Superimposition

“I like to take classic shapes but play off of that and treat all of the details with a lot of consideration.”

In 2000, fashion designer Tess Giberson launched her namesake collection to widespread acclaim. In two short years, Giberson won the much-coveted Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation award and won high praise from Julie Gilhart (then a powerful editor at W magazine), for her modern take on hand-crafted garments.
Giberson’s first strength is her love of craft, inherited from her artist parents. “I was raised around parents who believed that things should be made well,” she says, citing her father’s in-house glass studio and pottery wheel and her mother’s constant production of clothing and textile art. Her second strength is the focus she applies to the construction: “I’m obsessed with details,” says Giberson. “I like to take classic shapes but play off of that and treat all of the details with a lot of consideration.” Details often become creative springboards for Giberson’s collections: in her Magnification Fall 2005 collection, a single garment detail was magnified to a dramatic scale like the oversized lapel of an overcoat.

Hand-making each garment takes its toll. After five years, she accepted the creative director position at luxury cashmere brand Tse in order to spend more time with her new-born son. Two years at Tse taught Giberson the value of working with the demands of a more commercial brand. She brings these valuable lessons as well as a new business partner, Harriott Lau (former director of Tse’s parent company) to the re-launch of the Tess Giberson collection in Spring of 2010. In this incarnation, Giberson marries her love of design details, finish and quality with a strategic business objective to create clothes that are “the best design, the best quality, at the best prices” in the contemporary market. Says Giberson, “it’s not enough just to be doing one of those anymore, you need to provide all three to be competitive.”
With the Fall 2010 line about to show in NYC’s fashion week, Giberson showed Theme parts of her latest construction preoccupation, superimposition, and showed us her tulle shirts with cashmere panels overlaid on the chest and skirts with lasercut lines that expose the skin underneath. We can’t wait to see the rest.