bit of maturity and experience, but we wanted to just kind of be really authentic to who we are, not hide anything about ourselves as creatives, then try to attack this sort of iconic brand's history through our very personal lens.

34:14Lazaro Hernandez:And that was really the simple approach to it and sort of imbue a sense of Spanishness to the house, because I think that's an important element. most people forget that Loewe is like a you know it's not only the second oldest luxury fashion brand in the world but it's it's very much a Spanish house like most of the companies actually are based in Madrid and there's such a sense of pride in Spain about Loewe and you go into the archives and there's all this like Spanish history and like they used to outfit the royal family and it's like so Spanish so we wanted to kind of imbue bring back to the to sort of the foreground this idea of Spanishness.

34:54Lazaro Hernandez:It's such a rich culture to sort of pull from and be inspired by. So we also didn't want to sort of hide that. We wanted to celebrate that.

35:02Jack McCollough:And the Spanishness we wanted to tap into weren't these like kind of cliche ideas of what Spain is, like a flamenco and bullfighting or whatever it might be. It's for us a feeling. It's a, I mean, we got there and we've spent a lot of time in Spain prior to this. Like there's like a passion and a ferocity and a warmth and you get there and everyone hugs you. And there's like, it reminds me a lot of Lazarus' family, actually. There's just this like, there's just this warmth and a bit of fieriness at times. And I think that's really what we wanted to tap into, that kind of feeling of Spanishness, a more abstract feeling of Spanishness.

35:38Lazaro Hernandez:My grandparents were Spanish. So I, you know, I know that world pretty well. And yeah, it's just like an attitude in a way. They love dancing and food and celebration, and life is more important than work. There's very much a work-life balance there. There's just like this sort of love of life, a zest for life, I guess. That warmth was really sort of intoxicating to us, and we wanted to imbue. That's where all the color came from.

36:05Jack McCollough:We really, like all the imagery we've been doing and the teaser we put out even before our first show, we really wanted it to capture that feeling we're describing. Just a vibe.

36:18Jack McCollough:We're going to take a quick break.

36:44Jack McCollough:you already knew about. So the next time someone says, did you see that? You can say, yeah, obviously. Follow NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

37:00Jack McCollough:In the profile Vogue did last year, I think it was - Wow, that feels like ages ago. Yeah. Sally Singer said that the job of a creative director today is finding ways for people to interact with your brand, even when they're not buying anything.

37:16Lazaro Hernandez:I think in today's world, the attention economy, I think that's really important. I think we have to communicate with the public 24-7. I think with social media being what it is and communications being what it is, I think it's important to sort of, you know, be present all the time in some way or another, which is why we're having four shows to keep that pace up. You know, it's...

37:40Jack McCollough:It's why you're here in New York. Yeah. reconnecting with your first fans. Exactly.

37:46Lazaro Hernandez:Bergdorf gave us all their windows now for the launch of the first collection, so we're here celebrating that with them.

37:53Jack McCollough:I think the fashion customer feels like they kind of have everything they need, so for them to want to get something from a brand, it's got to be more than just a beautiful piece that brings out emotion on some level. it's got to be a world and a culture behind it that they feel like they can tap into it's more than just the clothes it's a bigger story

38:18Lazaro Hernandez:fashion is just not about the clothes or the bags anymore fashion has become a really important tenant of popular culture it's like Hollywood or it's like theater or ballet it's just another sort of you know, facet of that gem of culture. And I think people look at fashion for like entertainment now and, and it's connection to Hollywood and music. And it's just like this big cultural melting pot and fashions just sort of have, it's sort of blended seamlessly into, into all those other disciplines or art forms. So yeah, I think it's just 24 seven.

38:59Jack McCollough:Not to put too much pressure on you. I'm curious about your big picture plans for when you forecast, you know, a year from now or three years from now? What are your dreams for yourselves at the brand? I mean, we've never been people to look too far ahead. We're like very much people in the moment. I mean, obviously, you've got to think ahead and imagine how you see this brand being built. At the same time, it can be a bit daunting to look that far ahead. So we can predict what the future is going to be in three years, especially this world we're living in today. It feels like things are just constantly changing.

