Indie Frock | Kim Gordon’s New Line
By
Bee-Shyuan Chang
Photos courtesy of Urban Outfitters The artist-musician-designer Kim Gordon.
Youth may be fleeting, but Urban Outfitters is intent on keeping its customers. Long a teenage and college wallet mainstay, Urban Outfitters has been keeping up with the H&M’s, Targets and Uniqlos with a series of innovative collaborations, Steven Alan, Grey Ant, Paul & Joe and Neal Sperling among them. The latest is with the artist-musician-designer Kim Gordon, best known as a member of Sonic Youth, and her friends Melinda Wansbrough (a Mayle and Sari Gueron alum) and Jeffrey Monteiro (formerly at Derek Lam). Called Mirror/Dash, it hits stores Feb. 16. The Moment caught up with Kim Gordon between rehearsal sessions in Berlin.
Most people know you best as a musician, but you’re also an accomplished artist as well. Starting out, did you ever feel like you had to choose between art and music?
I always wanted to be an artist since I was little, and I just sort of fell into playing music. I was writing about music and male bonding and thought it would be more beneficial for the writing if I had an inside view of it, sort of a roundabout way to find out. It’s more complicated but also another opportunity for expression.
More recently, you’ve crossed over into the fashion world. Your first line was X-Girl out of Los Angeles, and now Mirror/Dash with Urban Outfitters. Has music or art influenced your design aesthetics?
Only in the female icons I admire for their style, like Françoise Hardy.
What were you thinking when you were sitting down at the drawing board for the line? Did you do sketches or were you bouncing ideas around with your design collaborators?
I don’t sketch. I work with Jeffrey Monteiro and my partner Melinda Wandsbrough, who has a lot of experience in sales and dealing with stores. We discuss ideas and fabric ideas, and then he [Jeffrey] does drawings. Then we present them to a production house that works with Urban Outfitters, and they make samples.
Mirror/Dash at Urban Outfitters.
Now that you are a mother, did you consider your daughter and her tastes when you were designing Mirror/Dash?
We’re actually trying to do something a little less trend oriented, a little more classic, that might appeal to someone say who used to shop at Urban [Outfitters] but wants something slightly less young looking. And we would like to appeal also to the usual Urban customer as well.
You no longer live in New York, but this is where you were an integral part of the downtown music and art scene in the ’80s. Do you miss it?
I totally miss many aspects of it. Where I live there’s a pretty happening underground music scene, but I really miss being able to go to openings and the multicultural street life — the in-your-face thing. Of course, great food and getting a good haircut are also New York experiences. I don’t miss the “Sex and the City” feel that my [old] neighborhood seems to have acquired. And I sometimes have to remind myself that being a cool, sophisticated urban person is a good thing. I love Northampton. As exciting and glamorous as New York can be I’m always really relieved to get back there.
Do you think the creative community has changed in New York since you left?
It will always be creative — it seems to shift around neighborhoods — but the same people that have been doing interesting things in the city, and the genetics of New York for that, will probably never change.
What advice would you give a young creative type who wants to do it all — music, art and fashion?
I think it’s easier to pick one thing. Just make sure that’s what you really want because you can get it.