“I think we’re just scrappy, that’s why it is,” she says. It’s yet another impressive feat for her label ( ), which boasts retailers like Moda Operandi, Kirna Zabête and Saks Fifth Avenue just eight seasons in and with only three employees-including Liang herself. But inside, the bright white space, lined with mirrors and colossal vases among the racks of clothing, could be the atelier of any high-fashion brand. If it weren’t for the sign that reads SANDY LIANG IS DOWNSTAIRS (repeated 13 times), the designer’s basement studio on an unassuming Lower East Side block would be easy to miss. Luckily, he has a plan to make all the sweat worth it: “I want to turn around in, like, five years, and have this amazing thing going, and have it all be mine.”īuy his threads at: Opening Ceremony, 35 Howard St (21, ) “It all came to me walking to work yesterday, listening to my music,” he says regarding stepping right back into the hustle. Schlösberg planned to take a post–Fashion Week break, but his next collection is already underway. After that, it’s off to his day job at a luxury retailer in the West Village, then home to cook dinner with his husband, Logan Reed, founder of indie e-tailer Circe New York. To get it all done, Schlösberg starts his days at 6am, when he answers press requests and sends out samples for the brand from his East Village apartment before walking to a factory in the Garment District. “But at the same time, I also don’t want them to be uncomfortable as soon as they leave the house.” “I want the person who puts it on to feel outrageous and fabulous and to get that empowerment from the clothing,” he says. The pieces are still anything but restrained-yet perhaps a bit easier to mix and match into an existing wardrobe. “The clothes are also a bit more elevated, just slightly more advanced,” says Schlösberg. The two met while he was studying at Parsons, where he initially failed out of the fashion program for creating clothes his teachers deemed too “costumey.”īut things have changed. It was the third outing for his eponymous line ( ), which he started after folding Ammerman Schlösberg, the cult label he ran with a former Pratt Institute student. “I have no investors at the moment it’s not something that I’ve ever really wanted.” It’s been a few days since the presentation of his fall/winter 2017 collection, a sort of twisted mix of Alice in Wonderland and a New Jersey girl turned ’80s sex slave. “The thing is, I do everything myself, out of pocket,” the 28-year-old says while on a break from his retail day job.