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Keith Herron will display his brand Advisry’s first decade of designs at Los Angeles Fashion Week, with some garments dating back to when he was a teenager. Herron founded the 10-year-old brand at age 13.
“It’s a really embarrassing thing, to show things you made at 15,” Herron says. “But, I think it’s valuable for people to clearly see how one step influenced the next one.” He describes his most recent work — which he showed in September at his New York Fashion Week debut — as his “graduate collection”. The collection is called ‘Technicolor’ — in film, this marked a shift from shooting black-and-white to colour. For Advisry, it’s the end of the formative years. In LA, Advisry’s presentation will be a retrospective of sorts, with 10 garments from his recent, self-defining 10th season and additional pieces from seasons one through nine. “We’re done with black-and-white,” Herron says. “We’ve now entered a completely new chapter.”
Herron wants to offer a blueprint for the next generation of designers — particularly to those who don’t traditionally have access to the fashion industry. Virgil Abloh wasn’t yet at Louis Vuitton when Herron was starting his brand, he notes; role models in the industry were few and far between. “There was no track record of it — not an evident one.”
Advisry was born when, as a teen, Herron wanted to shop brands like Supreme and Diamond Supply Co. His mum told him to invest in himself instead. He began creating designs for T-shirts, which evolved into hoodies, hats and other printed pieces. At 16, he moved on to garment construction, which is when he says Advisry shifted from project to fully fledged business.
“That’s when fashion design and garment construction started to take precedence in terms of my priorities as a designer and brand owner,” he says. Herron didn’t take design or sewing courses, but studied the items that existed in the market. He credits his skillset to trial and error, noting that being in school gave him room to experiment. It wasn’t his career — yet. His first cut-and-sew patterns were hoodies, based on those he owned — but elevated, he notes. He then graduated to other items including shorts and pants, before experimenting with sweaters and cardigans.
Advisry’s employees are Herron and COO Jared Hook, a longtime friend of Herron’s who was hired in 2022 after working on projects with the brand. So far, Advisry has one stockist: The CAF, a Connecticut-based, multi-brand boutique. Herron wants to expand its wholesale footprint, and has been taking steps toward this by going to Paris with a collection to speak with buyers. “We are in place presently with our production infrastructure sorted, interest on a consumer level, and relationships within the wholesale industry that we believe we are set to succeed in getting ‘Season 10’ in some doors come this market season,” he says. The brand’s revenue now sits at over $100,000, he says, with 100 per cent growth year-over-year. The brand has never received outside funding.
Advisry is also a finalist for the 2023 Amiri Prize. “Hopefully, with the prize money, the plan is to improve the quality of my production in preparation of scaling up,” Herron says. “I am in the process of moving my bulk production from overseas to NYC, so those costs are already more expensive, and I want to develop my next market collection with better fabrics and finishings. I want to be able to give my customer an undeniable product experience, so it is a step that must be made.”
‘Making it’
Herron might have just produced his graduate collection, but when he graduated high school, his parents were intent on him going to college. “[They] were in favour of the typical structure, how you ‘make it in America’: graduate high school; go to college; graduate college; get a job.”
Despite his budding fashion brand, Herron ended up enrolling at Fordham University majoring in film. Fashion “just didn’t seem like an actual job”, he says, and film was another passion that now influences his design work. When toying with dropping out, Herron’s father connected him with Antoine Phillips, who at the time was vice president of brand and culture engagement at Gucci. He told Herron to call Phillips, and said that if Phillips said Herron should drop out, his father would approve. On the call, he recalls Phillips saying: “If you don't drop out of school, you can be my intern at Gucci.” Herron laughs. “I said, ‘OK, bet.’”
On his time at Gucci, where he first interned in 2020, and returned in 2021 as a Changemaker Scholar, Herron comes back to his point about the lack of Black men at large luxury houses. “The fact that I was able to work with Gucci gave me a lot more confidence to not only be a designer, but to operate within contemporary fashion,” he says. “Prior, I was doing more of a streetwear brand. That’s what gave me the confidence to take the leap and to trust myself that there's space in this more nuanced, more artful, avant-garde space of making clothes.”
His point hits home at a time when there are only two POC men in creative director roles at the top 30 luxury brands in the Vogue Business Index (Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton men’s and Maximilian Davis at Ferragamo). “It’s cyclical,” he says.
It’s also what gave Herron the push he needed to stage his first off-calendar runway show for his ‘Season 8’ collection. He did so with a $3,000 budget and the help of friends. After that, things kicked off. The CFDA requested an interview. NYFW posted about it. American model and activist Bethann Hardison sent messages of praise. He doesn’t know for certain, but Herron has a hunch that Gucci played a role in boosting the brand’s profile. “How else did they find out?” he asks.
