Why Do a Runway Show After 13 Years of Not Being a Runway Brand?
6397 is not a runway fashion brand. It's not even really a fashion brand. 6397 is a clothing brand of the purest sense, a 13-year-old label dedicated to the art of the perfect staple garment, the kind of clothes you wear "over and over and over," as founder Stella Ishii puts it.
And, yes, lot of brands say they make that sorta thing. 6397 — named for the alphanumeric spelling of NEWS, north, east, west, and south — actually does. And it's been turning them out for over 13 years. So, why a runway show?
(And what a runway show, by the way: considering that this was 6397's first stab at a catwalk, it couldn't have been better. Beachy theming saw sandy-footed models strolling in layered tanks and cropped cargos, hair intertwined with seashells. Whimsical but not enough to detract from the collection's easy seriousness.)
Ahead of the show, I yapped with Ishii, founder of both showroom The News and 6397 — and a fashion lifer who helped bring Martin Margiela and COMME des GARÇONS to wider markets — and Lizzie Owens, 6397's head of design, about their beautifully unpretentious clothing line, which just so happens to be run by beautifully unpretentious people.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Stella, I know 6397 from visiting your showroom but I also remember you guys had this amazing little store on Mulberry.
Ishii: Yes! Brendon [Babenzien, founder of The News-repped Noah], actually found that for us. We were there for four years but when it was time to renew it was like, well, we need a bigger space. There was no room for inventory, so we had to run back to the showroom for stock. I live in the neighborhood, so I'd often be there on the weekends as the runner because somebody had to be there and keep the customer engaged.
That is a perfect summation of how hands-on you've been with the brand.
Ishii: You know, the brand is always in my head. I always thought of it as this way of dressing that's easy, effortless but cool. Always New York, downtown New York. And Lizzie's really done amazing with it.
Talk a little bit about that period of transition where you brought Lizzie onboard.
Ishii: 6397 was a staple in many great stores but COVID happened, orders were canceled, and it got really hard to continue. If we were going to stop, that would have been the time. It just a long uphill climb. I didn't want to stop, but that was the time to make some updates without changing the basic DNA. That was something I was feeling and the girls on the team were feeling.
It was a combination of that and also realizing that the landscape. It lacked creativity. It really lacked creativity. And I wasn't stimulated creatively. COVID made me think like, what are we doing if it's not satisfying that creative need? I have a showroom. I represent many wonderful brands. I can just do that instead.
And that's when you brought in Lizzie. Lizzie, what was that like?
Owens: Stella and I go way back. She used to represent my old brand, Highland —
Ishii: Which was the coolest brand ever!
Owens: [laughs] When I started with 6397, we went back to the beginnings of the brand to figure out what we wanted to do.
It feels like the throughline, now and then, is simply good clothes.
Ishii: That's exactly it, good clothes. They go in and out of fashion but are a staple in your wardrobe. You wear them over and over and over.
Owens: Right. And there are just so many clothes in the world. Things really have to have layers of meaning. That's what I saw as my job, to take Stella's ethos and attitude and style and wardrobe and archive and give it those layers. We've arrived at a nice place. There's creativity, for sure, and our team probably has at least 60 combined years of experience so we put a lot into it behind the scenes. That can be felt in the clothes but, also, you don't have to know anything about fashion to feel the integrity.
How do you define that integrity?
Owens: It starts from us choosing fabrics, which we do collectively. Quality fabrics.
Ishii: It's really all about quality, quality, quality. Plus, we're very aware of the price range that we want to hit. I don't want the clothes to be out of reach for most shoppers. They shouldn't be. I think a lot of clothes are way too expensive now. And they're probably getting hefty margins. There is a margin we need to maintain the business but we don't go far over that. It's non-greedy. We can do that because we're a small company.
Owens: It's a really lean business. The team is really small, the amount of factories that we work with are few, and we're really intentional about the way we develop. We're also using kind of the best materials you can get for our price point — we're using mills that make stuff for Gucci, you know? We give you that level of quality but you don't have to pay those prices.
it's not advertised on that level, either.
Owens: No, no. It's for you to discover. We're always weighing whether something is worth the price, and if it'll register with the customer. Like, how good does this fabric feel on the skin and how does it behave after three washes? All of that is considered.
Lizzie, I'm curious: do you have a definition for what makes a 6397 garment?
Owens: I've been chipping away at that. It's something that has a timeless range so you can keep it around for a long time but you're also reaching for it right now because it has an energy that feels of the moment.
It's intuitive.
Owens: Yeah. It takes putting these clothes on to be like, "Wow, this makes me feel great. I didn't even know clothes could do that." Especially because it all looks so simple on the hanger. The clothes really should help make that person feel beautiful and confident and not take over. It should bring the person alive.
Ishii: It should never be "It has to be like this and worn with this and this and this." That's ridiculous.
Owens: Yeah, it's not a recipe.
Ishii: No, it's the ingredients.
Owens: Yeah, it is like cooking, right? It's intuitive in that sense, too. Everyone has that one thing they need in their pantry. This is like a pantry essential. [laughs]
Let's talk about the runway show.
Ishii: The show wasn't something we thought about or planned far in advance. Actually, I'm the one who's always like, "Oh, we don't need to show, our clothes don't need to show, we're so busy this time of year with market [when brands and showrooms display product to buyers], it's expensive." But the team was like, "Really, why not?" And then I thought, "Well, why not?"
In reality, I was a little scared to put us out there. But I changed my mind in May or June, which gave us about three months to prepare. And I knew it had to be here. [gestures around showroom] It's home. The space has so much to do with the brand. This is where we shoot our lookbooks. So, I thought, Can we do it at the budget of a glorified lookbook? Turns out: yes.
And the other question I had was, Well, if you do this once, will it be expected that you do it every season? That's scary. It's so much, because we're so busy, we're selling, we're seeing buyers, and we're responsible for all these other brands we represent. But it was like, let's try it. Why not? Just once, to see what the response is.
The runway is kinda like, "Nothing's different, but here's where 6397 is right now."
Owens: Yeah, not so much has changed. I just want to crystallize where we are now.
Ishii: It's not a change out of any desire to change. It's this intuitive feeling of this is what we see and this is what we like right now. Our tastes change. But not that much. Like, when Lizzie came on board, that was a change but even that wasn't really a change. It was an evolution. It was more creativity, the clothes becoming more what we're all feeling now.
