Rachel Comey put on her first New York Fashion Week show on September 8, 2001. Waris Ahluwalia, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Lutz, and sundry other downtown show ponies modeled her skinny men’s shirts. The collection, which we’re publishing on Vogue Runway for the first time, is a time capsule of turn-of-the-millennium male style: the shirts had high armholes, slimming panels, and all sorts of appliqués and patched bits. Ahluwalia accessorized his with a guitar and Lutz cradled a rooster in one hand and a valise in the other. Yes, a rooster.
“All of these men that my friends and I knew at the time, they were all such peacocks, so it seemed like fun to dress them up,” Comey remembers. “And they loved it.” By September 10, the shirts were being sold out of The News showroom, a resource for cool downtown labels. The next day was 9/11, a tragedy that felled many New York brands, but Comey’s project took off. She found a tailor to help her with the fit—she had no formal design training—and produced her first-season orders, which were mostly from Japan. Within a year Barneys came calling, asking for the shirts for the store’s women’s section; and within another few years she had pivoted to women’s completely.
Comey’s spring 2022 show this September 11 will mark her 20th year in business. Not many fledgling fashion brands make it to 20. The same season Comey launched, Vogue and Style.com partnered with Carolina Herrera to support up-and-coming designers whose shows had been canceled by 9/11. Of the 11 names on the lineup, which we called An American View (see it here), only Maria Cornejo is still operating her own label; other once well-known brands like Tuleh, Behnaz Sarafpour, and Benjamin Cho didn’t make it.
Comey can relate: “I would have loved to have been acknowledged for being the visionary I thought I was 20 years ago. Ha ha!” she says. “But if that did happen, would I have been able to live up to it? Maybe not. As much as my road has been challenging, with years and years of learning and work, I imagine the road of those with such accolades could be just as challenging too. I can’t really speak for other people’s experiences and choices.”
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