Fashion
from Natchez to New York

Fashion designer Hilton Hollis is one New Yorker who’s proud of his Southern roots and quick to claim them.

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, Hollis has worked with many highly respected designers including Calvin Klein and Dana Buchman among, many others. After graduating from F.I.T. in 1999, Hollis was asked to join 90 of the world’s most influential designers at the NYC 2000 Millennium Fashion Show in Times Square. Hollis began his career with a bang, and this early success has been a driving force in his fashion career.

Born in Natchez, Miss., Hollis, 34, says that his Southern heritage has greatly influenced how he approaches his designs. In sharing his view of Natchez and the sensibility and charm of the town, he says “that’s what inspires me in clothing. You can be traditional, you can make clothing that really appeals to the masses, but just by doing things a little bit differently you can really elevate it to the next level and you can make it grand. You can make it something out of the ordinary.”
Van Gogh and his use of color loosely inspired the Hilton Hollis Fall 2008 collection. The similarities include the use of thick, heavy paint and the colors and abstract of the florals chosen. Hollis travels to Europe three to four times a year to search for ideas for fabrics, usually choosing from Italy, Spain, and France, while selecting silks from China and Japan. He spends a great deal of time on each piece, making sure each ties into the overall theme of the collection. After spending roughly a year preparing for his fall line, it was shipped to stores for customer purchase in July.

The Spring 2009 collection is inspired by Japanese origami, along with loosely taking the concept of the Japanese geisha and translating it in a way that is approachable and acceptable to people in the United States. Hollis was motivated by the oriental folding of paper, so there is a lot of pleating and folding of bright, bold colors involved in the spring line. When asked why a certain color sometimes becomes “big” during a particular season, Hollis explained that a lot of it has to do with the economy, sharing that the ongoing recession was why black was so popular last year. “Designers tend to react to what is going around them, so, for me, I’m tired of the depression . . . so I really interjected a lot of color in the collection this season, grounding it with neutral, of course, which is always important for me, but really spicing it up a lot with some really bright, bold colors for Spring 2009.”

Hollis’ extreme talent paired with his fearless passion to create designs out of the ordinary has made him a standout, yet with all of this success, he has remained humble and true to his roots. He says he comes home to Mississippi two to three times a year, which is a lot considering he also travels the world for trunk shows, appearances, inspiration, and materials. Hollis has events scheduled all over the South, and takes great pleasure in coming back home. “I like to say the South is my home, not just Mississippi, because I have family spread out all over of course, and I just always feel at home no matter where I am in the South- so that’s a nice thing to go back to,” he says.

Hollis does a great deal of charity work, and this is often what brings him back to the South. A few include the shows he has done for Dress for Success, a women’s charity that helps battered and underprivileged women go out into the work force, as well as the International Children’s Heart Association, located in Memphis, Tenn., which was formed for children in countries that cannot afford to have heart procedures done. Medical professionals travel to these countries and perform the surgeries at no cost. He is also starting to work with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Hollis has worked the longest with the Telluride Aids Benefit in Telluride, Colo., volunteering his time for over eight years. Hollis clearly takes great joy in his volunteer work, and it is very important to him to give back to multiple foundations rather than just focusing on one. “That’s what makes people successful, is just that desire and that passion that they have in their hearts to actually do something good,” he says. “I feel like God’s given me so much, I want to give back to my fellow man, that’s for sure.”

He likes to say he’s not about a résumé; he’s about the people he surrounds himself with, saying, “I think that comes from being Southern, you grow up having people around you who are so nice and go out of their way to help you, and I find that people in the South have such great personalities and we’re always willing to help each other. I refuse to surround myself with anything else besides that, because that’s really what I’ve been accustomed to for my whole life.” Hollis says success is all about surrounding yourself with the right people, and that’s how the work gets done in a way where there is love and passion behind each design.

He shares advice to any aspiring designers. “I think as long as you stay true to your customer and stay true to yourself as a designer, the success and the business will come and it will prosper immensely.”

Hollis has clearly done so, and we can expect to watch his success continue to grow in the future. by Kathleen Williams

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