As FQ sits down in a cosy Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland bar with Jess Grindell, who’s arrived after clocking off from her nine-to-five, it’s clear there’s more to this young designer than meets the eye.
Dressed in sleek yet comfortable clothing, she exudes an undeniable inner confidence as she begins to discuss her label. High-quality fabrics, structured pleats and handcrafted pintucks have become synonymous with Grindell’s eponymous label. Giving a nod to the past through Victorian references and reworked takes on masculine tailoring, she sets herself apart from other designers through her strong feminist aesthetic.
Fashion has always been a major part of life for the young designer, who launched her label in 2021. She recounts memories of flipping through the catalogues of then-booming children’s brands Pumpkin Patch and Urban Angel, exhibiting an eye for design from an early age; however, it wasn’t until she began to study graphic design that she developed a desire to make clothing.
In the first year of her tertiary degree, Grindell elected to take a fashion design paper, and something just clicked. She invested in a sewing machine and began trying her hand at crafting different garments over her summer holiday. In her second year, she switched her major to fashion design, certain she’d found the right discipline for her.
“I was one of those people who’d stay late at uni to do my own stuff, come in on the weekends and make clothes for events I was going to,” she says. “A few times, after I’d made pairs of pants for myself, I had friends ask me if I could remake them for them.” Grindell’s mentors at AUT provided a sense of direction for her developing brand identity by asking her and her peers to identify and centre their values when designing their graduate collections. For Grindell, this was the beginning of her unique and considered aesthetic and attitude based on the female experience. “I love women and women’s rights and all that empowering stuff… that’s what I base everything on,” she says. “[I make] stuff to make women feel powerful and fun.”
“I realised that clothes could have meaning, be a protest about something or evoke emotions. I really like that about clothing, beyond it just being something pretty.”
This message and mission — to empower women through clothing — is obvious in Grindell’s creations. There’s the appreciation for the Victorian era in her corsetry references and pleated details, but she also offers a feminine, reworked take on several traditionally masculine garments. One of her most popular designs, the ‘Riding’ shirt, draws inspiration from the silhouette of a Victorian men’s equestrian shirt, with delicate hand-sewn gathering front and back. Another favourite, a playful pleated mini called the ‘Joker’ skirt, is also an historical throwback — this time inspired by court jesters and “men in power”.
“I realised that clothes could have meaning, be a protest about something or evoke emotions in people,” says Grindell. “I really like that about clothing, beyond it just being something pretty.”
Victorian looks and men’s tailoring aren’t the only things alluded to in Grindell’s designs. Trailblazers Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood are also sources of inspiration, but her influences can be more esoteric too. “Right now, it’s WAGs, before that, it was motorcycles, at university I liked [late German painter] Max Ernst,” she says.
Conveying her vision to the world via social media has been fundamental to Grindell’s rise. Seeing herself as an energetic, outgoing and self-assured individual, she uses her label’s Instagram page to communicate this image of the ‘Jess Grindell girl’ to her audience. A quick scroll of the grid confirms this — between campaign images, she posts photos of herself, her friends and her customers wearing her designs, a style of social media marketing she asserts she adopted from French label Jacquemus.
Grindell’s future as a fashion designer isn’t limited by what she’s doing now — she’d like to move into a similarly interesting and potentially multidisciplinary space, where clothing meets art. “I love the idea of [the brand] Jess Grindell being a world, not just clothes — to be able to create a space that represents women the way I do with events, furniture… ” she says. “I did an event last year and that night I had people around me who represent my world, which feels more Jess Grindell than a singular piece of clothing.”
In terms of her designs, Grindell aspires to move beyond a commercial, “safe” aesthetic and begin dabbling with a more avant- garde style, to offer wearers a sense of dressing-up without feeling like they’re wearing a costume. “You may as well aim for something out of this world, because you never know what’s going to happen.”
Jess Grindell is currently available to shop on jessgrindell.com and at her stockist Sully’s (Wellington), with the majority of her collection being made-to-order with a two-to three-week lead time.
This article appeared in Fashion Quarterly’s Autumn 2023 issue.
Words: Amberley Colby.
