Designer Style: Matthew Ames

images from Matthew Ames’ Spring 2009 lookbook

Fashion designer Matthew Ames makes the complicated look so simple. Although his draped creations seem to have simply fallen into the perfect place, creating an elegant and classic yet avant-garde silhouette, as any designer knows making it look easy is the hardest part.

For his Fall 2009 collection Ames merges quintessentially American colors and fabrics (red, camel, denim, ultra suede) with shapes that belong less to one time or place and more to the girl with a wandering spirit. As for inspiration, Ames explains to Interview Magazine channeling “an ‘untroubled mind,’ or being inspired by nothing…clearness of vision.” This can be seen in Ames’ draping and construction of each piece, held together  as seamlessly as possible. “I wanted to eliminate the unnecessary and focus on the essential,” Ames tells Style.com. With the trends in fashion, especially with young and emerging designers, leaning more toward a body con look it’s refreshing to see this new and modern interpretation of femininity. 

Designer Bio:
Matthew Ames was born in Washington, DC in 1979 and grew up in Illinois and Michigan. He gained a BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. After working at the atelier of Jurgi Persoons in Antwerp, Belgium, Ames relocated to New York where he began working as a design assistant to Miguel Adrover. In 2004, he was selected as a finalist for the Festival de la Mode a Hyeres in France. Ames showed his first women’s wear collection in 2005 and opened a studio in Brooklyn, New York. His collection is carried at Forty Five Ten in Dallas, Savannah in Los Angeles, Capitol in Charlotte, Helen Yi in Chicago and Takashimaya in New York among others. In 2009, Ames received the 8th annual Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in women’s wear design. Ames lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

below images from Matthew Ames’ Fall 2009 runway show