Designer preview: Greta Contstantine

We always look forward to the Greta Constantine (gretaconstantine.com) show. Designers Stephen Wong and Kirk Pickersgill are the go-to pair for silk jersey dresses that are ready to party party. (Their frocks have been spotted on the likes of Jennifer Hudson, Kreesha Turner, Iman and Nelly Furtado.) So when we heard they were doing pants for fall, we had to talk.

You just showed in New York for the first time…
Stephen Wong: We had a presentation in New York. It was basically just to get our feet wet, a bit of a meet and greet. And it went really well. We were so happy with it.

What was it like?
SW: It’s not as hard as we thought it was going to be. We were sort of scared to go because we’re used to Toronto. So we thought, go in there with blinders on. And we did it. It’s as easy as doing it anywhere. You know you think of New York as the big city and we’re the little small fish. And, no, it was excellent.

Talk to us about the collection.
SW: Normally what you see from Greta Constantine is all dresses, jersey dresses. But it’s kind of spread out now to incorporate woven. We’re doing a beautiful silk gazar which is a paper-y fabric. It’s amazing. It’s got lots of structure and body to it. As well we have lamé in gold. We’re doing neoprene again, which we’ve done before.
Kirk Pickersgill: Leather.
SW: There’s leather and nylon.
KP: It’s webbing, a type of webbing. You have to see it to understand it.

Who is the woman who is wearing your clothes?
SW: The whole collection is called Women, so it incorporates a very wide cross-section of women. They’re all our image of what the cool woman is though. We broke it up into three sections. That being going from a very high-end to kind of, just a downtown cool edgy girl.
KP: It’s a tribal thing. We broke it down but it became a tribal thing. Three separate types of women as opposed to most shows where they show you one kind of woman in different outfits. This is three distinct women.

Tell us about the atelier line.
SW: Well, we work with a factory and most often we have no problem. However, sometimes we go in and they just can’t reproduce the samples that we’ve given them. So the atelier represents all the clothes that are made in-house.
KP: It’s a more expensive line. It’s almost like a couture line.

What’s next?
KP: Sleep. A vacation. Which is not even true.
SW: No, we’re not going anywhere.
KP: Ever. [both laugh]

Greta Constantine presents their Fall 2009 collection tomorrow night. Check back Monday to see the looks and read our review.

Check out their Spring 2009 show!

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