Keith Herron’s roots run deep in Sacramento. The City of Trees after all, is where the designer grew up. It’s also where Herron launched his fashion label, Advisry.
“[Sacramento] felt like a playground for me to do creative project after creative project,” Herron told Style Speak’s Kristin Vartan. “I feel like it gave me the room to dream.”
Ten years since launching the brand as a 13-year-old and six hours away from where it all started, Heron presents a retrospective from all ten collections in Advisry’s Los Angeles Fashion Week Presentation: “The City of Trees: The Formative Years.” Each “season,” is surrounded by a bed of fallen foliage.
“That one quite literally says “City of Trees,” Herron points to a crewneck embroidered with the moniker. “[City of Trees] was the first tagline of the brand.”
Advisry’s breakout collection featured two screen-printed long-sleeve shirts, two felt 6-panel caps, one cut and sewn hoodie, and one cut and sewn T-shirt, according to the exhibition. Herron used Microsoft PowerPoint to print Advisry’s box logo.
“I never set out knowing that this is something I ever wanted to do,” Herron told Helitra.com. “Each project led to the next, and that is how we ended up here. I don’t know how we got here.”
Here, standing in front of his tenth season collection. A royal blue balloon-shaped velvet gown and a double-breasted tweed dress belted with a boxy white collar and Adivsry logo belt tower, side-by-side. Here, being a finalist for the Amiri Prize. Here, being a brand worn by Tyler the Creator and Virgil Abloh.
“Treat everything like the world is watching. Keep doing those projects, because it doesn’t matter if no one is watching now, because you never know who is,” Herron told Helitra.com the words he would utter to his thirteen-year-old self. “You never know who one out of those one-hundred views that you consider to be small, really are. Just keep going.”
And so, Herron has. Like the trees that flank the Advisry-clad mannequins, they demonstrate how the Sacramentan has grown as a designer. He tells Helitra.com that Sacramento gave him that space to creatively evolve over the years.
“It wasn’t a metropolitan city like this, so I had to open up my imagination and see what else was out there.”
Herron’s ingenuity was not curbed by an absence of formal training in the fashion space. Four years in, what was once a passion project that barely reaped a profit, became a business that could blossom, like the sunflower cardigan from his collection that year, into a business finally getting its moment in the sun.
“Herron attributes the success of his collection to the creativity of the lookbook and a great mix to accompany it by Brandon Lamont—it created a world around the collection,” according to the exhibition curated by Jonathan Richetts.
From California’s capital city, to America’s fashion capital: New York where the brand is now based, Herron and his team continue to create a world that saddles streetwear and innovative tailoring.
It doesn’t matter which city’s trees Advisry settles under. When Herron approaches the “two roads diverged in the yellow wood,” as Robert Frost puts it, he tends to take “the road less traveled in fashion and beyond,” as the exhibition notes. There is a well-planted message in Herron presenting his body of work in the form of a retrospective back on the coast he hails from. While the designer is in a very fruitful season, he does not forget his roots.
“I want to speak to the integrity of art, and continue to push art forward, in every medium that we engage in as a brand,” Herron concludes to Helitra.com.
Source: Style-Speaks