When most people think of avant garde fashion, they think of fashion for a singular purpose or occasion; Jordan Arthur Smith’s namesake label challenges this assumption by creating garments that exist as multiple garments simultaneously, with no finality. Much like the signature curves in his designs, Smith has followed a non-traditional path on the way to founding his eponymous label. While most designers begin their career under a well established designer, or work at a major fashion house, Smith took a leap of faith and started his own label, despite the barriers he faced due to isolation from a major fashion market. Since 2020, Smith has worked tirelessly on collection after collection out of his apartment in the Midwest, hand-crafting garments that are closer to works of art. Smith and his label’s offerings are a product of his non-traditional background, and experimental approach to design. Growing up in a small town on the coast of California, Smith considered becoming a fashion designer in high school. After graduating, he went to a local community college and lived at home. During this period, he worked as a sailmaker, learning technical skills that later helped him as a designer. He then attended Kent State University’s fashion design program, up until the Covid-19 pandemic began and hindered in-person learning. Seeing the ensuing shutdowns as an opportunity, Jordan and his wife decided to start the label with some savings out of their apartment.
Smith's formative adolescence in coastal California engendered a fascination with the natural world. From water motifs to the use of natural dyeing techniques, his designs reflect this fascination. Smith’s design process is quite self referential, resulting in works that are unlike anything else from his contemporaries. Smith and his in-house team make every piece by hand, outsourcing only a few pieces and components. Jordans unconventional work reflects his keen attention to detail and non-traditional background, and these qualities help him stand apart from his contemporaries. Smith took the time to be interviewed by ARCHIVE.pdf. In the interview we discussed Smith’s background, his eponymous label’s origins, his inspirations, and how his ideas come to life.
Tell me about yourself and your journey as a designer.I got really into fashion in middle school and high school. I focused on researching designers, diving into the worlds they created and the history of the brands, and buying a few pieces that I really liked. After highschool I really wanted to go to fashion school but felt like it would make more sense financially to attend a local community college first. I studied fashion and photography, and graduated with a degree in both, and this college experience allowed me to explore new mediums of art such as ceramics, and quickly pick up industry experience in fabrics and construction. I've kind of always had the same vision and aesthetic that I've wanted to execute for the brand. I went into sailmaking and that taught me a lot of the technical side of things. It started with nonclothes and a lot of sewing and just technical skills. Things such as learning how to pattern make and learning how to sew. From there I went to Kent State for a little bit, and then I started my brand during the pandemic. We kind of started out of our apartment out of nothing. We didn't have anything, and …I just had this itch and this desire of, ‘this needs to happen.’ I felt that I had a unique enough voice in the space and enough passion to make things happen. I had no idea at the time if anything was going to work out. I had $3,000 left in our bank account because I worked a little bit over the summer and I just said ‘I'm just not going to school. I have to have this stuff ready and I'll have a collection out, and I'll have no money, but I can just find a job somewhere else or go back to school if need be.’ I just started it with nothing. Now we're here, and over time, we've just been knocking at the door– asking for us to be let into the industry, or give us recognition. I think I've also been fighting for that [industry recognition] because of where we're based. The pandemic was a little tricky because everything was online. But that was fine for me because it gave me a little bit of an advantage, because the location didn't really matter [during Covid]. Everyone was on an even playing field. And now, because of the location I'm in, the work has to speak for itself. So it's been a bit isolating, starting the brand. But I think that's been a good thing because in isolation, I've been able to focus on what we stand for and just the designs. And that's what is going to cause my brand to survive, or die.
Tell me more about your technical background. I think that it's done a lot for my designs because I'm able to start things in a very different manner than most designers do. Especially with our sculptural works, starting with something that is not made for the human form, which is similar to what I was doing with sail making, and then translating that onto the body. As far as a fashion background goes, I do think that I got enough of a glimpse of that from constant self-exploration, also through fashion university and the pattern-making background, specifically in relation to clothes. It's not necessarily a nautical approach, but a lot of my designs are connected with water in one way or another. As far as the visuals there's always some water element. I'm sure my team kind of hates me for it, where every collection I'm like, "You have to do something with water." Whether it's shooting it in the water, or incorporating some water into it. It's always a starting point for me, and it's also very relaxing to me. I feel really at peace by the water and most of the realizations that I've had in my best moments have come near the water, whether it be an ocean or a lake. I think that that's a lot of the DNA and background in our garments.
Tell me more about your affinity for water.It is a much deeper question. I think water has always been the most comforting thing for me. A lot of the designs that I work with are [about] adding comfort and protection to people. That comes from a more personal aspect of my life. Water has always been comforting and protective. The garments represent that in my life as well, in a more physical form, whether it's design elements that are very literal or something we call the ‘estuary motif.’This was inspired by the estuaries of my childhood and how those looked. We have a lot of other organic seam work and elements in our mind that remind me of water. If you look at our garments, they're constructed in a very non-traditional way. There are not really any straight seams anywhere. If there's a straight seam or a dart, I'll turn it into a curved seam, which makes things very complex and difficult to construct. When it comes to curved seams, to get those things to lay flat, the pattern work has to be perfect, and you have to rework things several times.
