Camila Frater is a 22-year-old label owner based in New York City, who has made a name for herself in the fashion industry. Born and raised in Toronto, Camila attended a prestigious arts high school that allowed her work to be exhibited in galleries both in Toronto and NYC at a young age. This early exposure led her to develop a fine arts background that she later tied into her fashion design.
After receiving intensive training in fine arts, Camila was awarded a merit scholarship to attend Parsons School of Design, where she studied Fashion Design. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries, including Teen Art Gallery, ScotiaBank Contact Photography, Vancouver Fashion Week, and NYFW with Flying Solo. She was even labeled “The Best of Vancouver Fashion Week” in Vogue Italy and has been featured in notable publications such as Elle, Vogue, Glamour Mag, and Office Magazine.
Currently, Camila’s designs can be found in two highly influential underground New York City retail spaces, “Retail Pharmacy” and “Lucky Jewel.” These NYC collectives represent young and independent designers and are community and collaborative spaces where many talented stylists, photographers, writers, and designers come to shop and scout talent. One of her pieces was even shot by singer Pinkpantheress in Office Magazine, captured by acclaimed photographer Petra Collins.
Camila’s art practice primarily consists of illustrations that reflect moments in time, primarily in animated sequences, emphasizing the idea of displaying different versions of oneself and developing personal narratives within those concepts. Her unconventional way of drawing has bridged a framework into patternmaking, resulting in the creation of large-scale pieces that are truly unique. Camila’s label reflects her creativity and passion for design, and she continues to make a name for herself in the fashion industry.
You can follow Camila on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camilafrater/
Can you tell us about your background in fine arts and how it has influenced your fashion design?
Drawing is an essential tool that promotes my design frameworks and storylines. Creating narratives through the process of illustration has always been a very important aspect to characterize and separate my work with a distinct style. It essentially gives my designs a voice in terms of textile print and process development. It is always working in the background but will always remain one of the most crucial inspirations for my designs.
How do you approach the process of creating your large scale illustrations and integrating them into your designs?
The way I view drawing is not in a linear way, more so in a jagged way of two narratives colliding with each other. I’ve always felt limited drawing on a sheet of paper, because my drawing would always go outside the paper.
During these periods of exploration, I would simply just take another piece of paper and tape it onto the existing drawing, so I can extend it and so on- since I work a lot with tracing paper due to its versatile uses and drafting tape, I noticed that while building a larger scope of a drawing with these materials, it created a really beautiful surface that made me think about it in a textile sense, I would always question how I could relate my 2D world into the 3D constructive space of pattern making?
These large scale drawings would be so jaggeded and modular in shape, I would experiment folding them in a compact format, creating crease lines in the paper. I wanted to translate that into 3D, so that’s where the draping system I explored took off. I took the drawing and traced it onto fabric and marked up each crease line onto the fabric, and labeled them with different letters, numbers etc.
I basically started draping the shape copied onto fabric with all the lines onto the form. Everything draped is corresponding to the fold lines, and then I would create a list of which labeled line to cut into, hand sew onto, etc. There were a lot of toiles made before actually working with final fabric choice, because patternmaking something that was draped into such a sculptural shape is pretty difficult to take apart and then make sure it mathematically makes sense and can also fit nicely onto a body.
It was such a rewarding exploration to be able to imagine something that seemed so impossible to even make a design process for. It is actually very much possible to make whatever you think of… just requires a lot of patience and work!
What inspired you to merge fine arts practices and fashion design, and what unique perspective do you bring to the industry?
There was never any intention to merge, it just was like that. I always used fine arts practices and illustration as a muse and accent in my design framework, it became the visual language for a dress collection for example. That is how people can tell my work apart from others and know that it is coming from me, it is almost sort of like stamping my visual language onto the clothes. My unique perspective is to show that you can merge two mediums into a collection, and you can break traditional rules and not be scared to make mistakes within that process, obviously, don’t listen to anyone that tells you it’s not possible.
Can you walk us through your creative process for designing your 2022-2023 collection of dresses?
Sure!
Majority of it was looking at illustrations in a sequenced format. What that essentially means to me is capturing animated movement in a drawing sequence that portrays a narrative. This was something that was important for me building large scale drawings that later on became the origin of my patterns For the dresses. The rest fell into place after this, and the illustrations gave the collection a voice and a personalized feeling for the background of my collection. Capturing that as my process and experimenting with how far you can take fashion illustration was a necessity in my process.
