day of the deadstock

It was this men’s topcoat from the 1950s or 1960s. I’d worn it so much that the fabric was totally degrading. At one point I flipped it, so I could just wear it inside-out. Then I thought, maybe I could detail it, so it’s a functional coat inside-out. So I added belt loops and straps and pockets and all these things, and I started wearing it, and then I just put it in the collection. That was sort of accidentally the first piece because it was something I made for myself. 

Oh, thank you. I make things with the intention of it having a function in the world and in someone’s life. The function could be quite theoretical and loose because some of the clothes are really delicate and fragile, but there is always this sense of there being kind of a purpose to what I make.

Totally. Honestly, I think beauty is an actual expression of love of the universe. I have a semi-religious belief in beauty and the value of it. I think that it is sort of a profound appreciation of existence. That’s enough for me. Beauty is enough of a reason all the time.

The collection right after the pandemic, resort 2022. During the pandemic, Shane and I moved in with my parents, and my sister and her husband moved in with my parents. We didn’t want to be in the city and they had just had a baby, so we all moved back into our childhood bedrooms. I was like, I just need to keep working. Normally I work with a lot of collaborators, a lot of pattern-makers and sewers to make things. This time, I thought, well, I can make things. I can make everything myself. So I just started making work. I’d spend hours beading. I would wake up and I’d start beading around nine o’clock in the morning and I would bead until probably nine o’clock that evening. I’d be doing 12 hours a day, and I did it for almost two weeks. 

It became this really meditative process of making work with no sense of understanding what’s going to happen with these pieces – no sense of anything. I was just making work because I had this space to make things, and I could just take my time. I think about that collection a lot. I don’t know if it speaks to every aspect of what CDLM is, but I think it speaks to the delicacy and the intention and the weight of craft because it was so crafty.

There are a couple of dresses that are really special to me. One was a slip dress that I reconstructed that had really bad dry rot. This was the collection where I buried some pieces for a couple of months, and then I would dig them up and I’d repair them. And at one point it was washing them with a cheese mould to try and build up textures on them. It was really nice that it was such an organic process. 

Even if you can’t necessarily see all the handiwork that’s there in the photos, knowing the level of handiwork in these is really precious. It was a really special collection to me.

I’m very grateful to the people in the fashion community who get it and appreciate it. On the other end, there is this idea in fashion that everything has to have a commercial application and it has to be something that speaks to this larger world of fashion. I wouldn’t even say CDLM is a fashion collection. I don’t want to say it’s an art practice either, because that feels like removing it from the intention of being on a body. But it isn’t about making something to be consumed. It’s about making something that I think is beautiful and will end up on someone’s body at one point. That’s the thing that people don’t always get.

I’ve been doing this so long, though, I don’t really care. I went backstage at the Tory Burch [where Peters is head designer] show yesterday and was talking to Alexa Chung. She remembered Creatures of the Wind and she asked “Do you miss having your brand?” I was like, “No, because I have CDLM and I have Tory.” I started Creatures when I was 23 and I’m 40 now. I’ve been doing this for almost half my life, which is wild. It’s funny – obviously you’re still vulnerable to being upset by a criticism or someone not liking something, but that very rarely happens at this point. I legit don’t care what people think about what I do, but I’m always happy and I am so grateful for the opportunities that I have and to be able to make work like this. I feel very much loved and taken care of by the larger fashion world.

It’s just a rolling process. My mom was an antique dealer. She’s since retired, but she still helps. I work with a bunch of different vintage dealers who know what I like. They’ll help me source things. I go all over the place. I’m also very democratic with what I find. I generally don’t rework anything that has some life left in it. It has to be already a big thing messed up for me to go after it. 

For the deadstock fabrics, I source them from friends who work at other companies, thrift stores, the trunk sales, wherever. I’ll buy it and keep it. That’s one of the things that’s been a bit of an issue with my boyfriend – I have to accumulate a lot of things to be able to make work. There are narratives in the collections, so I just have to have enough stuff to create a narrative out of it. That just means I have a ton of junk in our house all the time.

It’s insane. It’s so bad! I work out of our apartment. We live in a space that has two floors, so I can kind of isolate some of the pieces to one area, but at the same time it’s like I just need to get it out of our house because it’s just too much.

There’s so much stuff. It’s impossible!

For me, the practice of making clothes, of respecting materials, is very important. Sustainability is not necessarily a bad word, but it does put you in a really weird position being “eco” or “green.” I think the whole fashion industry should be like this, but obviously I’m aware that for these larger-scale companies, it’s not totally possible. Showing people that you can make work that’s really beautiful and connects to people in a way that you don’t have to hurt anyone, you don’t have to hurt the planet, you don’t have to make new things – you can make stuff that’s beautiful and interesting and special with the things that already exists – is really important. 

Truly we are a zero-waste company. Everything gets turned into something. If it’s not me making it myself, I’m working with artisan groups all over the world. One of the reasons why I like making clothes is that I can make things that are beautiful and in a beautiful way, and support people who need the support.

It really varies. The most recent collection that will come out in October or November is a reaction to breaking my shoulder earlier this summer. I had a bike accident and I destroyed it completely. When you break your shoulder, you can’t move your arm at all. I couldn’t do any embroidery. I couldn’t really lift anything up, but I could thread-pick. So I started making all this work that was just thread-picking with a pair of tweezers. I did yards and yards and yards of fabric. I thought it’d be cool as a wig, so I started making wigs. 

It’s a process that is really circumstance-driven. Sometimes it’s finding something cool like a box of antique feathers, other times it’s breaking my stupid shoulder. The white one that I showed in January,  that was about my meditation practice. 

I always try to make the collections cohesive. There’s generally a sense of a colour palette of the same time period the pieces are sourced from, or of the same silhouette. 

Oh yeah, thank you. I’ve never really been hurt badly before, and I really, really broke it. Even though I was in pain, there was a nice assurance that things happen and you grow and get better and recover. Just after I had the accident, it weirdly felt like it somehow opened me up more to the universe. It was on an emotional or spiritual level. There is an odd energetic aspect to getting injured that is, I don’t know, somehow calming. 

Straight up. That’s all you can do.

I hope that I just continue to make stuff. I want to do more projects with different communities around the world. I’ve been in contact with some artisan groups and women’s collectives, and I’d love to do those projects on a larger scale. 

We’ve worked with Aid to Artisans Mexico and Loona in Mexico City to make a series of bags based on 1930s brassieres. They are actually bras that turn it into tote bags. I remember being on the Zoom call with them explaining the idea. These women live in an isolated mountain village in the Yucatan Peninsula and have been doing craftwork and macramé for over 60 years as a collective. We had such a nice exchange and they were really excited about making these bags – and in the end the bags sold really well too. I love being able to make things that are interesting and odd and weird and to do it with people who live really beautiful lives, who potentially need additional support. 

It’s totally true. Clothes are an extension of ourselves. They are our immaterial forms made real. It’s our imagined ideas of who we’d like to be and who we are that we can communicate immediately without having to say any words.