Denim Consultant Benjamin Talley Smith Returns to Talk Fall Trends and the New Guest in Residence Denim Line

The Who What Wear Podcast

Denim expert Benjamin Talley-Smith joins the podcast to discuss his prolific career designing for brands like Madewell and J.Crew. He provid

Key takeaways

• Benjamin Tally-Smith is described by the New York Times as 'the most influential jeans guy you've never heard of.'
• His new brand, Subject to Change, utilizes reclaimed materials and vintage pieces to create one-of-one handbags.

Main topics

• Benjamin Talley-Smit's design career
• Subject to Change handbag brand

Notable quotes

the most influential jeans guy you've never heard of

Conclusion

An insightful look at the technical artistry behind denim design and a

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:10) Welcome to the Who What Wear podcast. I'm your host, Hilary Kerr, and today I'm sitting down in studio with denim expert and designer Benjamin Talley-Smith. Ben designs jeans for so many of your favorite brands from Kate to Reformation to J.Crew to Madewell. And today we chat all about his new denim line for Gigi Hadid's brand, Guest in Residence. We also get into the denim trends to look out for this fall. And Ben gives his prediction for the number one style of the season, a style I never thought would come back. It's all coming up on Who, What, Where. Ben, thank you for joining me today and welcome back to the pod. You were here a handful of years ago. speaking with our amazing editor-in-chief, Kat Collings. And this is right after the New York Times called you, and I'm going to quote, the most influential jeans guy you've never heard of. Now, I had heard of you because I have been following your career for a very, very, very long time. But since you had that moment, the New York Times article, the interview with Kat, it feels like you are stepping into the light a little bit more. Speaker 1 (1:29) You had that amazing collaboration with Madewell earlier this year. As someone who has been working so successfully for so many years, what made you finally decide to not stay behind the scenes entirely? I Speaker 2 (1:42) think the New York Times piece was obviously an important piece in my life and was a great stepping stone. I've always designed product. I look at Madewell as sort of like a brand building exercise for me. It allowed me to... basically create a brand on my own with them, obviously collaborating. I had a brand in the past called Tally. I've had brands and it just sort of felt right to put my name on something and really experiment with that. And it's also helped grow my consulting business in a big way, which is great. I mean, all of being with you guys, the times piece, everything has really helped sort of my visibility and brands that I. hadn't spoken to, I've now spoken to, or people that I would love to work with, I'm now working with. I Speaker 1 (2:26) don't know how you could work with more people at this point, because it feels like you're touching like every major cool brand right now. How do you have the bandwidth to work with so many different brands and people? Speaker 2 (2:36) More people on my team, for sure, which is great. You know, I've built a team around me. The brands do a lot of the heavy lifting. I integrate with amazing teams. And then I'm always interested in growing myself. and learning as long as i have the time and the bandwidth and know i can service the brands i usually say yes and i make sure it's something that i think is interesting i think it's something that like has legs and longevity i want to make sure the brands that i work with have the focus that they want denim to be a big part of their business but really learning i mean that's my favorite thing like every day i'm like with somebody else that i'm like oh my god I never thought about doing a jean that way or learning a brand ethos, you know, is always fun. Speaker 1 (3:17) Do you have any big takeaways from working with Madewell, something that you learned that they really excel at or something that you didn't know about them? Speaker 2 (3:24) What I loved about it was being able to build the product sort of on my own. And I've known Stephen for a long time. I'm Kataron, the creative director. He was amazing and worked with me and the team on how to make it different, but still like part of their brand. We did some things that like. were in their world but pushed it with the purpose of bringing in a more elevated customer or luxury customer into Madewell, which I think worked. And then it was fun for me, like an exercise in marketing and how do we get it out there and how do we tell the story. And I did all of the marketing pieces with like stamps and signatures and like all of the jeans