Winnie fall 2020
Courtesy
WINNIE
Perhaps his American contemporaries were hanging out at the mall. But when he was a teenager, Idris Balogun, the founder of New York-based label Winnie, took to “the Row” — Saville Row — in London. Landing his first apprenticeship at age 15, Balogun, who grew up in a family of Nigerian immigrants, said he feels lucky to have learned the tricks of the trade at an early age — tailoring and pattern-cutting.
“The guys on Savile Row kind of think of themselves as a separate entity from fashion,” he explained, noting they stuck to the classics, avoiding the fashion industry’s seasonal churn. He himself felt the pull and eventually moved to the design studios of Burberry and Tom Ford.
“I kind of found beauty in that, in the seasonal operation, because there’s always newness,” he said. He got himself into trouble, at times, suggesting fresh ideas.
“Like, ‘Well, why do we have this line here, instead of putting it here?’ or ‘How come our lapel can’t be a bit slimmer?’ But all houses have rules and you kind of have to kind of stick to those rules when you’re a cutter,” he said.
A stint at the Fashion Institute of Technology landed
Follow WWD on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.