The success of a best-selling product can be a double-edged sword. While it brings financial rewards and builds brand recognition, it can also lead to creative stagnation. Maisie Schloss, designer behind the popular Maisie Wilen label, experienced this firsthand with her perforated knit designs. Their popularity, while gratifying, created a challenge for her. She felt constrained, longing to explore new ideas while simultaneously fulfilling customer expectations.
“I started to feel a little angsty towards them the last couple of seasons because they have been so popular,” Schloss shared from her California apartment. “They were inhibiting me from showing new things because people were focused on them, while I’m like, ‘Hey, look at this other stuff I made!’ but this season I’ve fallen in love with the fabric all over again.”
This rekindled passion stemmed from a significant shift in Schloss’s design process. Known for her digital-heavy approach, incorporating digital prints and optical illusions into her collections, she decided to take a different path this season.
“Previously, I’ve been almost entirely digital,” Schloss explained, describing how her design journey typically involved digital sketching, silhouette development, and meticulous planning. “Once it was all finalized on the computer I’d make the actual things, it was all very calculated.” While practical, this approach often resulted in a polished, predictable outcome.
Seeking a more spontaneous and artistic expression, Schloss closed her laptop and ventured into the streets of Los Angeles. She embarked on a quest for deadstock materials, abandoning her meticulously planned designs for an improvised, material-driven approach. She draped raffia around the body, threaded vintage beads together, creating funky separates resembling bejeweled fishing nets. She even reimagined her signature perforated jersey, twisting and draping it for a sense of novelty.
“It feels like fine art, observing an image and creating it simultaneously,” Schloss remarked on her newfound methodology, which infused her collection with dimension and depth. “I was like, ‘I have to log off for a minute,'” she joked, acknowledging the need to escape the confines of her digital routine. It seems that this digital detox allowed Schloss to rediscover the beauty and potential of her craft, ultimately giving birth to a collection that feels fresh, artistic, and undeniably Maisie Wilen.