Herron’s venture into womenswear for his ‘Season 9’ collection was a bid to prove his talent to himself — to see whether he could design garments he wouldn’t wear. “I did it kind of as a challenge to see: ‘Am I a good designer, or do I have good style?’” he says. “Which I feel is a question among younger designers, especially coming from a streetwear sort of background.” This, in turn, drove Herron to rethink his approach to menswear, which influenced his latest collection: ‘Season 10’.
With ‘Season 10’, the brand is growing up. “What I really wanted to do was establish a jumping point for the brand to exist,” Herron says. “But, that does not mean, by any means, that exploration is done.” The hope is that now, when someone walks into a shop, they’ll be able to identify an Advisry piece. The boxy fit; the cropped denim and plaid. “It’s definable in that way, but still open to interpretation.” It’s also the last of Advisry’s numbered seasons; another marker of a turning point for the brand, he says.
Training the next gen
When Herron first started designing, his target consumer group was his own: Gen Z. “When I was 18, I was selling to 16- to 18-year-olds as well,” he says. As the brand and designer have grown, so have these consumers. But, Advisry isn’t what it once was — and juggling this evolution has been tricky, Herron says.
“Building a business around an age group that doesn't necessarily consume fashion in the way that the generation above does has proven to be tricky — especially with all of the ‘rules of fashion’ that you’re not supposed to change your price points, and you have to come out the gate with your brand the way it’s supposed to be.”
It’s this dilemma that ‘Season 10’ set out to solve, “to allow people to let go of what we were four years ago and say, this is the brand”, the designer says. LAFW, meanwhile, is a blank canvas, Herron says. Much like the early years of Advisry, the stakes are relatively low (relative to a Big Four fashion week). “Most of us participating don’t really know what to expect because this is something new that they’re trying out,” the designer says. It’s a relatively light lift: all of the garments are already made, and LAFW provides the space (Hollywood’s NYA Studios).
Because of this, Herron is experimenting with a new format. With his LAFW debut, the designer wants to trace the growth of the brand, from T-shirts to dresses and full runway collections. It’s open to the public, upping exposure. “Hopefully, someone who’s 15 walks in, and it’s a road map to a path less travelled,” he says.
It’s a homecoming of sorts; Herron was born and raised in California. “My initial communities were in California,” he says. “So, it’s a cool opportunity to bring it back home.” Alongside the clothes, the presentation will include displays of the references and ideologies behind the designer’s artistic decisions, and how each one informed the next. ‘Season 9’, for instance, was informed by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 new wave film Masculin Féminin. ‘Season 10’ pulled from the 1939 Wizard of Oz (an early technicolour film). Through his LAFW presentation, Herron is taking stock of the brand’s development thus far; bidding farewell to its coming-of-age chapter.
As his brand evolves, Herron still wants to keep his earliest supporters and customers engaged. To do that, he’s delving into branded parties, music and film. Advisry will soon begin hosting screenings, and also plans to get into live music events. These open new revenue streams while cementing Advisry’s place in the cultural conversation. “A large facet of what created the brand — and what continues to hold its place within culture — is the curation of the brand,” he says. “We very much want to keep the other, multimedia facets of the brand alive.”
For ‘Season 10’, for instance, Advisry partnered with Spotify, which sponsored the runway show. The playlist the brand shared alongside the collection was a way of catering to its audience through music, rather than selling clothes, Herron says.
“We’re training that audience,” Herron says. By engaging consumers in non-monetary ways, and selling entry-level garments such as tees and boxers, the designer is building brand loyalty among younger consumers, who he hopes will keep coming back because of both the quality and the brand’s cultural cachet.
He sees Advisry evolving into a new-age lifestyle brand that’s about more than selling clothes. “I want to lead with my personal taste,” he says. “And, to hopefully champion and push forward the other really great acts that also come from my generation, whether that be like great music or great films — and eventually dip our feet into those worlds as well.”
Herron pauses. “But, for now, the focus is getting really good at making clothing.”
Key takeaway: Ten years in, Advisry is at a turning point. After founding the brand at 13 with a streetwear focus, designer Keith Herron has honed his skills and shifted Advisry’s offerings from graphic tees to full runway collections, replete with women’s and menswear offerings. With his most recent collection, the designer seeks to offer the industry a definition of the brand: a “jumping-off point” from which he’ll pursue growth in the fashion industry.
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