Fashion Reverie Exclusive: Charles Harbison

In the wake of the 2016 Oscar Blackout, Black Lives Matter protests, and a 2016 presidential race that is beginning to place race relations as a key issue, very few medial outlets or cultural pundits are taking a critical look at diversity in the fashion industry and the lack of African American designers that have a major US retail presence.

In this critical fashion season as the Council Federation of Designers of America (CFDA) is looking at ways to reposition and invigorate a lagging US retail market and US fashion weeks that no larger attract wide media coverage, there is a blight of journalism on the state of designers of color. Though CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg has addressed this issue, during New York Fashion: The Shows spring 2016 season only a handful of African American designers of note presented collections.  And as of 2010 there were only 12 African Americans that were members of the CFDA.

And, if there has been a discussion in the media over the lack of diversity in fashion, it is always centered on black models, rarely designers of color. That is probably due to the fact that there are several well-known Asian and Hispanic designers/brands—Alexander Wang, Oscar de la Renta, Vivienne Tam, Anna Sui, Tadashi Shoji, Narcisco Rodriguez, Thakoon, Derek Lam, Monique Lhuillier, Custo Barcelona, Angel Sanchez, Jason Wu, Carolina Herrera, Desigual , Lie Sang Bong, and the least goes on—that present collections every season. When you ponder black designers, only a few names come to mind—Tracy Reese, B. Michael, Maxwell Osborne of Public School, and Stephen Burrows, though he only shows sporadically.

However, at closer examinations there are some rising black design stars on the horizon. Though they are getting limited media coverage, for those fashion folks in the know, these black designers are blazing a new path and causing the fashion community to rethink they way they look at the contemporary shopper. Charles Harbison is one such designer.

Slender, mild mannered, but highly passionate about his design aesthetic, his brand's DNA, and its market viability, Charles Harbison is taking the fashion industry by storm by forging a unique brand identity and breaking new ground in niche marketing, customer curating, and retention. And like many young, new fashion designers, Charles’ path into fashion was not linear, it was a circuitous trajectory of ‘a ha’ moments and Eureka-like realizations.

“I had initially gone to North Carolina State University (NCSU) to study architecture because I thought that was how a creative mind could make money. I soon found that architecture was bit to stringent and rigid for me. In my fundamentals class I started working with materials and fabric and fell in love with that medium that led me to follow the path of textiles. I put all my energies into becoming a textile weaver and technician,” explains Charles Harbison.

“While following this new passion, I wove 17 yards of this incredible new textile and later did not know what to do with it. The fabric had a very beautiful, tactile tribal motif. The tribal references in the textile were Native American. … When I put the textile as clothing on some friends, I just loved the process. By my senior your at NCSU, my thesis was all in garments.”

After successfully working as an associate designer at Luca Luca, Billy Reid, and Michael Kors, Charles struck out on his own, launching his eponymous brand, HARBISON. “I was professionally satisfied at these companies but I was not personally satisfied. My personal life was not centered; I wasn’t putting enough time into self-care. It was sustainable for me, but I didn’t want that kind of life,” continues Harbison. “At HARBISON, I can configure business so that my professional and personal life don’t have to be polar opposites. I can work with my friends in the industry, if I choose to; I can also commission my friends. I get to surround myself with people that I know and trust. I also get to instate processes that are more thoughtful of myself.”

And Charles can also play with a variety of cultural influences, motifs, color palettes, and fabrications and meld these seemingly disparate points of view into a seamless dissertation on how the modern woman and man might express themselves through wearable art. Take Charles Harbison’s spring 2016 collection. At a perfunctory glance, the collection might seem a smorgasbord of dissimilar abstractions. However, at closer examination, the randomness adds to the beauty and craftsmanship of the collection.

“The primary reference for the spring 2016 collection was the iconic film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” So, there was a strong lean toward simplicity expressed in shift dresses, linear elements. I was inspired by these sun-bleached pastels, horizon colors; punch reds, but also stark whites. There is also this 60s preppy aesthetic that you see Katherine Hepburn donning in the film.  That aesthetic was turned into the navy story in this collection. I also wanted a color story that spoke to Sidney Poitier, so I have these bricks and reds that look beautiful on a chocolate skin tone,” explained Charles.

“Surf and swim references were also important to this collection. I imagined Katherine Houghton as a renegade surf girl. There are other aquatic references in the collection. The ruffles in the collection reference ripples in the ocean; there is mesh that speaks to fisherman’s net and seaweed.”

“There is also this underwater sculpture called “Vicissitudes” that is off the coast of Grenada. This sculpture is life-sized humans linked and entwined together that has been dropped to the bottom of the ocean. The sculpture now has coral and sea life growing all over it. So, the ruffle and other embellishments speak to sea life growing on top of this sculpture.”

“Constatine Brancusi designed beautiful brass and gold sculptures. He also worked in marble. Thus, my shapes are bit more sculptural this season, I wanted to use fabrics and textures that held shape in a very organic way. I like to put four finite things in the pot, so to speak, and when you hybridize them you can come up with something pretty unique and amazing.“

With HARBISON, Charles Harbison is getting to do exactly what he wants to do. Expressing his unique design aesthetic, designing for a consumer that reflects his own penchant for ‘art meets fashion’ seen through a lens of modernity, sophistication, and wearable charm and expand and test the waters of his own creativity.

“The exciting thing I am building with Harbison is that there are so many product categories that can sit underneath this brand identity. I am excited about servicing him and her with the things and experiencing that I love. At the end of the day, I want my customer to be more powerful in their life. I want to give my customer the tools to aesthetically present him or herself to the world. I want men to be more comfortable opting into that softer more fragile part of themselves and women opting into the more directional powerful parts of their personality.”

And we are excited with and for you!!

—William S. Gooch