[The] things that inspire my work are mistakes and the process. As a designer, I'm not very literally inspired by many things. I don't reference much history or literal references; it works from a point of experimentation and process. And so, one of the elements that informed the curved seam work, and the ‘post-human’ work I've been working on, is a mistake made during grading for our first collection. When you grade all the sizes, it's difficult with the curved panels. One of our panels had a bubble in it, and I thought, ‘this is terrible because I have orders due.’ It was a very stressful moment in my life. Early on, I was caught up on this. From there it shifted into thinking this mistake could actually be something cool, because there was some element I liked about it– if I incorporate this in a way that looks intentional and pushes the design forward, that informs the post-human sculptural work we do, where I'm actively making sculptures to create the shape of the garment I want and then translating that back to the human form. This goes back to the water elements and the protection elements of something that is protecting the body and shielding it.
Who is the post-human and what does the post-human look like to you?I think that informs a lot of the design. Maybe I'm a little focused on utopia, as opposed to the world going into something not so great. It's weird– I think it's a bit of escapism in my design. A lot right now is focused on irony and dystopia as opposed to looking forward to the future. Our brand is focused on a future that doesn't exist right now and what that could look like; whether it be the sustainable elements of our garments or just garments that have multiple ways to wear them, that's one of our big focuses. I want to make clothes for the future where someone might wear something one way now. But with time, trends shift, and [the wearer’s] ability to experiment grows. They can wear something a little more crazy and feel more comfortable. I like to think about design as a challenge: that's where we start most of our designs. One of the keys of our brand is that our garments can be worn in multiple different ways. With that challenge, it informs the shapes of the garments and the components that go into them, whether it be details, pockets, fabric type, or construction in general; it's condensing a wardrobe down to something where, if I was going to take a flight, I could pack one shirt and a pair of pants and be fine for a week, see the same people, and wear those things in different ways without them noticing. The clothes can be different colors and silhouettes daily. This turtleneck is one piece that can be worn in 20 to 30 different ways.
It's been cool to see our customers send me pictures of new ways to wear the turtleneck. Like, I never thought it could be worn that way. It allows people to experience the clothes, experiment, and create newness in their lives. These moments take me back to when I started in fashion, that feeling of newness and creation. I'm experimenting with the garments for the design, but I also want to pass that on to our customers, allowing them to experiment with the outfits, wearing a turtleneck in 15 different ways. For most people, a fashion journey starts with basic things that feel uncomfortable. A simple turtleneck could be easy for someone to pull off because it looks like a normal turtleneck,but can be worn as a dress, a halfway dress, or on one arm as a tank top with one longer sleeve. It allows people to choose how daring they want to be each day and ease into that.How do you interpret time? Both in relation to self and in relation to your label's clothes?It's funny that you bring that up, because that's also one of my main key pillars of the brand, focusing on time and the passage of time. I use that in many different ways: the way I look at our collection is a continuation of building a world, not necessarily switching to something completely different. Each garment [that] I've made experiments with a basic Western wardrobe of menswear, making those pieces unique, and building off of that while referencing old work. There's the passage of time going backwards, referencing mistakes I've made, or ideas we haven't fully brought to life; our post-human work is a good example of that. Even now, I haven't fully realized that idea. Focusing on materials is a huge thing [in the process]. That's one reason why I focus on the natural undyed color of things: it's a passage of time because when people wear it, it will get dirty and show the markings. Another focus is on hardware. Many of our garments have hand-painted elements for the hardware, so as people wear them, the paint will come off, revealing the brass underneath.
I try to design things so far in the future that they almost become timeless. I reference objects that I view that way, whether it be the pyramids or nature in general, because nature is very timeless. A frog has been around for a long time and isn't going anywhere. It isn't going to necessarily morph into something and isn't going to pass with trends. Another thing I focus on, as far as the visuals and our brand in general, is things that aren't set in a specific period. I reference enough from the past and push enough to the future, with a tiny sprinkle of the present, to create something timeless. I don't want our clothes to be seen in the present, future, or past. I'm particular about the visuals. I avoid buildings, cars, street signs, or anything that would date a photo, like that would show if it was from 2019, 2020, or now, based on the technology or other details. I focus on things that could be put in a time capsule and sent back to ancient times or the future, and people could wear them that way as well. I don't want to date things with a timestamp. Focusing on materials that age with time is important. For our first collection, I worked with only natural dyes—indigo, an algae dye paste with acorns, tea, iron, and walnut hulls.And so, those things fade over time. As the wearer uses them, they'll naturally fade, similar to jeans and raw denim. I am drawn to garments and objects in my life that will intentionally age and become personal. Incorporating nature or natural elements into the clothes so they develop a personal relationship between the wearer and nature.
How has the design process been different for the last collection?With the last collection, we had different outcomes in mind because we focused on a specific dye process. It came from the more practical standpoint of which designs will look best with that dye process, and we let that process sing. With the Erode collection, we deconstructed the pieces into several panels. Some of the jackets had over 50 pattern pieces or more to make one jacket. With that, the seam work became a distraction to the dyeing process and it was too busy for me. So we stripped things down and made them more minimal to incorporate the dye process and printing process we used, [and] let the garments and the process stand out. We printed clothes on top of clothes. One example is the sweaters with an estuary motif, or as we call it, the ‘plexus,’ similar to a poncho; The sheer element was printed on the base layers, which informed the design. This collection's design comes from our focus on the print process and incorporating pieces that worked with that.I always have to outdo myself each time, making something crazier than last time. Whether it's a piece that can transform into more ways to wear it or a statement piece, we always aim to create something extraordinary for the next collection.