Tess Giberson and Jon Widman, Remixed

Style

As the fashion designer becomes more commercial (in a good way), her artist husband works on his own upcoming show

In Tess Giberson’s TriBeCa loft a week before her Spring 2014 runway show, the focus appears to be on family time instead of fashion. The designer’s husband, artist Jon Widman, sketches at a wooden table while keeping an eye on their five-year-old daughter, June, who crouches on the floor and creates plastic characters from Tetris Link tiles. Ezra, age eight and an aspiring soccer player, is out and about, but his drawings (e.g. Museum of Natural History Snakes) and watercolors plaster a wall adjacent to the kitchen. Giberson says good-bye to a pair of visiting friends and I tell her she seems calm, given the circumstances. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” she replies. “I’m stressed—there’s a lot of anxiety inside—but it always gets done somehow.”

"I’m doing this more as a business, but creativity is still what defines me and keeps me going, Giberson says."

Giberson started her namesake label in 2001 and shuttered it in 2005 upon joining TSE as its design director for women’s and menswear lines. She left the cashmere house in 2008 and relaunched Tess Giberson for the spring 2010 season. Between the first and second iterations of her collection, she shed her total reliance on Widman, romantic sensibility, and twentysomething “purist” perspective—“I would think, I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to sell here, I don’t want to work with this magazine”—in favor of new partners Vickie See and Harriet Lau, functional silhouettes, and a CFDA membership. Plus, dressing for motherhood contributed to the shift.

“I’m doing this more as a business, but creativity is still what defines me and keeps me going,” Giberson says. “I need to find ways to express it that more people can understand and it doesn’t become so…”

Insular? I suggest.

“Yes, because it makes sense to everyone I know, but when you are trying to reach more people, then it becomes a little bit isolating. I want to build a business in this. I think of moving toward the commercial in a good way—as something that people want to buy as opposed to watered-down.”

Tess checking the constant stream of messages leading up to her show this week.

June holds up a recent collage she made while her mom was working.

Tess’s white rope and yarn wall hanging, which will serve as set design for her show on September 6.

Spools of white yarn and rope Tess uses in her work.

Jon at work on a new piece.

A wall dedicated to drawings made by the couple’s two children, June and Ezra.

Tess and Jon’s daughter June on the windowsill at the family’s Tribeca apartment (son Ezra was at soccer).

Her upcoming offering is sure to speak to a broader audience. She and Widman, who have bounced ideas off each other since they met at the Rhode Island School of Design two decades ago, arrived together at the collection’s title, Remix. The couple became interested in elements of the fiber art movement and Bauhaus. “There was also a nice piece about remix in literature…remember that quote that you found?” she asks Widman. “I think it was William Burroughs on how you can take words from a sentence, mix them up, and create new sentences.” Sticking to a palette of white, Kelly green, and navy, she integrated stripes, eyelets and, of course, Widman’s prints, as she’s done from the get-go. It was later that she realized the clothing serves as a strong take on preppy, an aesthetic not usually associated with Giberson.

Though, there is a Giberson Clan story related to the theme. Raised in rural New Hampshire by a glassblower for a father and a textile-captivated mother, along with two sisters who would eventually become artists, Giberson learned to bring the hand into her work. Her family made everything they could from scratch, even growing their own food. “Once I got into the school system, it was a little more difficult,” the designer recounts. “We lived in a conservative area—very WASPy and preppy—and being around the other kids, I, too, wanted to be preppy. I wanted an Izod shirt. I wanted Jordache jeans. But by high school, I was on to other things.”

When I ask Widman whether he’s seen his wife’s forthcoming collection, he responds no. “In the earlier days, I used to be involved 24/7,” he remembers. “We used to do our own silkscreening. Now, Tess has a wonderful team, so I try to stand back and watch with a smile on my face. I like to be surprised and excited for the show.” As such, he concentrates on his own art, which he describes as mixed media. “I like to incorporate drawing and painting, but with sculptural and photographic elements to have a very complete experience.” Giberson notes that he’s incredibly meticulous and tries to invent his own reality. “My own environment where I feel safe,” Widman elaborates. “Memory is very important; in a lot of my paintings, drawings and sculptures, I reference used objects, records or books—things familiar to me—and keep all of the little marks that others have made, creating a new story out of that.”

"Tess inspires me all of the time. I ask simple things—color and composition questions—but most important to me is having a dialogue with Tess that will spark something in my work."

Widman exhibits in both Japan and Korea (where he was born) and has a gallery show next July. He doesn’t yet have a title or a theme. “I’m just reading and I know the exhibition is going to be an evolution of things I’ve done in the past,” he discloses, echoing Giberson’s “Remix” process. Likewise, he continues: “Tess inspires me all of the time. I ask simple things—color and composition questions—but most important to me is having a dialogue with Tess that will spark something in my work.” Ezra and June travel to Seoul with their parents on a regular basis. “They know they’re half me—half Korean—and they have friends in Korea, so they’re at ease with both sides of the family,” Widman beams. As an extracurricular, he, designer Richard Agerbeek of Sweden Unlimited, and musician Hisham Bharoocha run tablet-based publication Ravelin, which plans to sponsor Giberson’s inaugural after-party at Le Bain.

Post-fashion week, Giberson moves on to Fall 2014. She and conceptual photographer Liz Wendelbo, whom the designer recruited when she cast “real women” in her presentation last season, are partnering on T-shirts, printed bags, a perfume, assorted objects, and a video to debut in Giberson’s Soho store in October. In fact, the Crosby Street space is a hub of collaboration, reminiscent of the Giberson’s New Hampshire homestead. It’s housed the artwork of Widman, Giberson’s younger sister Petrova, and sculptor Carol Bove, as well as a video by filmmaker Alia Raza that starred Kim Gordon.

“I do the collaborations because if I don’t, I lose touch with who I am,” Giberson explains. “That makes me feel right inside.”