Fashion
Luella Bartley
Hui-Hui
Peter Jensen
Katie Gallagher

Entertainment
Alan Ball
Summer Bishil
Dr. Dog
Nima Nourizadeh
Chuck Palahniuk
Anthology Recodrings
Marina Zenovich
Zimmerman/Berg

Artists
Desireé Holman
Corndawg
Matt Furie
Molly Landreth
Matthew Lock
Nikolay Saveliev
Christopher Schulz
Darren Sylvester

Fiction
24 Hours on L16
Nobody Eats Oranges...
Some Mornings

Katie Gallagher’s “Everything Furever” feels less like a Fall/Winter collection and more like a queasy, outlandish, but ultimately rhapsodic piece of drone music. With skin-colored corsets disguised as futuristic exoskeleton rib cages, Super-Spandex waistbands, and elastic straps keeping the fabric impenetrably tight, Gallagher presents us with a striking vision of cloistered sexuality—a cold, provoking parody of nakedness. The catalogue book accompanying Gallagher’s highly unconventional spin on nude spandex bodysuits is prefaced with a teasingly brief, handwritten explanation of the collection’s epidermic aesthetic: “When I was little, I hated wearing clothes, but I loved wearing my cat Thomas on my head.” That’s all the information we’re given to try and figure out whose mothership these stunning airlocked ensembles beamed down from, and why.

        “Everything Furever” is the work of an audacious newcomer. In the midst of her junior year at RISD, there’s already a tremendous confidence evident in Gallagher’s work: she has a clarity of vision that many established designers would kill for, and she knows it. But there’s no cockiness here, and these pieces never veer into self-aggrandizing exaggerated couture. They’re simply the organic byproducts of an artist expressing her ideas unfettered by bottom-line market constraints. “I chose to attend RISD because I wanted to study art, not necessarily fashion design,” says Gallagher. “I considered several other majors at RISD like painting, textiles and sculpture before realizing that creating an aesthetic through clothing is where my strengths and interests lie.”

        While her peers were busy playing with Easy Bake Ovens and Care Bears, Gallagher spent much of her childhood in a teepee, treasure-hunting in the woods with her three sisters, and making “potions” for her Barbies “out of mushrooms, flowers, and weeds.” But she wasn’t a complete nature-girl tomboy: “I only wore leggings and dresses—never jeans—and would never wear anything too oversized. I also liked my dance leotards and tutus,” remembers Gallagher, of her “girly” childhood aesthetic. “I was very neurotic about the fit of clothing; everything had to fit perfectly or I would tear it off. Needless to say, I spent most of my time wishing I was naked.”

        She expresses that same peculiar love-hate relationship with civilization’s insistence that we cover ourselves in her designs, oscillating between unwieldy constriction and raw, stark-naked freedom. “Metal,” a sleek one-piece dress that mushrooms into a whimsically poofy mini-hoop skirt, is made of galvanized steel and aluminum. Built from dozens of interlocking hand-made springs, the piece appears at once industrial and internal, like the unthinkable guts of a supple Sleep Number mattress. With slivers of bare skin exposed between the springs, “Metal” both protects and imprisons its wearer in a panic room of shimmering Slinkys.

        Rather than starting with a specific customer in mind for her designs, Gallagher designs for alternate realities. “I normally create a scene, a narrative, or sometimes a whole universe that I would be interested in making a reality, and then I fill these worlds with people,” Gallagher explains. “The people just happen to be wearing what's appropriate to their surroundings and ideas. Clothes aren't really at the center of my interests; the people that wear them and their ideals are.”

Gallagher draws inspiration for her otherworldly accoutrements from sources as varied as anatomical illustrations, birthday parties, and retro-futuristic new wave aesthetics. In terms of designers, Gallagher holds a special admiration for “people that create and maintain an aesthetic,” citing Ann Demeulemeester, Yohji Yamamoto, Alexandre Plokhov of Cloak, and Alber Elbaz as some of her heroes.

        Gallagher wants to design for people who focused on “conveying something with the way they dress, rather than simply dressing to look good.” Such a manifesto may seem surprising, given the conceptual nature of her work, but there’s also an undeniable attention to structure and proportion in Gallagher’s clothes: this is art that’s designed to be worn, not just modeled. “I do like intricacy,” admits the designer, “and would ideally like my designs to work as a midpoint between couture and ready-to-wear.”

        With an internship at Anna Sui under her belt, and another upcoming at threeASFOUR, Katie Gallagher is currently working on a new Fall/Winter collection using layers of solid black. “My inspiration comes from bat wings and secrets,” she tells Mean, “I'm experimenting a lot with structured shawls to mimic bat anatomy.” Keep an eye out for Gallagher’s ever-evolving world of darkly comic, dazzling duds—you can bet this won’t be the last you hear from her.