Colleen Quen
Designer of the Week (2010)
Form, Line, and Shape
With an artist’s vernacular, Fashion Week El Paseo marquee designer Colleen Quen reveals an inspired flair befitting the desert.
When the fashion world speaks of “outsider designers” working in the United States, it typically means U.S. designers who work outside New York. So when Forbes published its hunted treasures from its foray into to the West Coast, we were hardly surprised when, in San Francisco, its fashion team found Colleen Quen.
Touting the designer’s celebrity clients (Paris Hilton, Tyra Banks, Geena Davis, and others) — because, face it, you’re no one if your gowns fail to measure up to the couturiers who dress the A-list — Forbes opted to show one of Quen’s more daring designs: her signature red, magenta, and orange “Sake-tini” dress.
On Saturday night during Fashion Week El Paseo, the French-educated couturier will treat Palm Desert to a spectacle far more impressive than celebrity — a colorfully dynamic runway show with a sumptuous collection that reveals her influences in dramatic fashion: the radiance of the natural world, impressionist paintings, and modern architecture — each a birthright of the desert communities.
“Colleen Quen brings meaningful inspiration to her designs,” says Palm Springs Life fashion editor Susan Stein, “and her intent, beyond dressing women, is to inspire everybody who sees her distinctive designs to appreciate what she does about the endless colors and textures in nature and the color and lines of fine art and architecture.”
The point was driven home recently when San Francisco Museum of Modern Art selected Quen for its “Muse Campaign,” celebrating the institution’s 75th anniversary and the emotional connections between people and art. The campaign showcases 10 iconic artworks from the SFMOMA collection and the same number of prominent creative people from the Bay Area. The campaign’s play on words punctuates the museum’s role as a source of inspiration, harking to the ancient meaning of the word museum as “home of the muses.”
With nearly 25 years as a couturier, Quen has an intimate and intuitive sense of shaping clothes to the body, and insists on working every piece by hand using centuries-old techniques, emphasizing, “Each gown is a gift made with love.” She has referred to her “understanding of the emotional textures of fabric — its luminescence, its aura, its interiority.”
Clients for Quen’s fabric sculptures include fashion-forward women and museum curators, who are more interested in exhibiting than wearing her dresses. They see colors akin to a particular Matisse oil painting as well as classical Chinese calligraphy — each hue and mark defining open space within physical form, layering colorful movement of fabric and texture.
San Francisco magazine astutely picked up on Quen’s vision, writing, “Women of substance and style who want to compete with the artwork at museum openings — or float down the aisle — visit the storied Heron Street-based atelier of Colleen Quen.”
Quen told the magazine that true couture “is about the form and the cut, [the] lines, where the darts are placed. There’s a purpose for every cut I make. I’m really obsessed with the shape and how it complements the body, but also with making it very unusual, trying to extract out a new form.”
A fourth-generation Chinese American, Quen designed WilkesSport by Wilkes Bashford, Gap, and Eileen West before launching her own line more nearly 15 years ago.
At Fashion Week El Paseo, expect new designs featuring ancient batik, embroidery, and silverwork traditions of villagers in China’s Guizhou Province.
Quen’s designs have appeared in Women’s Wear Daily, The New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune. She also collaborates with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, creating costumes that seem to dance along with the dancers themselves.
A native of the Bay Area, Quen studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising and at the Simmone Sethna School of Fashion, where she specialized in French design, modeling, and cutting.
Jamie Paul Holahan
American Menswear Designer (2010)
In the Swim
Jamie Paul Holahan takes Palm Desert with his distinctive line of beach-inspired men’s apparel
The addition of a men’s night during Fashion Week El Paseo last year raised the bar for the event, drawing guys to the Big White Tent and invigorating the women who cheered for the hip style of menswear with roots tracing back to California surf and skate culture.
This year, the event introduces another West Coast phenomenon, Jamie Paul Holahan, who was discovered during “Debut,” the annual gala of his alma mater, Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. Among hundreds of industry executives in attendance was Doug Arbetman, CEO of Sirena Apparel Group, who scheduled an interview with Holahan and hired him to produce a line of junior swimwear called Hot Water.
Holahan — “The Guru of Swim” who has since become director of design for Liz Claiborne Swimwear at Sirena — will show his newest line on the Fashion Week El Paseo runway on Friday, March 26.
He has been designing men’s apparel and women’s swimwear for more than 15 years. His Jamie Paul Holahan men’s line consists of hand-painted T-shirts, board shorts, and Euro trunks. Holahan has also created collections for Tommy Bahama, Quiksilver, Nautica, Pac Sun, many other well-known brands.
Two years ago, when Holahan met Lucille V. Wagner, they started designing custom men’s apparel and high-end bikinis in Laguna Beach. Wagner, like Holahan, grew up on the beach. Their collaboration motivated them to create one-of-a-kind bikinis and board shorts. Wagner’s favorite red polka dot bikini was the inspiration for this sexy line. Holahan’s signature look for the men’s line is truly distinctive. His dress shirts are adorned with roses, hibiscus flowers, dragons, and hearts. Each style is embellished with crosses, barbed wire, or something out of the norm. Holahan’s experience, artistic flare, and attention to detail make these exceptional collections stand out.
Their debut 2009 collection was off the charts and has created a cult following with locals in Laguna Beach. They were featured last year in Riviera magazine and in several fashion shows in Laguna Beach. Through innovative design, handcrafted materials, and distinctive applications, Holahan and Lucille — who design and sew their work in their home studio — are poised to become players in the apparel and swimwear industry.
Interestingly, Holahan came to fashion after serving as an army ammo team chief during the Gulf War in the early 1990s.
Having since appeared on E! News, Hard Copy, Fox News, The Donny and Marie Show, Totally Cool, and NBC, Holahan attributes his success to his personal philosophy: He feels that life is like a game; you have to play to win. Nothing good in life comes easy, he says.
CLICK HERE to see highlights from the 2009 event, which featured marquee designer Juan Carlos Obando, who unveiled his timeless and provocative collection at the Fashion Week El Paseo finale, and men’s night designer Jade Howe, a champion of the skinny jean who parlays his Southern California skate and surf sensibilities and sophisticated European influences into a style he describes as “cowboy punk meets English gentleman.”
