Douglas Stewart

It's always about what am I trying to project?

Actually, the thing I'm most proud of comes after Calvin Klein.

I actually was one of the heads of menswear design at Banana Republic for 15 years.

Yeah, in the early 2000s when everybody was wearing Banana Republic.

And I got to tell you, as a sort of a young working class boy from a socialist country, it was such a thrill to come off the subway in the morning and see like, you know, 12 pairs of your chinos before you even got to the office.

And suddenly realizing the power of clothing and democracy where everybody wears something, what is part of a culture.

And I really loved that.

That used to give me such a thrill when I would see my things everywhere.

Yeah.

And sometimes when I'm in an audience now and I sort of look out and I feel a little bit nervous, I have a joke to myself.

I think, how many people in this audience have worn the underwear that you designed?

And that sort of is a bit like my version of picturing people naked.

I designed everything as a knitwear expert.

Yeah, I designed, yeah, lots and lots of underwear.

And one of the very funny things is when you're fitting underwear on a model, you know, you've got to essentially make the garment fit as well as you can.

But you've also got to do it without ever approaching or touching the model.

And so a lot of my sort of early design days was just pointing at people's crotches and asking someone to take an inch out of it or, you know, to make it fit a little bit better around the high waist.

Yeah, I've designed everything.

Oh, I think this is why I write everything is because I feel like two very disconnected people.

I don't think the boy that I was could imagine that this kind of life I'm living now is possible, that I can spend all day with books and then have a husband who talks about art all night.