Moxie Randall

Excerpts from an Interview with the Designer

Recorded on: Feb 20 2023

Tell me about your collection!

When I was thinking about concepts for the collection, there were a couple of things that were really important for me. I wanted to do something I felt I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to do, and something that I would really really love. There’s so few opportunities to get the chance to do your own collection where you get to design everything you want to do. We’ve learned so many construction techniques that I felt I hadn’t gotten to employ, so I wanted to do something that I was passionate about, that I hadn’t gotten to do, and that I would have a learning experience with. I went a little more costumey with mine. I’m telling a story with my collection about the way we talk about hope in storytelling, and I’m using the method of arthurian legend to kind of describe this very human instinct to have this classic story structure - you’ve got the peak of everything and then it falls. Something that I love about Arthurian legends, and a lot of legends from around the world, is when you have this really great hero who is ultimately defeated, the story almost always ends with some iteration of “but when we really need him, he’ll come back”. I really like that, and I wanted to incorporate that. I didn’t want to get too on the nose, and I did want to do womenswear. And so I decided I wasn’t doing armor or anything, but I am incorporating medieval-inspired silhouettes, as well as some armor-inspired silhouettes into my pieces, as well as kind of a floaty, dreamy medieval vibe. 

How is the arch of a story represented through your collection?

It’s represented a lot through color. Because I have such a small collection, and I’m using such a big concept, I felt the need to go with a pretty narrow color scheme. My color scheme is almost exclusively shades of blue and gold, and that goes with Arthurian legends - I’m a bit of a history nerd - he’s called the sunrise king because he’s in gold all the time. Because the legends originally come from welsh-pagan sun god myths, where the sun dies every winter and is regenerated in the spring, so that cyclical nature, that hope that I’m talking about - is really old. And so there will be more and then less gold in the pieces, with my final piece representing that cloaked nature, but literally, of hope - rebirth.

What does creativity mean to you?

I think the fact that I’m such a huge history nerd is really part of the fact that my collection is a little more concrete, and for me, my two big loves are fashion design and storytelling. And whether I’m a good storyteller or not, I love how it's done. I love experiencing a story, so that’s why I wanted to go a little more costumey with mine, to tell a story. How I’ve ideated this small collection, is really thinking of the dresses as individual characters. So, while other designers tell a story, that story may be a little more abstract, I’m gonna be telling this story in a linear fashion. The order of my dresses couldn't be switched around. I do very in-depth sketches, and then I do paintings to represent the full emotion of what I’m looking for in the piece. In one of my paintings. I’m using some botanical elements, and I do want that flowy feeling. A little bit of the look is Arthurian legends from the pre-raphaelite painters. They painted a lot of romantic, chivalry, poetry-type things. I took some artistic inspiration from there as well. The painting helps me think about how I really want something to be perceived. For me, my creativity comes from my hands, and how I can work with them, and I think best when I’m already creating in one sense or another.