Audrie Austin is an eclectic urban fashion brand that celebrates the artistry that goes into designing, making clothes and how people use clothes to express who they are. Audrie Austin, is an artist and one of her mediums of choice is fashion. She believes people are canvas and that fashion is the paint they use to express themselves. Austin also believes in substitutability; she is a small batch designer who uses recycled material in her designs and generates minimal wasted by turning scraps into accessories and other artistic creations. Audrie Austin offers a full range of sizes for women and coming fall 2021, limited sizes for men. Another way Audrie expresses her artistry is through interior design. She enjoys restoring furniture, making furniture, and designing a new space.
What started the connection between your business and Johnavich, the artist behind the posters?
Outside of being a fashion designer, I’m the founder of a nonprofit organization, No Limits Arts Theatre, and we work with young artists. I met Johnavich at an art exhibit featuring various local artist. I collect art and I prefer to buy from local artists. He mentioned he had a studio space that he leased out for events and when I needed a space to host an exhibit for my young artists, I contacted him. When I wanted artwork for my online store and other projects, I thought of Johnavich because he is such a great artist. We have a licensing agreement so I can take images of his artwork and use them on various things, whether it be my home décor pieces or my garments. I like to promote local artists and he’s just one of the artists that I work with. Art is a passion of mine and I believe fashion is art. It just seems natural to me to have an artist participate in helping me design some of the things I do in fashion and in interior design.
Where did the idea for Ragwear come from and how bad can the waste be from large manufactures?
Ragwear was born when I was in college and I took some scraps of fabric and made a garment to wear to our upcoming fashion show. I just had a lot of scraps laying around so I started making clothes from those scraps. I was trying to figure out how I could make a skirt and how I could make a top from the scraps that I had rather than throwing them away, because they were large pieces. They weren’t enough to make like a full garment but if I put them together, I could come up with a look so that’s what I did. I was complimented on the look and my response was that I made it out of rags. The next day in class I came up with the name Ragwear.
There is a lot of waste in the fashion industry. Consumers throw away about 70 pounds of clothing a year and most of that waste can be recycled. I just watched a documentary a couple of weeks ago about the amount of waste that is produced in the fashion industry because of what we call disposable fashion, inexpensive, trendy clothes that are worn for a season then thrown or given away a lot of which ends up in our landfills. The documentary shared how companies overseas are taking discarded clothing and recycling them into new materials to manufacture other things including new garments.
Has your interior design work influenced what you do in fashion?
It’s the other way around, my fashion influences my interior design work. I studied both fashion and interior design at Wade College. I have an associate degree in fashion design, interior design and merchandising and I’ve always enjoyed doing both. To me, they are almost one in the same. If you’re going to style your person, you’re going to also want to style your home and both fashion and interior design to me are expressions of art. I’ve been making clothes since I was 13 years old and I’ve always enjoyed decorating. It just seemed natural to me to merge the two. In the past three years I have really started to focus more attention on interior design. 2019 was the first year that I started to incorporate interior design items on my website and on social media to let people see what I do in home décor. Like I said fashion influences what I do in interior design. I like color and pattern and I like things to be different and a little outside of the box and so I take that from the fashion side of my brain and put it to the interior design side.
How big will the athleisure movement be due to covid-19?
I think that the athleisure boom started before COVID and it just expanded because people weren’t going anywhere. They wanted to find comfortable clothing to wear around the house, but it became a staple in women’s closets well before COVID. Once leggings started being worn outside of yoga or workout classes and became a part of everyday wear, that’s when it started to be rebranded as athleisure wear instead of athletic wear. I designed my first collection of athleisure wear in 2019, I have a new collection that I’ll be launching after the Runway Dallas fashion show. I think if women are going to wear leggings as part of their everyday attire, then they might as well be fun, comfortable, and different.
Are there any unique differences between a virtual fashion show and in person runway?
When I did the virtual fashion show during COVID it was to test it out using a single model. I had just designed and launched my line of athletic wear a few weeks before COVID hit. A friend of my daughter offered to do a video of her wearing the collection for me and she did an outstanding job. I personally think doing a virtual fashion show is great for a small designer because it can be budget friendly and some small designer can’t afford to participate in fashion show, especially those in New York or abroad in Paris. However, if you can get a couple of people together; models, yourself, depending on the designer. You can do a virtual show and it’s not as expensive. What I like about some of the major brands this year is even though they could have put on a live show, some chose to do what I consider to be virtual in that there was no audience. The entire show was shot at a particular location and the models were walking somewhere outdoors in the mountains, across bridges, airplanes, etc. They found so many fun and different ways to film their shows without an audience. And I think that that’s a great thing for all designers to think about, but especially small designers. It can be easier, less expensive and you can get it out to more people across the country.