39:35Jack McCollough:You're wasting your time if you're going to try and make those predictions. So it's more about being reactionary in the moment and being able to pivot when you need to and continuing to build on the story. I mean, we're not interested in flip-flopping on ideas season after season. We really want to build a world. We've been working really hard to keep that consistency, and I think that's important as we move forward into the future.

40:00Lazaro Hernandez:you know yeah there's no big sort of master we've never had a big people always ask us that and i

40:06Jack McCollough:think if you have a master plan you're setting yourself up for for disappointment yeah i mean

40:11Lazaro Hernandez:like you could have said like five years ago like what's your big master plan at proenza like who

40:16Jack McCollough:knew we'd be living in paris five years later i mean the world throws at you all sorts of surprises so we're just really about thinking and living and dreaming in the moment we're working on

40:29Lazaro Hernandez:spring 27, is that right? 27?

40:32Jack McCollough:Spring 27, yes. Right now. We started that last week.

40:35Lazaro Hernandez:Yeah, and so... That's as far ahead as we can think. That's already a year and something ahead.

40:40Jack McCollough:Let's throw it back. This is fairly well-established fashion lore, but we've never told the story on the podcast before about the infamous plane ride. Oh my God. Where you met our illustrious editor, Anna Wintour.

40:55Lazaro Hernandez:Oh God, that story. I feel like I've said this story so many times in my life.

40:59Jack McCollough:It is Vogue, so. I've heard it a lot of times.

41:03Lazaro Hernandez:It's great, this story. This is back in 1964. It was a long time ago. I was in Miami on, it was back in the day when your parents, that's how long ago this was, when your parents could take you to the gate itself. You were a sophomore? I was a sophomore. I was a sophomore or a freshman at Parsons. and my mom you know took me it was like spring break or something i went back to miami to see my family and then on the way back to new york to start school again my mom took me to the gate and we're just waiting for the plane to board and anna wintour kind of comes through and you know they're they call first class you know business class whatever and and i see her walk in front of me and i get on the plane i tell my mom oh my god mom that's anna wintour the editor-in-chief of Vogue and my mom is so ignorant to fashion or any of that, that's not her world.

41:54Lazaro Hernandez:She's like, oh, you should go talk to her. I was like, no, her reputation is not that. I can't just go up to her and I'm like, and do what? She's like, ask her for a job. Don't you want an internship this summer? You should ask her for an internship. I'm sure she can get you one if you wanted one. I was like, no, I'm not talking to her. Then she sat me down and gave me a mom talk. she's like listen you're just a kid from miami you want nothing but you just want like you're offering your free it was because free back in the day like insurance didn't make a dollar you're you're offering free labor to someone who you know they'd be so lucky to have you she gave this whole pep talk and um she promised me you'll like talk to her on the plane like this is your opportunity like grab the future by the horns like very mom pep talk i was like okay and um i got on the plane and like i walked by her because you have to go to the front I see where she's sitting and I clock it and I'm sat literally in the last row in the back of the plane by the bathrooms I'm trying to muster the courage I had two hours to figure it out and finally I wrote a note on a napkin I had a little napkin from my water or something and I think I had a crayon or a marker I had something random and I wrote a little note on a napkin and just said I'm sitting in the back I'm a student of Parsons I really would love an internship this summer I really want to like get my foot into the door of fashion I don't understand it I don't know how to start you know could you help me out like all I want to do is like work for free for someone if you would be open to pointing me in the right direction I would you know appreciate that so I went up to so I like sneaked I pulled back the curtain of business class and I go to the front she's there with you know with her sunglasses on and I couldn't tell if she was awake or sleeping or what.

43:48Lazaro Hernandez:She was just kind of— Didn't you tap her on the shoulder? So then I tapped her on the shoulder and she did not move.

43:54Jack McCollough:She was either sleeping or ignoring me.

