Meet Haitian-American knitwear designer Victor Glemaud. Glemaud recently gained membership into the CFDA, one of the fashion world’s most prestigious associations. The Haitian-American knitwear designer who is only getting started interviewed with Okay Africa last week. Here are a few of our favorite highlights from the interview.
Glemaud is one of the 2017 finalists for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion fund, an award that recognizes fashion’s most innovative and promising couturiers.
Glemaud started working in fashion when he was 19 years old. He was at school at FIT studying fashion, and was also working at Dean Deluca’s, as one of the checkout boys or kids.
Glemaud consider himself successful because he works in an industry that he love and inspired by what he does for a living. He is slowly creating his own unique mark in the Fashion industry and in this space, through clothes.
Glemaud proudest accomplishment is when he see people wearing his clothes whether it’s in real life or on social media. In the interview, he says he’ll never forget the first time he saw someone wearing one of his sweaters years ago, “I was like, “oh my God.” His friend was like, “I think I see your sweater.” And he really geeked out over it. The interesting thing is , it still happens to him.
Glemaud Haitian background influence his clothing because his parents instilled that you have to work hard and enjoy your life so he expresses himself through his work. His aesthetic really comes from his parents, especially his father. His father had a rigor in the way that he dressed, he was very formal and immaculate and really chic, even when he was in jeans and a leather jacket.
His mother was a little bit more casual and didn’t follow fashion and trends and still does not. He feel like those sorts of figureheads, the people in his life who respected the way that they dressed, all of those people and things are encapsulated in different ways in the way he show his clothes and the way the clothes look, as well as the cast that he work with.
Glemaud loves and is inspired by Dries Van Noten and Paul Smith. They have beautiful stores, they make great clothes, great accessories, and they sort of just move on.
Some of Glemaud’s habits that have been essential to his success in the fashion industry is he ask a lot of questions, he tend to ask the same question in different ways and he reads everything. He listen to peoples advice and their opinions, but at the end of the day, he make his own decision and stick to it. He doesn’t hide behind anyone else’s opinions, whether it’s right or wrong.
Some of his future goals include planning his next campaign with a great team he’s currently putting together. Collaborating with a German brand that comes out at the beginning of next year, and expanding distribution. In addition to Net-A-Porter, he’s selling to ShopBop coming this fall. He’s also hiring people, so if you are interested in working with him, contact the company.
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