have the signatures of the people that worked on the product and the hang tag. There was just a lot of like little pieces and details that you wouldn't. See, normally on a Madewell jean that I nerd out on, the button is like a maze that says BTS. It's like hidden. You know, there's like all sorts of like fun things. I always love when you discover things about product. That was the big takeaway with Madewell was sort of just getting to. build something, you know. I Speaker 1 (4:25) love that you Taylor Swift Easter egged a Madewell jean. A Speaker 2 (4:28) hundred percent. If you look at the button, you're like, you're like, wait, what is that? And it's like BTS. It's kind of cool. Speaker 1 (4:34) You're also currently working on something new of your own, a brand called Subject to Change. Talk to me about the inspiration behind creating it. Speaker 2 (4:42) This is one right there. I've always been interested in handbags, just. Purely from like a vintage shopping perspective, at every flea market, you see a million different iterations of like old handbags or things that people have made. And I always just thought that was interesting. So I've probably spent four years working on this, just making prototypes. I've probably made 50 different prototypes over the years. So I take basically... So reclaimed items or like vintage pieces, that's like the body of the fabric and the leather is the accent pieces. It all has like vintage locks and they're all different. So it's really like one of one and using alternative materials like canvas or there's some that are made from old mailbags and things like that. They're really cool. Amazing. I think what's also cool is you could even like give me a jean from high school that doesn't fit you anymore and make the bag out of that so they can really be one of one. The name even itself is like subject to change. It could be a lot of things. So there's a couple of bag silhouettes. You know, I'm not sure what it'll turn into. But for me, it's like a passion project and something fun. Speaker 1 (5:49) You're so free. You have so much leisure time. It also Speaker 2 (5:53) is fun. I do a lot of photography and the website is all photographs that I've taken. with basically an old point-and-shoot camera, like, over the years. I tried to make it look like a Tumblr from, like, 2011. It's a passion project that I think is fun and just a different creative outlet because I do jeans all day long. And it nods to the jeans, but it's not, you know, it's not a jean. I Speaker 1 (6:16) also feel like... There's something to working in a slightly different format that then frees up new ideas about other things in ways that you can't always predict. Speaker 2 (6:24) Totally. I use the same tools. I sketch in the same way. I'll make a tech pack. I mean, it's like all the things that I would do in denim, I do for this. It's just like a different supply chain. And then it's also like jeans, you don't really make one of ones. So it makes it very special. Well, Speaker 1 (6:40) I love it. Congratulations. Thank you. So cool. I do want to talk about denim. So you work across so many different brands for our audience who might not be as familiar with your work or follow you as closely as I do. We're talking about brands like Kate and J.Crew and Reformation. You've worked with Walmart in the past. There's so many different price points, so many different look and feels. I would imagine that obviously every brand has a different... point of view and consideration and set of goals and like what they want to achieve from a design perspective. For example, with J.Crew, am I correct in saying it's Speaker 2 (7:14) a Speaker 1 (7:14) newer collaboration? Yeah, the Speaker 2 (7:15) jeans just launched. Speaker 1 (7:16) J.Crew has a great denim program. J.Crew has a great heritage. Speaker 2 (7:19) What Speaker 1 (7:20) was the impetus for this or like what did they want from working with you? I Speaker 2 (7:24) mean, I've known Olympia for, I mean, a hundred years. I Speaker 1 (7:27) love Speaker 2 (7:27) her so much. I've been friends with her probably since 20... 2006. Oh, Speaker 1 (7:33) you go back that. Yeah, Speaker 2 (7:34) back, back. And she actually approached me to do J.Crew before Madewell. This was probably like four years ago. Yeah. And the sort of leadership there was like, he should be at Madewell because that's like true. Yeah. Like first. Then eventually they were like. can you also move into J.Crew? And I was like, of course I can. And then for her, she's been doing such a good job of sort of the nostalgia of J.Crew and what it used to be but still feels modern. And she's so good at styling herself and sort of being that image. And so when she asked me to do it, I was like, of course