43:56Lazaro Hernandez:I was like, what am I doing? And so like I was bold and like I tapped her a little bit harder, like really hard on her shoulder and she did not move. So I was like, oh God, she's like totally ignoring me. And I lifted up her—so bold. I lifted up her glass of water and put the napkin underneath her glass of water, and I just left. And I sat back down at the back of the plane. I was like, you know, I tried, you know, whatever. Like, you know, I called my mom when I landed. I'm like, I did it, and I gave her, like, a note. I'm sure she threw it away. She's like, well, at least you tried. It's good practice.

44:31Lazaro Hernandez:Like, you know, courage is great. And, like, I think two weeks later, I get a call from Michael Kors, actually, saying that Anna had given this note from this ballsy kid. And she gave the note to Michael. It's like, if you want an intern, I recommend this kid. He seems like he's, you know, courageous or whatever.

44:53Jack McCollough:Confidence to spare.

44:54Lazaro Hernandez:Yeah, I guess so. And then Michael called me to his office, and he gave me my first internship. And that's how I started. And then I think during the first show of that season when I was an intern, he pulled me to the front of the audience and introduced me to Anna he was like this is the kid that whatever and she was she was like so cool she was so sweet she was like I'm happy that worked out for you and then four years later Jack and I started our company and people had been hearing about ProWenza Schooler and we had the Windsor Daily cover we had one designer of the year we were having like a little it was like our beginnings

45:33Jack McCollough:and that's right she called us

45:35Lazaro Hernandez:She calls into her office.

45:36Jack McCollough:We had to bring our senior, this is before CFDA. I mean, we'd just finished our senior thesis.

45:43Lazaro Hernandez:It was our school collection.

45:44Jack McCollough:And Barney's had just picked it up, so we just started the brand. And Anna called us in, she heard about the brand. She said, can you bring up the collections? We, you know, packed it into a Lincoln Town car. And then put a bunch of clothes on racks, rolled it in. And I think it was at that moment that she realized that you were the one who passed the note to her, that she got the internship. We had locked eyes and she was like, are you? I was like, I am. It was one of the more stressful meetings we've done in our lives. The whole collection was black, for starters, which is Anna's worst nightmare.

46:23Jack McCollough:That was her first comment, that it was all black. But, you know, she's been a huge supporter ever since we started and we have so much love for her. She's been such a huge supporter of so many young talents. It's incredible, and you don't see it often from a lot of people. So we have so much admiration and appreciation and respect for her. On that note, when young designers come to you for advice, what do you say?

46:48Lazaro Hernandez:That you really have to believe in what you're doing.

46:50Jack McCollough:Yeah, I think you have to have a really clear vision of what you want to do, more so now than ever. I think there's so many voices out there. and if you don't have a clear vision that's different from everyone else's vision, you're not going to stand out and people aren't going to appreciate what you're doing. And you've got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and really put in the hard work. I mean, it's full on and it's relentless and it doesn't stop. It's season after season after season. So I think you truly have to love what you do or it's not the right career path for you.

47:26Lazaro Hernandez:And you have to have a clear point of view. I think when we started, there was so many, like when you look back at Vogue Runway from like 2005 or whatever, there's so, Style.com. Yeah, Style.com. Back in the day? Style.com.

47:36Jack McCollough:I remember the list when we started. It was so small. You scroll the list and it was like 50 designers total across four cities. We're global now, so yes. Now you scroll the list and it's just this endless scroll of designers.

47:50Lazaro Hernandez:There was less noise when we started. It was kind of easier to break through and I think now there's just so much competition and so much noise and social media and whatnot, I think you have to have a really original and distinct point of view to break through the clutter and the noise and be noticed. It's a lot harder today.

48:10Jack McCollough:Thank you both. It's great to talk to you.

48:12Lazaro Hernandez:Great to see you. We could keep going, Nicole. I know. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

48:26Jack McCollough:The Run Through with Vogue is produced by Chelsea Daniel, Alex DePalma and Alex John Burns with help from Emily Elias. The show is engineered by Brand Bandi and mixed by Mike Kuchman.

48:38Lazaro Hernandez:Bye!

48:48Jack McCollough:Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.

48:56Lazaro Hernandez:I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. Thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real.

49:18Jack McCollough:From PRX.