Today we’d like to introduce you to Katherine Tsina Bird.
Katherine, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I moved to New York after graduating from UC Berkeley to continue studying dance for a few years. One of the jobs I stumbled into was working as a fitting and showroom model for some designers at a showroom called Fuel which had Zero, Balenciaga, Pierrot and others. It really was the nuts and bolts of clothing: standing around, feeling the fit of clothing and how the fabric moved and seeing how the designers worked. Something in that really got into my brain. I went back to school, first at FIT to learn some basic construction and then I went to Parsons for my degree. After school finished, I started my line, Avion, and I was lucky to be able to get press and stores to carry my collection right away. I made all the patterns myself and sometimes had to cut the production in the beginning, running back and forth to the garment district from my West Village studio. I have always focused on the made to measure aspect working with private clients as well as wholesale when I lived in New York.
When I moved out to LA, I needed to change the model of my business so I decided to open my store, which has been a really rewarding venture. I feel a lot of freedom to work with the best fabric mills and my factories in New York, but work at a more manageable scale for me. I work with private clients for custom pieces and make ready to wear pieces for people to buy off the rack. Fashion is definitely a business and you have to understand how to manage that with your own collection. Working in these different ways over the years has helped me get to this place where my business runs in a way beneficial to building my brand independently.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Relatively speaking, I had a pretty smooth road. The beginning was just a lot of hard work but things came pretty easily in terms of learning the skills, finding some stores interested in it, and receiving press to spread the word. I had a lot of help from friends and interns in the early days. I did reach a point where a lot of designers get to where you really need a larger capital investment to grow and around that time, the recession hit my business very hard, I think I lost 90% of my stores all at once. That season I had to make a collection all by hand in my studio with my assistant and interns. I hand painted dresses and this sent me in a different direction focusing more on the special artisan pieces in my collection. I started to become less interested in making collections that stores would be interested in commercially which can inevitably happen in fashion and focusing on what I was curious about. I spent a whole summer painting orders for these handpainted dresses and these were actually some of the more commercially successful pieces, it was an interesting realization. I started to rethink the model of how I wanted to run my business.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Avion started in 2005 as a women’s designer collection, and now in 2020 it is still my collection that is sold in my store, Avion Clothier that was opened in 2016 in Los Angeles.
I was interested in tailoring in school so in the beginning, I started by making tailored cocktail dresses and jackets which led me to be known for fit. I am pretty meticulous and obsessed with fit for all my garments. I try everything on myself. I also have collected so many beautiful fabrics and printed textiles and love to use them for evening pieces for the store. Everyone season we are making custom fabrics with our mills.
I am most proud of the level of the business I can run at a smaller scale. I can work at the highest level possible for me directly with my customer and I don’t have to make any compromises in my business. The fabrics, production and attention to detail are all very personal and specialized, I do think that sets my business apart. I just want to make beautiful pieces and being a cult brand appeals to me more than any other model.
What were you like growing up?
I was fairly quiet growing up, I was constantly reading and doing things on my own. As I got older, I started dancing which a good outlet for a shy person. Fashion was definitely on my mind in my teens. I still have hundreds of fashion magazines from the nineties in boxes in my room growing up. My parents were not surprised at my career choice. I think it was a very internal thing at the time though, I didn’t really understand that it could be a job. I think what I am doing now mixes a lot of those interests together in my approach.
Contact Info:
- Address: Avion Clothier
3153 Glendale Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90039 - Website: www.avionclothiershop.com
- Phone: 3109538688
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @avionclothier
Image Credit:
Avion Clothier
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