How do you balance your focus on fine arts and fashion design, and what benefits do you see in merging the two?
I truly see myself as an artist working in all different mediums, primarily design. At the end of the day though, I feel as if I can express my truest form of artistic ability through fashion design, and have for many years. I think there are so many benefits of merging to practices as they both allow you to create a unique body of work that depends on one another to move forward. It is always so interesting to see people in fashion design and how they approach design with a fine arts background, an architecture background, engineering background, or a background in performance art – the list goes on. I think it gives fashion design a fresher perspective and pushes the boundaries of traditional step by step fashion design, I believe that where real induviduallity can stem from in fashion.
Can you talk about your experience exhibiting your work in various galleries and fashion shows, and how it has impacted your career?
Definitely. I have been exhibiting since 2015 and started developing my career earlier on. I remember my first group show was at Edward Day Gallery, a well-known gallery in Toronto that has been exhibiting contemporary Canadian and international fine art for over 24 years.
I first started out mainly with fine art pieces, large scale illustrations, and then started to move into fashion photography, and now I professionally work in Fashion Design. I believe all of these are related to each other for me as a designer, because I learned so much through these experiences and finding a medium that best suits my artistic vision. I now have a great understanding of creative directing my shoots, working with photography, garment construction, textile design via illustration, how I want to exhibit my designs, and how to sew et cetera.. It all has to begin somewhere and merge. Starting with gallery exhibitions helped me refine my work and curate it in a format that compliments myself as an artist and designer, and see it from a different perspective in a curated space. Being a part of exhibitions or fashion week events can definitely help with getting exposure and also understanding those different kinds of environments. If you have experience in those related settings already, it will be much easier to handle and meet the next opportunity in that realm. It’s really more so, how do you let it impact your career? You can either be closed off or learn from the experience and move to the next.
How do you prioritize collaboration and community in your work, and what value do you see in these relationships?
I think working within the art and design community in NYC opens up a lot more doors than one would think. I believe it is definitely a gateway for an independent designer to be exposed to bigger opportunities than one would obtain traditionally. By working with individuals in your community, you meet a lot of people who are stylists, photographers, or creative directors of magazines or musicians etc, and are always looking to collaborate with independent designers, whether it is just from reaching out, or scouting out designs at local shops in the community. Being a part of something bigger than myself and my work is the most fulfilling part of what I do, so prioritizing those collaborations in the community means a lot to me.
Can you discuss the role of sustainability in your designs, and how you incorporate eco-friendly practices into your process?
I work with a lot of dye sublimation textile design processes when it comes to the fabric print of my blouses. I achieve a really interesting faded effect through multiple reuses of the print when applied onto fabric with a heat press. In effect, this saves a lot of dye sublimation prints and reuses them until all of the ink has been used up in the print. I am always looking for new ways to promote sustainability in my design process, as creating a collection can be quite a process where fabric and paper can go to waste with all the trial and error.
What challenges have you faced as a young designer in the industry, and how have you overcome them?
I think the main fact is that I am young, perhaps some people can misread that as a weakness- which is a general misconception. Living, experiencing,and working in the corporate fashion industry and independent designer community in NYC definitely jumpstarts a young designer’s career and essentially has them working very independent roles with a significant amount of responsibility. I believe a lot has changed too after COVID in this scene, a lot of the traditional rules that fashion design came with changed. It encouraged young designers that they too can become established by following their own order of operations, and just doing it and advocating for themselves and their brand. This for sure created a wave of independent designers that emerged after COVID, and now you’re seeing a lot of one of a kind and interesting designers starting to take charge of the over saturated fast fashion industry that everyone is bored of.
Looking to the future, what are your goals and aspirations for your label and your career as a designer?
I definitely want to work with more stores in NYC and other parts of the U.S. and eventually places in Europe. There are a lot of interesting shops that are always looking to stock new designers like me, and I am looking to build those relationships as I keep making new collections. I want to express my individuality through my label and have it exhibited curated shops that compliment my designs in different ways- whether that be participating in fashion weeks or stocking in more stores, all of these opportunities will open new doors that are best fit for me as a fashion designer, I am excited to see what happens, and open!