Anna Slevin Collection: the sustainable side of streetwear

Anna Slevin has always loved fashion. Her first creation, a pair of tiny pants for her favourite doll, dates back at when she was 6, but she started developing a more personal style and technical skills during the high school and university. After finishing her studies, she spent a few years working between New York and Los Angeles as an intern at Helmut Lang, as an assistant at Rodarte and in merchandising for DVF, before founding her namesake brand Anna Slevin Collection (ASc) in 2014. She has learned a lot from these great designers, as she says:

It really prepared me for starting my own line because it gave me an idea of the ad hoc things that actually need to be done at a brand, day-to-day. I did everything from shipment coordination to sample maintenance and photo shoot assistance. Laura and Kate Mulleavy are such artists to the core, and it was really cool to watch them work.

ASc's style mixes architecture, sporting elements and urban vibrations that make her streetwear no less appealing than that proposed by Marine Serre or Off-White. A perfect example is the FW19 collection with its oversized sweatshirts, python bodysuits, tops and leggings with dedicated psychedelic graphics in orange, green and neon blue tones, shorts and total black mini dresses. The prices? Almost all under 200 dollars.

Like for many of her generation, sustainability is very important for Anna. That's why she emphasizes that for her products she often uses deadstock fabrics, combined with minimal packaging, entirely recycled and recyclable, including hangtag made using paper sourced from trees in sustainable forests and printed with the care instructions in order to minimize the production of sew-in labels.

Her creative base is in Chicago in a studio in Wicker Park, not far from where Anna grew up, for several reasons:

Designing in Chicago has made it a bit easier for me to be really authentic to my own aesthetic. Chicago is such a welcoming place to foster creativity. There are so many talented creatives here, and the other designers and artists I know locally are so generous with sharing information, which is pretty unique in this business…. I believe that you can get inspiration anywhere, so for me having the creative community is really a big draw.

Here the designer works with a small team of local fabric manufacturers and suppliers.