Christopher John Rogers Has Time on His Side
For many people who work in fashion, manic energy is a prerequisite. Whether you work at a design showroom, a press office, or a magazine, the gig often comes with a sense of anxiety-ridden urgency. Everything is a constant, grueling race to the finish or to the next fashion show. Sometimes, there are actually people running down the hallways. “Gird your loins!” as the meme goes.
Not an ounce of that energy exists inside Christopher John Rogers's studio. The designer’s headquarters, located inside an old warehouse building on Broadway, is distinctly cool, calm, and collected. So is the man himself, especially when I met him there a few weeks before his return to the New York Fashion Week schedule. Rogers is about as warm as they come, a light and gracious spirit who is quick with a smile. You know his colorful work when you see it, whether it’s a corset with rainbow top stitching in a lookbook, a voluminous ballgown on a red carpet, or a vibrant striped knit in stores like Target and J.Crew, both of which he’s created sell-out capsule collections for over the last couple of years. It’s clear he has never taken himself too seriously, and perhaps this is a key to the success he’s seen ever since starting his eponymous label in the apartment he shared with the brand’s co-founder in 2018.
That co-founder is still by his side. Her name is Christina Ripley, and she greets me with a hug as soon as I arrived at the studio space. So did “Chris,” as she calls him. The pair met while in school together at SCAD and have been inseparable ever since. They are more than business partners; they’re best friends having a blast.
In front of a comfy emerald green couch, a sweet-smelling candle is lit on a table stacked with magazines featuring Rogers’s designs on their covers. It’s an open space with sunlight pouring in, the better to take in a preview of his vibrant Collection 015. A single long rack nearly the length of the space is hung with the designer’s latest offering, which includes a spectacular silk faille gown with Japanese grosgrain ribbon embroidery on a draped skirt that Rogers says was inspired by a folded umbrella he saw on the streets of Tribeca. (He points out the “pattern magic” happening with a neckline that’s been pleated into the back of the neck and turned into an armhole.) There’s also a longline British mohair coat in a color he calls “slime.”
The clothes look divine, even just hanging on racks without bodies filling them. Rogers also points out that this is the first season they’ve started working with a factory in Italy for their tailoring, which I could tell immediately from that big, delicious bunch of beautiful clothes. “This is the most ‘me’ collection I’ve ever designed,” he said with a soft confidence and that sweet smile.
Rogers hasn’t shown a runway collection since 2023, and I was curious to learn more about why he decided now was the moment to return. Of course, he’s never really followed fashion’s calendar system. As he and Ripley have often noted in interviews, they’ve always just done what’s right for them, both creatively and business-wise as an independent label. They have been very intentional in the way that they’ve chosen to release collections when it makes sense for them, usually in the pre-seasons, which gives the team longer lead times to make the clothes and get them delivered. That timing also means the collections can be on the store floors longer, allowing for deeper customer engagement with and discovery of the clothes each season.
Time is an interesting concept in relation to Rogers’s work and business. The word came up a lot during our conversation in the studio, primarily when talking about the creative benefits of taking a beat to process, ideate, and recalibrate as a designer. “I feel like in the beginning, there was an urgency behind it all,” Rogers says. “We started out all having full-time jobs and making collections at the same time. A lot of the work was reliant on the ease of making things because we made everything completely ourselves.” He says that this is the longest period of time that he’s had to really sit with his ideas and take deeper dives into references that have always interested him. For this collection, Rogers notes that he really used process as inspiration and looked to other artists he admires who have done the same, like Ángela de la Cruz, Robert Morris, and Ettore Sottsass. He also looked to the interior construction of couture garments and underwater ecosystems with their surreal, “high-octane” colors.
Color is Rogers’s most important visual code, something he’s built his business on in a way that’s always felt completely singular. The most inspiring thing about Rogers’s designs, ROYGBIV and all, is that his pieces can look completely different on different people.
“When I was growing up,” he said, “I never felt like there were clothes that did that for me. But there was this vintage store down the street from my high school [in Baton Rouge, Louisiana] called Time Warp, and it was organized by color, not decade. So you have a rotating rack of pink and you have a 1970s prom shirt next to a 1920s flapper dress in these weird shades of the same color that flattens the time. You could take a piece and really make it your own, like an exploration of identity.”
Another advantage to spending years away from the runway space and the traditional fashion calendar is the relationship-building that Rogers has been able to do with his customers. Community is often a poorly used marketing tool in fashion, but for Rogers, it’s the reason he does what he does. As Ripley explained, “What’s been cool about the past year and getting off the hamster wheel of fashion shows, events, and industry happenings is that we’ve had the opportunity to connect a lot with our customers.” She said they’ve been focused on trunk shows with their retail partners as well as in-studio sales, which have not only been good for business but also for the creative health of the brand.
“The best thing about what Chris does is not prescribing something on you, a trend or an outfit, but allowing a person to connect to something in the collection and have them wear it in their own way,” Ripley said.
Rogers echoes her sentiment, “Providing people with lots of different options to choose who they want to be is exciting.” He added, “I love the show, I love to do lookbooks and to create that world, but I also love when a customer will tag us on Instagram and be wearing something in a way that I completely did not expect, like wearing something femme and pink but with a fucked up shoe. That’s exciting.”
I ask them if they’re thinking about opening their own store space to do more of that community-building. “That’s something we’d love to do,” Rogers says. “Definitely soon.”
“No rush!” I said as they started to laugh. Of course, they have to get through their show first. Is everything in the collection currently in-studio? Check. Is the soundtrack done? It’s been done for a while. Has casting happened yet? Not quite but in the next few days. As I stand up to leave, I tell them, probably too much, how excited I am to see the show. Ripley and Rogers embrace, cheek-to-cheek, and let out a simultaneous happy exhale. They’re living in the moment, and what a bright one it is for them.
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